Posted on 08/30/2004 8:23:15 AM PDT by kattracks
Kerry is proud that, upon his return from Vietnam, he eagerly believed anyone who told him Americans had done evil things without any effort to verify their charges or even bother to see if those making the vile claims were who they said they were. Virtually all of America's "unbiased" journalists believe this attribute will make Kerry a great president.
John Kerry's opposition to the war will cause him trouble in Massachusetts? I doubt it.
In South Boston, he might be unpopular, but in Cambridge and every other college town in the Commonwealth, he'll be a hero.
Not just Kerry. The media elites were just as eager as Kerry to believe that Americans had done evil things. Just like Kerry, the media elites made no effort to verify the charges of widespread atrocities or even bother to see if those making the vile charges were who they said they were.
To be fair about it, George W. Bush did what many of us would have done given the chance. He ducked the war in Vietnam and got free flying lessons in the deal. That he stopped attending Air National Guard meetings is really no big deal. Those meetings are boring and unproductive.
What is troublesome is Bush's hypocrisy.
WHY IS THAT HYPOCRITICAL? By the time he was of age, we weren’t fighting to win, and the forces were being drawn down in Vietnam. It made no sense to jump into the fighting at that point – because of people like you. The Viet Cong was destroyed during Tet in 1968, yet people like you portrayed it as a defeat because of “pictures”. North Vietnam was on the ropes in October 1972 with nearly all of its ability to wage war in the South wiped out by Linebacker 1, but bombing above the 20th parallel was halted for more “peace negotiations”. If not for the pressure of the anti-war crowd, the war would have been long over by 1972, but it’s funny how peace activists always end up string wars out years beyond necessity, placing stupid restrictions on the fighting – which has always meant that peace activists cause more deaths than hawks. The North Vietnamese were on the verge of giving up, but they held on because they knew that people like you in America meant victory was still possible because you would force America to pull out.
As for the charge leveled throughout your column that the vets from Vietnam who don’t take Kerry’s side are just on a glory ego-trip, there’s still a lot of making up to do for all the spit that landed on them when they came back. They don’t want to be thought of as saints, they’d just like to not be hated by folks like you.
***
He has no qualms about sending others into battle, but he himself did a sophisticated cut and run when the shooting started.
HOW DO YOU KNOW HE HAS NO QUALMS? This reminds me of the stupid “hypocrisy” argument by parents who did drugs when they were young feeling hypocritical about telling their children not to do it. Does it make any sense to have your character frozen by age 18? Should a parent who had a criminal past feel hypocritical about telling his son not to rob liquor stores? Again, I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to fight after about 1968 when it was clear that the communist-sympathizing anti-war activists were going to ensure that not only we would not win but that far more Americans and Vietnamese were going to die in the process – for nothing. Bush’s father, in the position he was in at the time, probably knew that better than anyone and did what any father would do.
But now that he is president, it is not an option for him to say “The military will never be used while I am president because I was in the National Guard in 1972 and because Harley Sorensen says that makes me a hypocrite.” The president has to do what the president has to do. So now it comes back, as it always should, to actually debating the war on its merits.
***
That is one reason, when it comes to waging a war, John Kerry might make a better president than Bush.
KERRY WILL NOT FIGHT. He will pass the buck to the French or the dictator-loving UN. He, like the folks he associated with in the early 1970’s, will ensure that more Americans die in the Middle East for a cause he will ensure will be lost. He will give lip service, he will make things APPEAR to those ignorant of military and foreign affairs that he is “fighting” and “tough”, but no objectives will be taken, no victory will be had, and America will become in the eyes of our enemies the same cowardly America that was helpless during the Iran hostage crisis, pulled out of Lebanon and Somalia, and was generally very easily discouraged because Kerry wants to make “allies” out of nations that have no good will toward us and never will.
***
But his real heroism revealed itself when he became a front man for Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
NO, THAT WAS HIS MOST TRAITOROUS MOMENT. You talk about how heroic Kerry was to speak up, but curiously have nothing to say about the content of what he said. It was all lies. This is why the Vietnam vets are so mad – people like you believed people like Kerry. They were no more “war criminals” than the WWII vets. VVAW was full of communist-sympathizers and men who either were never in the military or never saw combat. They had zero credibility. Even Kerry himself said he committed atrocities – do you believe that? If it’s true, then he should be in the Hague awaiting trial. If it’s not true, then he is a traitorous liar. Name your poison…
***
We Americans don't like to admit it, but we live in a culture that adores war.
IF THAT was true, there would be no significant anti-war movement and it would not have the level of influence that it does.
***
Our World War II veterans were long ago promoted to sainthood, and our younger men deliriously want the same kind of respect. The nation as a whole sees our success in WWII as "the good old days."
SEE ABOVE. They do not want to be falsely remembered as war criminals. That’s all.
***
So in our national psyche, war is good.
SEE ABOVE.
***
By logical extension, people who oppose war are bad. It seems there are two kinds of war veterans: those who make their war experience the cornerstone of their existence,
LIKE KERRY…
And those who come home, try to forget, and get on with their lives.
LIKE BOB DOLE.
In the case of Vietnam veterans, the first kind, the "professional veterans," are angry and bitter because they never got the kind of respect accorded to WWII vets.
AGAIN, because people like you remember them as war criminals.
***
The "forgetters," on the other hand, don't care. They've gotten on with their lives. That was then; this is now. In any event, it took a remarkable amount of courage for John Kerry, and others like him, to take an active public stand against the war they had just helped fight.
SUCH “COURAGE” IS CANCELLED OUT if it is the courage to tell traitorous lies.
