Posted on 08/28/2004 5:02:31 PM PDT by mylife
Who's to blame for nation's Vietnam wounds? Kerry
August 29, 2004
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
Every serious nation, in the course of history, loses a war here and there. You hope it's there rather than here -- somewhere far away, a small conflict in a distant land, not central to your country's sense of itself. During America's ''Vietnam era,'' Britain grappled with a number of nasty colonial struggles. Some they won -- Malaya -- and others they lost -- Aden -- or, at any rate, concluded that the cost of achieving whatever it was they wanted to achieve was no longer worth it.
No parallels are exact, but the symbolism of the transfer of power in Aden (on the Arabian coast) is not dissimilar to the fall of Saigon. On Nov. 29, 1967, the Union Jack was lowered over the city, and the high commissioner, his staff and all her majesty's forces left. On Nov. 30, the People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed -- the only avowedly Marxist state in Arabia. A couple of years earlier, the penultimate high commissioner, Sir Richard Turnbull, had remarked bleakly to Denis Healey, the British Defense secretary, that the British empire would be remembered for only two things: ''the popularization of Association Football [soccer] and the term 'f-- off.' "
Sir Richard was being a little hard on his fellow imperialists, but those two legacies of empire are useful ways of looking at the situation when the natives are restless and you're a long way from home: Faraway disputes you're stuck in the middle of aren't played by the rules of Association Football, and it's important to know when to "f-- off.'' Aden had been British since 1839: that's 130 years, or 10 times as long as America was mixed up in Vietnam. And yet in the end the British shrugged it off. Just one of those things, old boy. Can't be helped. As the last high commissioner inspected his troops at Khormaksar Airport on that final day, the band of the Royal Marines played not ''Land Of Home And Glory'' or ''Rule, Britannia'' but a Cockney novelty pop song, ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be,'' as a jaunty reflection on the vicissitudes of fate.
So when John McCain sternly warns the swift boat veterans of ''reopening the wounds of Vietnam,'' it's worth asking: Why is Vietnam a ''wound'' and why won't it heal? The answer: not because it was a military or strategic defeat but because it was a national trauma. And whose fault is that?
Well, you can't pin it all on one person, but, if you had to, Lt. John F. Kerry would stand a better shot at taking the solo trophy than almost anyone. The ''wounds'' McCain complains of aren't from losing Vietnam, but from the manner in which it was lost. Today Sen. Kerry says he's proud of his anti-war activism, but that's not what it was. Every war has pacifists and conscientious objectors and even disenchanted veterans, but there's simply no precedent for what John Kerry did: a man who put his combat credentials to the service of smearing his country's entire armed forces as rapists, decapitators and baby killers. That's the ''wound,'' Sen. McCain. That's why a crummy little war on the other side of the world still festers. That's why the band didn't play ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be'' and move on to the next item of business. Because Kerry didn't just call for U.S. withdrawal, he impugned the honor of every man he served with.
In his testimony to Congress in 1971, Kerry asserted a scale of routine war crimes unparalleled in American history -- his ''band of brothers'' (as he now calls them) ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.'' Almost all these claims were unsupported. Indeed, the only specific example of a U.S. war criminal that Kerry gave was himself. As he said on ''Meet The Press'' in April 1971, ''Yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I used 50-caliber machineguns, which we were granted and ordered to use.''
Really? And when was that? On your top-secret Christmas Eve mission in Cambodia? If they'd taken him at his word, when the senator said ''I'm John Kerry reporting for duty,'' the delegates at the Democratic Convention should have dived for cover.
But they didn't. So Kerry is now the first self-confessed war criminal in the history of the Republic to be nominated for president. Normally this would be considered an electoral plus only in the more cynical banana republics. But the Democrats seemed to think they could run an anti-war anti-hero as a war hero and nobody would mind. As we now know, a lot of people -- a lot of veterans -- do mind, very much. They understand that, whether or not he ever mowed down civilians with his 50-caliber machinegun, Kerry is responsible for a lot of wounds closer to home.
In the usual course of events, Kerry's terrible judgment in the '70s would render him unelectable. Instead, over two decades he morphed into a respectably dull run-of-the-mill pompous senatorial windbag. Had he run for president in the '90s or 2000, he might even have pulled it off. But the Democrats turned to him this time because the tortured contradictions of his resume suited an anti-war party that didn't dare run as such. Ever since the first cries of ''Quagmire!'' back in the early days of the Afghan liberation in 2001, the left have been trying to Vietnamize the war on terror. They failed in that, but they succeeded in the Vietnamization of the election campaign, and that's turned out just swell, hasn't it? Remember that formulation a lot of Democrats were using last year? They oppose the war but ''of course'' they support our troops. Kerry's campaign is a walking illustration of the deficiencies of that straddle: When you divorce the heroism of soldiering from the justice of the cause, what's left but a hollow braggart?
