Posted on 08/26/2004 4:48:17 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
.......Many of those who condemn Kerry for opposing the Vietnam War are too young to have been politically aware during that period. The rest are fighting very old battles. But the fact is that the argument over Vietnam was settled long ago, and a majority of Americans decided that Kerry was right.
Members of the Swift boat group and like-minded Americans are free to try to re-litigate the basic Vietnam question. They say, from the comfortable perspective of 2004, that the antiwar movement emboldened the enemy and thus lengthened the war. That's their premise: We could have won the war by 1971 if not for Kerry and his ilk. Of course, after continuing the war for three more years, we still didn't win it. So even accepting the dubious premises of these Hindsight Hawks, blame for the lives lost after Kerry's testimony goes primarily to the leaders in Washington who kept the war going needlessly.
But most Americans came to accept Kerry's view that the war was ill advised and unwinnable at any reasonable cost. Only when that happened did the war end, and the antiwar movement made it happen sooner. If that historical judgment is correct, which we think it clearly is, then Kerry saved the lives of many more Americans in his antiwar role than he did as a Navy officer.
Kerry's testimony in April 1971 was eloquent, persuasive and damning. Consistent with his cautious instincts, Kerry never joined the extremist America-haters who hoped for a North Vietnamese victory, but instead he patiently explained to senators why the war was a disaster.
Undoubtedly, Kerry was overwrought when he declared that atrocities by American soldiers were ubiquitous. They weren't. But it is ignorant fantasy to suppose that the United States emerged from Vietnam unblemished by horrible misdeeds................
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
What you were really against was not war at all, but American "imperialism" and American capitalism. What you truly hated was America's democracy, which you knew to be a "sham" because it was controlled by money in the end. That's why you wanted to "Bring the Troops Home," as your slogan said. Because if America's troops came home, America would lose and the Communists would win. And the progressive future would be one step closer.
But you never had the honesty-then or now-to admit that. You told the lie then to maintain your influence and increase your power to do good (as only the Chosen can). And you keep on telling the lie for the same reason.
Why would you admit that, despite your tactical support for civil rights, you weren't really committed to civil rights as Americans understand rights? What you really wanted was to overthrow the very Constitution that guaranteed those rights, based as it is on private property and the individual-both of which you despise.
It is because America is a democracy and the people endorse it, that the left's anti-American, but "progressive" agendas can only be achieved by deceiving the people. This is the cross the left has to bear: The better world is only achievable by lying to the very people they propose to redeem.
Despite the homage contemporary leftists pay to post-modernist conceits, despite their belated and half-hearted display of critical sentiment towards Communist regimes, they are very much the ideological heirs of Stalinist progressives, who supported the greatest mass murders in human history, but who remember themselves as civil libertarian opponents of McCarthy and victims of a political witch-hunt. (Only the dialectically gifted can even begin to follow the logic involved.) .........[End Excerpt]
So, the plot to assassinate U.S. Senators was just one of those crazy kids pranks? He was there, he should know.
Can't accuse the MSM of not going to bat for Kerry.
One thing struck me this morning.
They're willing to call O'Neill a liar over his Cambodia remarks, but Kerry is only mistaken, or off by a couple miles when he made remarks about Cambodia.
Old media beats the drum for their candidate, John Kerry.
Kerry's Vietnam "experience" certainly should have been off limits in this campaign....
IF HE HADN'T USED IT AS HIS PLATFORM FOR ELECTION - and basis to be establish his credibility as a leader and "hero". His use of Vietnam (and the accompanying lies that keep surfacing) makes the whole issue a legitimate target.
KERRY started it.
"That's their premise: We could have won the war by 1971 if not for Kerry and his ilk."
Try again. That is NOT their premise nor is it that we could have won the war.
Their premise is that this pos dumblecrat nominee stabbed his fellow soldiers in the back by hyping supposed war crimes to smear everyone who served, spit on this country and the flag he now wants to defend, gave aid and comfort to the enemy, caused harm to the POW's and is a bold faced liar.
