From The Desk of Viper
News you won't see on MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC or ABC
"You can't support the troops if you are
marching in the streets against the war!"
A Vietnam Veteran
February 08, 2007
 |
'Gathering of Eagles' |
By C.J. Raven
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
February 07, 2007
Leftist activists who march to the Pentagon next month will discover that their path won't be as clear as it has been in the past.
The group, led by Cindy Sheehan, Jane Fonda, Ed Asner and their ilk, plan to gather March 17 at the Vietnam Memorial Wall to begin a march to protest America's involvement in the Iraq war. The date marks the fourth anniversary of the war's beginning.
This time, however, protestors will see objectors if they spit on Iraqi veterans again, or throw paint on a war memorial. This time, they will encounter a buzz saw of Vietnam veterans and supporters who will gather to protect the Wall, and show their support for U.S. troops. The counter-protestors are calling themselves the Gathering of Eagles.
"... An eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks. The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it."
An unknown author wrote that description, but it describes how the veterans see their mission. They are angry that the Wall is being used as a jumping off point for a political protest and they are gathering to protect it from another storm of anti-war activists.
"The anti-war/anti-America group cannot be allowed to use the Vietnam Memorial Wall as a back-drop to their anti-America venom and stain the hallowed ground that virtually cries out with blood at the thought of this proposed desecration ... it must not happen," said veteran Bud Gross. "... All Americans are invited to support our effort, which is intended as a defender of hallowed ground and intended as a non-violent competition between those that would sell out America and those of us who support freedom and keeping the fight with the enemy on distant shores."
The group defending the Wall will be wearing armbands to identify themselves. Those who are unable to stand with the defenders are being asked to wear armbands with small U.S. flags to show their own communities that they abhor the Fonda-Sheehan tactics.
"We'll be there to act as a countervailing force against the Cindy Sheehan-Jane Fond march from the Vietnam Memorial to the Pentagon," retired Navy Capt. Larry Bailey said. "We will protect the Vietnam Memorial. If they try to deface it, there will be some violence, I guarantee you."
Bailey and thousands of his fellow Vietnam vets are worried that the anti-war protesters will damage the wall, just as they spray-painted the steps of the Capitol at their last march.
The wall is sacred to the men and women who fought in that war.
"It is our contact with our dead brothers -- those who lost their lives in the cause of their country," Bailey said.
And so it is that Washington will see a Gathering of Eagles - Americans determined to stand up against leftist propagandists who denigrate U.S. troops and the mission for which they sometimes sacrifice their lives.
Retired Col. Harry Riley organized the Gathering of Eagles. Organizers hope thousands will show up in Washington from as far away as Hawaii, and they won't only be Vietnam veterans. Families, friends and veterans of other wars, including Iraq, and soldiers still on active duty, will be there to defend the Wall.
"When we say a gathering of eagles, that signifies people who support the American way," Bailey said.
The leftist Web site MarchonPentagon.org describes the anti-war demonstrators this way: "The March on the Pentagon has already attracted more than 1,500 endorsers, including prominent individuals and national and grassroots organizations. Students on college campuses and in high schools will be attending in large numbers. There will be a large turnout from the Muslim and Arab American community, which is organizing throughout the country."
The movement is well-financed. Its sponsor list is lengthy and contains highly recognizable names, as well as those of Fonda and Sheehan:
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Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark (who offered his services to defend Saddam Hussein)
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Ultra-liberal Congresswoman Maxine Waters
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Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
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Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran and author of "Born on the 4th of July"
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Mahdi Bray, executive director, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
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Waleed Bader, vice chair of the National Council of Arab Americans and former president of Arab Muslim American Federation
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Medea Benjamin, co-founder, CODEPINK and Global Exchange
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Free Palestine Alliance
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Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
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Islamic Political Party of America
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FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front)
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Islamic-National Congress
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Gay Liberation Network
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Muslim Student Association
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Jibril Hough, chairman, Islamic Political Party of America
Retired Air Force Col. Smitty Harris, a former Vietnam POW, doesn't believe Fonda's protests carry the weight they once did. Harris says Fonda's actions at the march last month were "anti-American," just as they were in the 1970s, and won't have much effect on public opinion.
"It was big news during the Vietnam era when they had these marches ... because people didn't have all the alternative ways of finding out what is true and what's not," he recently told Agape Press. "So I don't think it's going to have a big effect." In fact, he says, it could even be counterproductive.
