Posted on 02/06/2015 6:47:52 AM PST by Kaslin
Let me see if I understand this: Chris Kyle was not a hero, but Brian Williams was? What do we make of Williams' attempt to snatch some vicarious honor?
The response to "American Sniper" should not surprise us. Bill Maher called Chris Kyle a "psychopath patriot." It's more than likely that Maher thinks all patriots are a bit unhinged. Lindy West, writing in The Guardian, called Kyle a "hate-filled killer," and The Atlantic's Megan Garber wondered whether "heroism is still heroism when you're motivated by hatred."
Spawned in the Vietnam era, the modern left cut its teeth defaming America. That included a campaign of vilification and slander against Americans who served in Vietnam. The chief spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War was none other than Secretary of State John F. Kerry. In testimony before Congress, young Kerry claimed that American forces in Vietnam had committed atrocities "in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." He claimed that they "randomly shot at civilians ... raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power..." and so forth.
When the Naval Criminal Investigative Service looked into these allegations, it found that many of the "vets" whose testimony Kerry was vouching for had not even been in Vietnam. Some had never served in the military at all.
This story, among others, is told in "Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History," by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley. It recounts how the left-leaning press relied on impostors and liars to create the myth of the "damaged" Vietnam veteran. Leftist moviemakers then spun their preferred history, portraying the war not as a mistake, but as a protracted American crime.
In time, the leftist interpretation of Vietnam became the conventional wisdom -- repeated in dozens of documentaries, enshrined in songs and books, and taught to the young through textbooks. When Ronald Reagan argued defiantly in 1980 that "ours was, in truth, a noble cause," it was treated by the press as a gaffe. As Steven Hayward wrote in "The Age of Reagan," The Washington Post's TV critic observed that NBC's tone "cast doubt on (Reagan's) fitness as a leader, if not, by implication, on his sanity."
In time, the left retreated from its open hostility to soldiers, preferring to characterize them as victims of evil leaders like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney rather than the foam-flecked psychopaths Kerry had conjured. Even Jane Fonda, who famously traveled to North Vietnam and posed frolicking on an anti-aircraft gun (pointed at her countrymen), has, if not apologized, then expressed regret.
Bill Clinton used the U.S. military, but only when his party could be persuaded that no American interests were at stake. That made it pure -- like one giant Peace Corps.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the old-fashioned military briefly came back into fashion. Every Democratic politician made it a point to praise their service, and the press treated some individual soldiers (usually women, but sometimes men, as well) as admirable. That's when Brian Williams made his bid for faux heroism. Williams' self-aggrandizing lie about being under fire is a tribute, of a kind, to true heroism. His deceit contains within it the recognition that the kind of terrors real soldiers face can be ennobling, not corrupting. Hillary Clinton tried to poach some glory herself by falsely claiming to have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia.
They are both liars and deserve contempt for trying to steal some of the honor that comes with military service without actually risking more than a missed meal.
But they are also the party perpetually poised to condemn our real soldiers. The left has been attempting to "Vietnamize" the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since Abu Ghraib. The president Clinton served and Williams doubtless voted for has hollowed out the military while declining to name the enemy. The best penance Williams and Clinton could do for their flagrant deceit would be to defend the Chris Kyles of the world against their own friends, colleagues and donors.
And if Kerry would like to apologize to the men who sacrificed for this country in Vietnam, it's not too late.
You can say that again
And yet Thomas Ricks wrote a book years ago wondering why the Military is 80 - 90 percent conservative and/or republican. Apparently he never wonders why his own profession of reporters is 80 - 90 percent leftist.
Yes, to this day, Vietnam Veterans are still considered by many Americans to be “damaged goods” and to be just a little bit crazy. I was reminded of this the other day at the office when one of my young 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 wasn’t 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 the country in 1973, and when I arrived at Travis Air Force Base, 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 wasn’t 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 I assure you, every Vietnam Veteran I know feels the same way.
#6 is post of the day
Thank you for your service, DJ.
Let’s see, based on what he looks like today ( butt ugly ) Bill Maher’s mother must have taken Thalidomide when she was pregnant and it caused her to give birth to an nine pound nose!
Wouldn’t it be fun in an alternate universe to see Maher try to live in a country where only people who felt the way HE did were responsible to go to war and defend the country from aggressive countries? He’d be shocked, shocked, to find out that everyone would have to be drafted and MADE to fight, because patriots would not be available to volunteer to fight for our armies.
And lest he say that risk was low, we all know how dangerous things would be if there were no “Chris Kyles” in the military, because to be weak makes you a target.
Usually I can pass off a lot of lib comments with, “Well, that’s their opinion”, but this kind of cowardice is nauseating. He is so free to insult a man who put his life on the line doing something Maher would never do; and Maher reaps the benefits of safety and freedom.
What is frightening—even terrifying, when you think about it and its consequences—is that millions of Americans will continue to be led willingly by the U.S. newsmedia.
When the Naval Criminal Investigative Service looked into these allegations, it found that many of the "vets" whose testimony Kerry was vouching for had not even been in Vietnam. Some had never served in the military at all.
Obama picked Kerry because he hated this country?
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