Thats just a little different.
On November 21, 1970 she told a University of Michigan audience of some two thousand students, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." At Duke University in North Carolina she repeated what she had said in Michigan, adding "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism. " Washington Times July 7, 2000
Jane Fonda began her participation in anti-war activities around 1967, allegedly after meeting with Communists while in France and with American citizens who were revolutionaries. Her activities included active participation in demonstrations, rallies, radio broadcasts and plays.
Jane Fonda also helped in the organization of a production group called the F.T.A. (F*** The Army). This group helped to set up coffee houses near military bases where they would perform anti-war derogatory-type sketches for the visiting soldiers. The coffee-house sketches were intended to counterpoint the U.S.O. shows, such as Bob Hope and other U.S.O. sponsored performers whose performances increased morale and gave positive support to American soldiers. Some of the F.T.A. coffee house employees would mingle with the soldiers to help them to "relax and unwind", while encouraging the soldiers to desert. Some soldiers alleged that they were promised jobs and money by the F.T.A. if they deserted.
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization received major financial support from Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda's F.T.A. coffee houses helped in recruiting soldiers and veterans for the Vietnam Veterans Against The War Organization. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization membership was approximately 7,000 at it's highest. The Organization's membership number was comparatively low, when you consider that more than 2 1/2 million Americans served during the Vietnam war.
Jane Fonda personally sought out returning American soldiers from Vietnam to solicit them to publicly speak out against American atrocities against Vietnamese women and children during her broadcasts. North Vietnamese officials based in Canada allegedly coordinated her broadcasts.
In 1972 Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and others traveled to North Vietnam to give their support to the North Vietnamese's Government. When she returned to the United States, she advised the news media that all of the American Prisoners of War were being well treated and were not being tortured.
As the American POWs returned home in 1973, they spoke out about the inhumane treatment and torture they had suffered as prisoners of war. Their stories directly contradicted Jane Fonda's earlier statements of 1972. Some of the American POWs such as Senator John McCain, a former Presidential candidate, stated that he was tortured by his guards for refusing to meet with Jane Fonda and her group. Jane Fonda, in her response to these new allegations, referred to the returning POWs as being "hypocrites and liars."
The Wall Street Journal (August 3, 1995) published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy" referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement." Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin surmised that "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Mr. Tin further advised that General Vo Nguyen Giap (Commanding General of the North Vietnam Army) said the 1968 Tet Offensive was a defeat. Gen. Giap in his book, made the same statement, adding that they were surprised by the news media reporting and the demonstrations in America. Instead of seeking a conditional surrender, they would now hold out because America's resolve was weakening and victory could be theirs.
From 1969 to the end of the war over 20,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war that the United States did not have the resolve to win. If General Giap was accurate in his assessment that North Vietnam was going to seek a conditional surrender at the Paris Peace Conference, but stopped due to the sensationalism of the American news media and the anti-war protests following the 1968 Tet Offensive, it follows that those who participated in these anti-war activities have to share partial responsibility for those 20,000 + Americans deaths.
We won the war on the battlefield but lost it back home on the college campuses and in the city streets.
Americans must realize that there are agents* operating in this Country attempting to undermine our Country and it's leadership through our democratic principles in an effort to achieve a foreign country's goal. A prime example of such a person during the Vietnam War was Jane Fonda, an admitted Socialist, who blatantly supported North Vietnam. * Agent - Any person who works to obtain the goals of another nation either for money or for their own political beliefs.
A valuable lesson was taught by North Vietnam to other nations on how the United States may be defeated by fighting a two front war - the battlefield and the American home front. We must be aware of this vulnerability.
In 1975, after the fall of the South Vietnam Government, Jane Fonda returned to Hanoi with her newborn son Troy for a celebration in her honor for the work she had done for North Vietnam. During the celebration, her son was christened after a Viet Cong hero, Nguyen Van Troi. Troi had attempted to assassinate Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara while on his visit to South Vietnam in 1963. The South Vietnam Government executed Troi for this attempted assassination.
