Kerry's betrayal of Vietnam

The Boston Globe ^ | 8/25/2002 | By Jeff Jacoby

[vannrox]

I HAVE LONG thought that John Kerry is wrong on Vietnam. I don't mean wrong 30 years ago, when, as a decorated combat veteran, he returned from Vietnam and became a leading antiwar activist. I mean wrong in the years since, when he has been, with John McCain, the Senate's foremost advocate of normalized relations with Vietnam.

[vannrox]

Kerry and McCain, the Democrats strongest military experienced candidates.

[BenLurkin]

>Kerry and McCain both served honorably and we thank them for that service.
> Nevertheless, something about how they have personally reponsded to their experiences has damaged their psyches.
> Neither are fit for positions of responsibilty in Government.

[dcwusmc]

Kerry and McLame are a slap in the face to all the rest of us who were there. They are disgusting and despicable excuses for human beings.

[pabianice]

I saw the action report on Kerry's heroics. The dumbsh*t managed to run his boat aground, endangering his entire crew, and then had to "invent" new tactics to save his sorry tuchis..

Yeah. He "re-wrote the book on naval warfare" all right -- "Chapter 1: Using the PBR as a landing craft."

[Vetnor]

Who does that remind us of. Wonder when the movie will come out......

[joesnuffy]

I served with the Mobile Riverine Force with the Armys 9th Inf Div and was on an operation when the PBR we were on grounded on a mud flat...like F.Gump used to say...'It happens'
Kerry and McCain...I have no idea where they are coming from or how they got to where they are..I can only hope they go away and leave the country alone...they both served and I wish they no ill will...but they have no business directing the affairs of America or its path..as they have strayed too far...imo

[river rat]

McCain and Kerry - being leftists at best - are more comfortable with having "normal" relations with the communists in Vietnam than non-leftists.

But I've always thought there was was deeper explanation behind McCain's rude conduct toward the families of MIAs, and his VERY polite and friendly conduct toward his former communist captor.

Do the Vietnamese have "something" on McCain?....on Kerry? Or, is it that their private ghosts and nightmares still haunt them...

I haven't made my peace with the communists of the regime in Vietnam - and don't suspect I will before my death... In my mind - there are still too many unresolved issues that have been swept from view and discussion.
Semper Fi

[Sonny M]

One of the things that always bothers me is how the media always refers to McCain and Kerry as vietnam war vets, yet they never ever seem to give that reference to Senator Chuck Hagel. Hagel is just referred to as "conservative or right wing".

[Polybius]

A ''Cuba working group'' on Capitol Hill has undertaken something similar for the dictator in Havana. But Castro never invaded a US ally or excruciated American POWs.

Cuban Communist interrogators were quite active in Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

War Crimes: The Cuban-Vietnam Connection
February 10, 1997 National Alliance of Families

[rstevens]

Ah yes Dong Tam, I remember it well.

[onedoug]

I have to take issue with some of what Jacoby writes here. But not only the fall of the Soviet Union scared Vietnamese communism, but also their great famine of the mid-80's which resulted from land redistribution, particularly the latter of which resulted in their Doi Moi, or economic liberalization policies of the early 90s, which have had entreprenurial repurcussions from Saigon - which is almost a free economic zone - well north into the central provinces, where tourism has become big business.

A populace predomnantly under thirty has given rise to crops of younger leaders who frankly see the old-guard as more a hinderance to progress.

The Vietnamese are a highly resourceful, industrious an innovative peoples who are resenting being left behind the Asian democracies, so I feel somewhat strongly that the more they see of them, the better.

I hate communism, but the Vietnamese are not the Cubans. It's going to be a lot harder for them as a people to keep that genie of their potential in the lamp.

[BenLurkin]

Your estimation of the Vietnamese people is consistent with what I have seen here in Southern California. To this day the local community is industrious, preserves their heritage and proudly flies their flag (but with no disresepct to the American flag.)
I took an accounting course in Long Beach and sat next to a woman who had escaped the Communists with practically nothing. Her husband had been in the Vietnamese Air Force and flew ground attacks up to the very day Saigon fell. I hope the day comes soon when Vietnam is free again.

[onedoug]

Though here, their English could still improve, on the whole.

There, I would yet opt not so much for Kerry's "enagagement" (which is actually his term for appeasement), but for continued exposure to the near unlimited portential of which the Vietnamese people are capable.

Best to You....

[jigsaw]

Bump for an oldie but goodie.