The Vietnamese government used Kerry's 1971 testimony as evidence of American war crimes as recently as two months ago. In Aden, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, but in Hanoi Kerry's psychodrama-queen performance is a gift that keeps on giving. It would be a shame if they understood him more clearly than the American people do.
BTW, isn't it true that when Cornwallis surrendered
at Yorktown, the band played
"The World Turned Upside Down" ?
Perspiring minds who weren't there want to know.
A generous person could make some excuses or qualifiers for Fonda. A spoiled rich kid, completely immersed in the fantasy world of Hollywood culture her whole life. Rich and famous in her own right, her background and upbringing makes rational though impossible for her.
Kerry however was a DECORATED NAVAL OFFICER. He knew better. HE WAS THERE. There is no possible qualification or excuse for what he did.
Kerry and Fonda are not in the same league at all.
"If ponies rode men and grass ate the cows"
Just What Tune was in the Air when
The World Turned Upside Down?
by Dennis Montgomery
Name the song the British bands played when General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown in 1781. Yes, it's a trick question, and, tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . time's up. If you said "The World Turned Upside Down," chances are good you are wrong. The correct response is: No one knows for sure.
(snip)
For more than you ever whated to know about this
http://www.americanrevolution.org/upside.html
Interesting. . .
Don't remember where, but the lines I remember
from 'The World Turned Upside Down' included
If horses rode men
and the other way around
then all the World
Would be Turned Upside Down. . .
Thanks for the response,
I haven't had time to follow your link yet.
Cheers!
"...the man is amazing and I am truly jealous of his writing ability!"
HA! I'll admit it, I am too. Mark Steyn and Michael Kelly (RIP) are two of the few that make me say: I wish I could write like that.
When the collected works of Mary Steyn is published how many volumes will it be?
LOL, thanks for posting those lyrics. Of course a lot of them are beyond my comprehension, but I think I get the general idea. It's quite an amusing tidbit. Steyn totally rules.
BTTT!!!!!!
Great article, I am continually amazed at the writing ability of Mark Steyn.
-PJ
Then, in 1897, his grandfather, Fritz, decided to shed the Jewish-sounding name of Kohn. He chose a new name by dropping a pencil on a map. The pencil landed on Ireland's County Kerry. In 1901, Fritz's name was then changed officially from Fritz Kohn to Frederick Kerry.
Looks like flip flopping runs in the family, lol.....
Bump and thanks!
bump
Worse, in the latest round, he and his political band of brothers have offended and impugned the honor of every person who ever served in the U.S. military.
You're right. It would have been better for the troops in Vietnam, for LBJ, as bad as he was, to have had a second term. There would have been less anti-war demonstrations and LBJ would have shown some guts to the enemy by sticking it out, rather than tucking his tail under his leg and slithering back to Texas.
But that's, as you note, standard for the Democrats, as Kerry did the "Cut and Run Boogie" from "Nam", after only four months.
Notice how nobody in the present-day anti-war movement raised a single peep about Clinton's exploits in Yugoslavia, in a war that had absolutely zero national interest to the U.S., or posed any threat whatsoever to U.S. security.
The anti-war movement was conspicuous by its absence. It always is when the Democrats are in the White House. The anti-war movement is part of the Democratic Party.
Most wounds don't heal when you keep picking at them; they get infected.
"Vietnam all started with liars and lies of the Democrats. Why should the Dems be any different now."
"My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight with a heavy heart to promise you that I will not send American boys to Asia to do what Asian boys should be doing for themselves." That is not exactly right but somewhere close.
"The part that amazes me, is that we allow the dems to continually lay the vietnam war at nixons feet."
Why not, they were giving Slick Willy credit for the 1992 recovery thirty days after G. H. W. Bush conceded.
That's close enough. I was a "Young Republican for Goldwater" in 1964 and every speech of Lyndon Johnson is "seared, seared I tell you", into my brain.
What may be of interest, is that those of us who were for Goldwater, felt at the time that Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats were lying and liars, just as Kerry and the Democrats are considered now. Also, Goldwater was as smeared as Bush is now. This 2004 election is a lot like 1964.
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