I have heard and read that some people believe that Jane Fonda was simply young and impressionable. Jane Fonda was born on December 21, 1937. She was 34 years old when she made her infamous trip to North Vietnam and was in her 30's when she participated in anti-war demonstrations and rallies. During this same time period a large number of young American soldiers, who had not yet reached their 21st birthday, were fighting the war in Vietnam and were held accountable for all of their actions. These same young soldiers were, upon their return to the United States, still not of legal age to vote or buy alcoholic beverages. Jane Fonda was an adult when she made these conscious decisions and actions, and as such, she is responsible and should be held accountable. The Vietnam Memorial Wall contains the names of 25,493 American soldiers who served their Country and paid the ultimate price for freedom who were under the age of 21 ( Casualty Statistics).
Mistakes were made in the Vietnam War, and we should learn from them, but the mistakes are not necessarily what people might first think. Here are the big ones.
1) Politization: When we use a war to separate the parties within the US, we are making a huge mistake. The war started out being a split within the Democrat party between the anti-war youth and the older more conservative Democrats who started and expanded the war. Once Nixon was elected, it became a Democrat vs Republican issue and took on a similar slant to what we are seeing today. People using the war as a blunt instrument to attack their political opponent.
2) Media Antagonism: Rather than support our troops as the media did during WW2, we saw (and again see) the media turn against our own troops. While this war started out OK with embedded reporters demonstrating the bravery and skill of our troops, they now embed themselves with the enemy. They show endless re-runs of Abu Graib and undermine the morale of our troops.
3) Political Management of Military Actions: Because of items 1 and 2 above, military leaders find themselves making tactical plans that are more concerned about political ramifications than military ones. In Vietnam, we would lose good men to take a hill so it could be announced as a victory on the evening news, only to relinquish it the next day as it had no military value. Today we see ourselves surrounding militia in a Mosque, and then dropping back to avoid political haymaking that would assuredly appear if we were to scratch its golden dome. This will paralyze our leaders and demoralize our fighters.
The Kerry folks think the mistake in Vietnam was fighting at all, I think the mistake was NOT WINNING. By letting the fight drag on, we lost the moral imperative and the decisive military ability to win.
We should publically state that we will not allow mosques or any other shrine to be used as a haven and then flatten them if they get in one.
The FBI files reveal:
1. VVAW Plan to assassinate seven US senators.
2. VVAW was training to execute a Phoenix plan to decapitate the leaders of the US Government.
3. Member of VVAW arrested enroute to VP Agnew speech with an explosive device (BOMB).
4. VVAW running guns to a black militant group in Cairo IL.
5. VVAW funded by Communist party of America.
6. VVAW receiving funds from the Communist Party of a country in Europe.
7. VVAW taking directions from the North Vietnamese Communist Government.
8. VVAW sent tapes to NV to be played to our POW's being held by the communists.
9. VVAW sent its leaders (Kerry was a leader) to NV to be indoctrinated by the NV Communists.
10. FBI files indicate that Kerry only resigned the exeutive committee of the VVAW.
And I found this article which proves he was still with the VVAW as a leader as late as Feb. 1972.
Kerry's in deep http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=26038
"Undoubtedly, Kerry was overwrought when he declared that atrocities by American soldiers were ubiquitous."
He was not overwrought, he was full of $hit.
On November 21, 1970 she told a University of Michigan audience of some two thousand students, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." At Duke University in North Carolina she repeated what she had said in Michigan, adding "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism. " Washington Times July 7, 2000 ***
Bump!
Fabulous post and stunning quotes! Thank you!
More recently the Tribune group proved itself to be a hotbed of thugs and thieves with it's misrepresentation of circulation figures to ABC.
John Ashcroft should reinitiate that prosecution he had prepared and be done with it. These people deserve no quarter.
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