Today, Harris points out, Americans have talk radio and media outlets like the Fox News Channel to hear the voices of those who do not agree with Jane Fonda's point of view.
For more information, visit the Gathering of Eagles message board.
URL: http://www.usvetdsp.com/feb07/eagle.htm
( Thank You Ted Sampley for setting up a Message Board for the "Gathering of Eagles" all on my mail list who want to join and get information about March 17th, to share ideas and information, please join the Message board. Viper )
Spitting on Veterans
BY SETH GITELL
February 6, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/48084
Anti-war sentiment is moving dangerously close to a place America must never go -- putting our anger on the soldiers that have been fighting the four-year Iraq war.
Some of this takes the form of minimizing what happened the last time American GIs returned from an unpopular war -- Vietnam. Liberal commentators, such as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann (Host of Countdown), are diminishing the hostile treatment Vietnam veterans garnered when they returned from Vietnam. countdown@msnbc.com
On the air on Thursday, Mr. Olbermann disparaged the old report of Vietnam veterans being spit upon when they came home: "And, oh, by the way, there is not one confirmed case, not one, of Americans spitting on veterans returning from Vietnam."
Washington Post blogger William Arkin, meanwhile, went so far as to lay a condition for America's "support" of veterans. "These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President's handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect," Mr. Arkin wrote. "Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order."
Let's state the obvious. First, Mr. Arkin's words are slanderous. To pluralize Abu Ghraib and Haditha and "every rape and murder" is unconscionable. True, there have been some misdeeds, acts as in Vietnam, where there was a William Calley, who was convicted in the murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians at the My Lai massacre. But in Vietnam there also was helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson who stopped Calley from killing even more innocents. The bulk of the American soldiers cannot be held responsible for the isolated wrong.
And, as for Mr. Olbermann, the point is not whether the social science research collected in Jerry Lembcke's book "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam" is correct and that no evidence exists of returning veterans being spit upon, but how most of these men were treated after the war.
In my family, the subject of America's support for returning Vietnam veterans is not an academic one. This past July, I sat down for breakfast with my father and a small group of veterans to talk about that war and its aftermath.
To my left, sat my father, Gerald Gitell, who served as the executive officer of a Special Forces A-Team in Vinh Gia, South Vietnam. He lead irregular Vietnamese forces in combat, worked to win over the native population of fishermen, and risked his life to help bring medical care to civilians when American napalm burned them.
Through a complicated set of circumstances, when he was at Fort Bragg prior to going to Vietnam, he was befriended by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler and helped produce the iconic pro-soldier anthem, "The Ballad of the Green Berets." When he returned, the song had become the number one song in America.
A Boston radio talk show invited him as a guest. Poison and invective came in from one of the callers, "If you weren't killing babies in Vietnam, you'd be killing them here," she hissed. Although she was unable to spit directly on him, the call was the verbal equivalent.
Across the breakfast table from me sat Rudy Loupias. Rudy fought in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines at Dai Do in 1968. Little known to the public and recognized by historians as the Battle of Dong Ha, this pitched fight saw brutal combat, sometimes hand-to-hand.
The American people were in no mood to support Rudy when he came back from Vietnam. When he returned, he kept his personal history quiet. "I didn't reveal I was a Vietnam veteran because they labeled us as ‘baby killers,'" he recalls. "Even at parties nobody knew I was a Vietnam veteran."
Rudy thinks the public should treat soldiers the way they did after the first Iraq war. "It's too bad you had to feel that way -- the hurt," he says. He didn't tell me anything about being spit on, but the pain in his voice says enough.
Health care professionals say that the reception veterans receive when they return from war goes a long way to mitigating problems down the line. The worst thing for soldiers who have just returned from war is to be vilified.
True support for the troops is nonideological and nonpartisan. These men and women have risked everything for us and must not be turned into political pawns. When their tours of duty come to an end and in the many years to come, we must continue to stand by them.
Mr. Gitell (www.gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.
Nam Vets
by Bob Scheyer
When the Lord was creating Vietnam veterans, he was into His 6th day of overtime when an angel appeared. "You're certainly doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And God said, "Have you seen the specs on this order? A Nam vet has to be able to run 5 miles through the bush with a full pack on, endure with barely any sleep for days, enter tunnels his higher ups wouldn't consider doing, and keep his weapons clean and operable. He has to be able to sit in his hole all night during an attack, hold his buddies as they die, walk point in unfamiliar territory known to be VC infested, and somehow keep his senses alert for danger. He has to be in top physical condition, existing on c-rats and very little rest. And he has to have 6 pairs of hands."
