Posted on 10/14/2013 5:57:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
Anyone old enough to remember Viet Nam can remember how the country felt toward the man and women who were sent to Southeast Asia to prosecute that war. They were treated like [as this is a family column] garbage.
We have discussed before how, in the National Guard during those days, it was suggested that we wear civilian clothes to and from drills.
Of all the dumb things the federal government has done during this partial shut down was to have shut down national parks, and national monuments. Some of the national monuments that have been shut down are the memorials to war dead in Washington, DC.
We have, within walking distance from one another, memorials to the Korean and Viet Nam wars and the World War II Memorial.
These three are crucial because there are still men and women alive who fought in those wars. There are no living veterans of World War I.
VE - Victory in Europe Day - was May 8, 1945; Japan signed the surrender documents ending the war in the Pacific on September 2, 1945.
An American who might have sneaked into the service at, say, 15 years of age would be 83 today. We're quickly running out of WWII veterans. In fact, the Veterans Administration says that these men and women are dying at the rate of 640 per day; so those that want to visit the memorial to their war are running out of time.
There is a program known as "Honor Flights" that began in 2005 as a small program to fly some WWII vets to Washington to visit the World War II Memorial.
The program has grown to the point that, according to HonorFlight.org this month there are flights scheduled for 25 out of the 31 available days.
That's why, when President Barack Obama shut down the war memorials - especially in Washington, DC and especially the WW II memorial, it struck such a chord both with those who have served under arms and those who, as Will Rogers once put it, have "stood on the curb and clapped as they've gone by."
I would love to say that Barack Obama didn't know that part of the shutdown of national parks would involve these memorials. But I don't think that's true.
Mr. Obama shut down White House tours when the Sequester began to demonstrate, in the most public possible manner, the effects of that activity. I am willing to be proved wrong, but I believe that the President knew full well the National Park Service would be shutting off access to America's most sacred monuments along the National Mall.
On October 1, the first day of the new fiscal year and the first day of the shutdown, ABC News reported:
"A group of 92 Mississippi Gulf Coast Honor Flight Veterans refused to let a government shutdown stop them from entering the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., this morning."
One vet was reported to have shouted at Park Policemen "Normandy was closed when we got there, too."
Whether that's true or apocryphal doesn't really matter. It's the way veterans today think. Since World War II we have veterans of many military actions. Most of them don't have a memorial to their service nor to their comrades' sacrifice.
Yesterday veterans from around the country converged on Washington to force open the war memorials as well as such iconic sights as the Lincoln Memorial.
The Park Police, just doing what they are instructed to do, largely allowed the demonstrators to move barricades and hold their events. Some people brought Confederate flags which, at best, is antithetical to the effort, but they didn't ask my advice. Also antithetical was the omnipresence of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) whose demands that Republicans in the House and Senate tie funding the government to de-funding ObamaCare is largely responsible for this mess, but he didn't ask my advice, either.
The broader point, though, is that American veterans of military service were not jeered and were not subject to the shouts and taunts of angry mobs.
They made their point: President Obama shutting down national monuments is as foolish as Sen. Cruz demanding the GOP shut down ObamaCare.
Members of the House and Senate are often foolish. We expect better of our President.
Where did this RINO come from?
Oh good! I don’t have to waste my time going to this website!
I know for sure it is staffed by idiots.
Holy Carp! The quislings are everywhere.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) ....didn’t ask my advice, either.
___________________________________________
given your ugly attitude, and fond regard for the unConstitutional ObamaCare, its no wonder...
The subhuman who wrote this article is a dimwit. RINOs and other quislings are insufferable. There is nothing “foolish” about shutting down fascist nobamadontcare. What a complete tool.
The other day at the office, one of my co-workers asked me how it was that I served multiple tours in Vietnam as a combat infantryman and I didn’t get PTSD. My rather flippant answer was “I didn’t get PTSD in Vietnam, I gave it.”
However, this PTSD question made me wonder what PTSD is and what the symptoms are, so I did a little research on the subject and found that I did indeed possess symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) concerning a traumatic and very stressful incident that occurred during my last tour in Vietnam. I was a professional soldier when the traumatic incident occurred and had accumulated over six years in Vietnam engaged occasionally in close combat with a vicious and cunningly capable enemy, but the traumatic event was not as a result of close combat with this enemy.
One day when I was totally focused on closing with and destroying the enemy, something caught my eye, I looked around and found a new enemy had unexpectedly appeared behind me; it was the American people. The same Democrat Party who had originally sent me to Vietnam promising that, “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty,” had now sided with the Communists I was fighting. They were parading in the streets of the United States under a Viet Cong flag, were quoting from Mao’s Red Book, and were spitting on and flinging insults at returning Vietnam Veterans. Then, a Democrat led Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War, American combat troops were withdrawn and we abandoned a valiant ally to their fate.
