WINTER SOLDIER: John Kerry's turning point

Detroit Free Press ^ | March 2, 2004 | JIM SCHAEFER

[secretagent]

You had me going. And you may be right about Kerry.

[truth_seeker]

"It was a kind of intellectual turning point. It was a moment that helped jar him out of kind of a complacent antiwar protester to one that was on a mission to charge the Nixon administration with war crimes."

Kennedy, then Johnson took Vietnam to a point where it was perhaps beyond any successful outcome for America.

Nixon did his best, and started the path to the end, however it is viewed.

Kerry and the anti-war zealots turned it into a left vs. right conflict at home. How convenient to overlook the roles of Kennedy and moreso Johnson.

But that is politics, as practiced worldover by the left. They accept NO RESPONSIBILITY for their own misdeeds gone bad, and BLAME the right for EVERYTHING gone bad.

With all the flack over 9/11/2001 photos in Bush's ads, I think Bush should make a case that democrats are not effective at national security or war. And restate the case that we remain at war.

Nixon didn't muck it up--he tried and did end it. But as bad as Vietnam turned out, I claim it was simply a battle in the Cold War, which we eventually won.

[secretagent]

Kennedy helped depose Diem on the sly, Johnson didn't think we could win but "widened the war" anyway and may have lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Nixon pardoned Calley and lied about our presence in Laos and Cambodia. We had the "Phoenix Program" which included political assasinations. We had a draft, because we couldn't sustain this muck with volunteers. All of this hardly uplifting.

After Nixon pulled out and Congress wouldn't even let the South match the North in arms, the South fell. With arms, the South would have held on to the win which the military and the South had achieved. Which says something about how bad the North was.

But disillusion had set in, and overeaction led us to abandon the South to the Soviet supplied North. I think Vietnam may have prolonged the Cold War.

[truth_seeker]

"I think Vietnam may have prolonged the Cold War."

Apparently you agree with my calling it a battle, or phase, in the Cold War.

Yes, it could have prolonged it. But it could have also demonstrated our resolve to hang in for many bloody, politically divisive years.

In the end, the so called end of the Cold War is being reflected historically as the time of the disollution of the USSR. That happened for several reasons.

Unpopular as it is on this board, I credit Gorby to a great extent. He knew his country couldn't be held together by force alone.