The angel shook his head slowly and said, "6 pair of hands .... no way."
"It's not the hands that are causing me problems ... it's the 3 pair of eyes a Nam vet has to have."
"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through elephant grass, another pair here in the side of his head for his buddies, another pair here in front that can look reassuringly at his bleeding, fellow soldier and say, 'You'll make it...' when he knows he won't."
"Lord, rest, and work on this tomorrow."
"I can't," said the Lord. "I already have a model that can carry a wounded soldier 1,000 yards during a firefight, calm the fears of the latest FNG, and feed a family of 4 on a grunt's paycheck."
The angel walked around the model and said, "Can it think?"
"You bet," said the Lord. "It can quote much of the UCMJ, recite all his general orders, and engage in a search and destroy mission in less time than it takes for his fellow Americans back home to discuss the morality of the War, and still keep his sense of humor. This Nam vet also has a phenomenal personal control. He can deal with ambushes from hell, comfort a fallen soldier's family, and then read in his hometown paper how Nam vets are baby killers, psychos, addicts, killers of innocent civilians."
The Lord gazed into the future and said, "He will also endure being villified and spit on when he returns home; rejected and crucified by the very ones he fought for."
Finally, the angel slowly ran his finger across the vet's cheek, and said, "There's a leak... I told you that you were trying to put too much into this model."
"That's not a leak," said the Lord. "That's a tear."
"What's the tear for?" asked the angel.
"It's for bottled up emotions, for holding fallen soldiers as they die, for commitment to that funny piece of cloth called the American flag, for the terror of living with PTSD for decades after the war, alone with it's demons, with no one to care or help."
"You're a genius," said the angel, casting a gaze at the tear.
The Lord looked very sombre, as if seeing down eternity's distant shores... "I didn't put it there," He said.
Hanoi/Jihad Jane
She'll Be At The Anti-War Rally At 'The Wall'
March 17, 2007 http://www.internationalanswer.org/
Will You?
THE SPIRIT OF THE WALL
The Viet Nam Veteran's Memorial
I STOOD BEFORE THE WALL TODAY ...
COMPLETELY UNPREPARED
FOR THE BITTERSWEET EMOTIONS
THAT RAINED DOWN UPON MY HEAD.
MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS HAVE COME ... AND GONE
SINCE THAT AWFUL WAR WAS FOUGHT ...
I THOUGHT THE PAIN HAD 'GONE AWAY'
I WAS SURPRISED THAT IT HAD NOT.
WE SENT OUR BEST AND BRIGHTEST LIGHTS
TO A JUNGLE FAR AWAY ...
WHERE FOR A CAUSE SO GOOD AND NOBLE,
WE COMMITTED TO THE FRAY.
I CANNOT BEGIN TO TELL YOU
OF ALL THE PAIN WITHIN THE WALL ...
OR HOW IT WAS 'WE, THE PEOPLE'
WHO SCORNED OUR SOLDIERS, ONE AND ALL.
AS I LOOKED AT ALL THE MANY NAMES
ENGRAVED UPON THIS WALL
I REACHED OUT WITH A TREMBLING HAND,
AS IF ... TO CATCH THEM ... AS THEY'D FALL.
MY HEART, I THOUGHT, IS BREAKING
FOR THE LIVES THEY'D NEVER KNOW ...
AND, AS I HEARD THAT LONELY BUGLE PLAY.
I THOUGHT OF THOSE WHO'D LOVED THEM SO ...
AND THEN ...
I SAW A MAN - NO LONGER YOUNG
KNEELING AT THE WALL...
HIS FINGERS TOUCHED BUT JUST ONE NAME ...
I HEARD HIM WHISPER ...'THROUGH IT ALL'
OUR SOLDIERS NEVER FALTERED ...
NEVER SAID THEY WOULDN'T GO ...
AND , AGAIN, THIS DAY, THEY FIGHT FOR ME
IN SPITE OF 'EVERYTHING THEY KNOW'.
I STOOD BEFORE THE WALL TODAY ...
AND REMEMBERED.
from: In The Spirit of Things
(All Rights Reserved)
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