I was ordered out of Vietnam in 1972, and when I arrived at Travis Air Force Base, California, purposely in the dark of the night, I was advised to change out of my uniform and put on civilian clothing to avoid being attacked by the American people when I entered San Francisco. I was not at all surprised when a few decades later these same people elected a Marxist-Communist as President of what was once my country.
Yes, the deep, burning hatred I feel for the Democrat Party to this day could be diagnosed as a symptom of PTSD, and could explain my longing to start killing communists again, and I wonder how many other Vietnam Veterans feel the same.
A better question is where did Obama come from and why?
It is the most extraordinary political development in the history of the United States. There has never been an occupant of the oval office less prepared for leadership in the most powerful political office in the world.
Even Jimmy Carter was a governor prior to his attempt to destroy America.
Obama came from a career of community organizing against the government of the United States.
Obama is virulently pro-abortionist with no restraints and has now written into law that it be federally funded.
Obama violates constitutional law practically everytime he opens his mouth:
Fast and Furious
IRS—targeting both organizations and individuals that oppose his socialist schemes
Immigration laws gutted without congressional approval
Funding terror, again and again and again
ICE restricted from doing its job
NSA’s 1984 style intrusions into free speech and privacy
Ran on a repeated (ad nauseum) promise at every campaign appearance promise to “cut the federal deficit in half in his first term”
Gay military (the most destructive thing he has pulled off, neutering, no pun intended, our national security.
Barricading private and public (owned by you and me)
properties and monuments
It truly is extraordinary. This abuse and lawlessness has never happened before at this level, at this sheer massive volume, constituting an almost daily breach of, and affront to, everything decent and true, and foundational in this country.
We should be impeaching this man and perp-walking handcuffed members of his administration—starting with Defense, State, EPA, Interior, DHS, ICE, BLS, OMB etc etc etc-all the alphabet agencies that have suborned their oath of office to support that which is unsupportable by law, to shamelessy fellate the boy dictator, usurper, tyrant, Barak Hussein Obama, who is demonstrably (by his own testimony) guilty of:
Threatening SSA payments, Medicare and Medicaid
Threatening Veteran’s pensions and benefits, to include the Veteran’s Administration
Refusal to release his own passport/travel visa and applications records
Refusal to release College records and financial assistance applications
Refusal to release foreign campaign contributors information
Defrauding bondholders (a bye bye, see you in 50 years felony if you or I were to do it) during the government/union takeover of Chrysler and GM
Using FEC contribution lists to eliminate all auto dealerships that failed to fund his campaign or that funded his opponent’s campaign in 2008.
He should be in a 4 by 8 prison cell instead of befouling the former White House, now more aptly referred to as the White Hut.
Or not...
Great post——a keeper for me.
what a ridiculous article
I only spent one tour in Vietnam but you have described my condition exactly and I served before the hate really got going (1964 - 1965).
Thank you. If anyone is wondering why these outrages are mis-directed, protected and ignored by the media and why the political leadership of both parties are slow-dancing and not erupting with everything at their disposal—statements and actions both, the answer is simple:
Blackmail-from felony offenses to “youthful indiscretions” to ongoing criminal activities. You and I are both “under the radar”, at least for now. Obama is watering, fertilizing and carefully nurturing the Police State he has sought throughout his political life.
In 2016 we will either be on a pendulum swing back to ‘normalcy’ or we will still be free-falling off the cliff as we are now.
There are some bright lights here and there, hope is not yet lost for many who decry the current situation.
It will have to be a major about-face fueled by an economic turn-around, a brake on the federal bureaucracies that would possibly de-fund and eliminate the worst among them.
I think it possible. I wish I could say I think it probable.
We’ll have to wait and see. We may once again wake up and smell the sewage and fix the problem.
Congratulations. You, too, are calling the subhuman pig turd (deliberate religious insult intended) the Mahdi. Please notice, I did not refer to the Mahdi as dog waste, dogs bring such noble animals that he (is he a he??) should never be equated even with their bodily waste.
Outstanding post, sir.
I just returned from the annual reunion of The Old Guard Association (TOGA)in Arlington, VA and can assure you that a bunch of the guys who served when and where you did feel the same way.
It started with Korea when our troops were not allowed to win that war and it just keeps repeating with each succeeding war. Democrats are on board when it comes to sending our young men off to war but refuse to let them win, ever since Truman.
Rich Galen is foolish for thinking ObaMaoCare can’t be repealed.
It’s a shame. I used to respect him as a journalist.
He was a featured speaker at FRIVA in the early 2000s.
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