***
They knew they'd be linked with Jane Fonda and the myths surrounding her anti-war efforts.
They knew all that, but they also knew what was right.
WHAT MYTHS ARE THESE? At least Fonda apologized.
***
They knew the war was wrong.
COME ON DOWN TO LITTLE SAIGON and explain that to the Vietnamese there. It was COMMUNISM that was wrong; not the war against it. Can you really turn such a blind eye to what has happened in Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia) since the Communists won in 1975?
***
The bogus "domino theory" (if Vietnam falls, the entire region becomes communist) was such a shallow lie it could have been something today's so-called neo-com advisers would have whispered into President Bush's ear.
FIRST OF ALL, IT WASN’T A LIE. Laos and Cambodia fell after we left. Shallow lies are the domain of Michael Moore and Co., not neocons.
***
The vets who dared speak against the war knew there was nothing about Vietnam that justified the deaths of tens of thousands of American boys and an estimated 1 million Vietnamese.
WHAT ABOUT THE THOUSANDS MORE AMERICANS and tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who perished after 1972 in the battlefield and in the Vietnamese gulags because the war was dragged out by the anti-war activists doing their best Neville Chamberlain imitation?
***
They'd been there. They knew it was wrong.
THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE who now live in the U.S. were there too – funny how they have a different opinion.
***
And they had the courage to say so in a country that thrives on war.
MORE OF THAT COURAGE TO LIE.
***
The Vietnam vets who despise Kerry do so because he has helped rob them of the glory they feel they deserve. Most of them, like most of the WWII vets, were dragged into battle through the Selective Service System. They were drafted. They didn't want to be in a war.
WHO DOES?
***
But once there they did what was expected of them, which was no more nor less than the WWII vets did. They crave the same respect.
YOU’RE REPEATING YOURSELF; I’ll repeat too: people like you called them war criminals. It was a big fat lie. They want YOU AND KERRY TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY. Again, Jane Fonda is at least ahead of you there.
***
The war in Iraq is, in a way, a continuum of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. So America in my lifetime went from its most noble war, to its forgotten war, to its unjustified war, to the hopeless quagmire we're in now in Iraq.
YOU ARE MILITARILY IGNORANT if you think Iraq is a quagmire for anyone but the terrorists.
***
Does John Kerry still have the courage he exhibited after returning from Vietnam? If he does, and if he's elected, our troops will be out of Iraq by next February.
KERRY WON’T HAVE THE GUTS to pull the troops out. He will just make sure they stay there so he looks tough but he won’t let them fight.
***
Courageous or not,
NOT.
***
Kerry is a peace-loving American's only hope.
ONLY IF YOU ARE A PEACE-LOVING AMERICAN in the mold of Neville Chamberlain.
***
The incumbent president (Mr. Bring It On) has signaled he'll be sending others off to fight for as long as he holds the office.
THE CHALLENGER (Mr. Reporting For Duty Because I’m Proud of my Vietnam Service Except When I Was a War Criminal) will ensure that as many American troops appear in hotspots in only the most symbolic way (e.g., without permission to fight) so they can soak up as many bullets as possible for no good reason.
The Anti-War-Left's Neville Chamberlain like actions resulted in the 1st part of that equation.
Damn, someone finally got it ... it would have been straight up eggman, but that screen name was already gone
The nickname was actually earned during a hardboiled egg eating contest during my misspent youth
Yes. Absolutely.
I e-mailed my above point-by-point to Harley Sorensen himself. He e-mailed me back, and here is his response:
***
David:
Bush is a hypocrite because, like you, he was a strong advocate for the war . . . and then he ducked it. What a punk!
As for "winning" in Vietnam, that was impossible, just like it's impossible for us to win in Iraq. We could have killed a lot more people, and destroyed a lot more real estate, but then what would we have? We'd still be there, spending money and sacrificing American lives. Some victory.
***
AND HERE -- FOR WHATEVER IT'S WORTH -- IS WHAT I SENT BACK (to harleysorensen@yahoo.com):
Bush is a hypocrite because, like you, he was a strong advocate for the war . . . and then he ducked it. What a punk!
***Two different wars -- one that was already given up on by the time Bush was to go. You want to make all wars sound like they are the same war -- waged only by those you stereotype as overly macho jerks who go to war out of boredom. You also want to elect a self-admitted war criminal or a treasonous liar. Also Bush never tried to make himself out as a hero. Are you saying George W. Bush was an outspoken proponent of the Vietnam War at the time, or are you playing a Michael Moore trick of conflating two unrelated events to pull one over on your readers -- in this case that saying Bush was an "strong advocate for the war" (in Iraq) without mentioning Iraq so your readers will think he was a "strong advocate" for the war in Vietnam?
Besides, I was only 8 years old in 1972 so I was kind of young to be drafted. (And don't answer that this means I'm too young to know anything about it because by that standard you're too young to comment on the WWII vets.)
I get that you hate Bush, so there's no need to emphasize that. But you never answered any of my charges about the effect of what Kerry said in 1971, your tacit approval of Kerry's smearing of all Vietnam vets as war criminals, your refusal, even denial about the Southeast Asian oppression and bloodbath that directly resulted from America's pullout, not only in Vietnam but in Laos and Cambodia too, and the Neville Chamberlain-like myopia the reflexively anti-war left of trying to reason with the unreasonable. You forego all of that and just call Bush a hypocrite and a "punk".
I also have the feeling that you had no problem voting for Clinton who dodged the draft and then launched missiles into Iraq and Sudan and took us to war in the Balkans. True? If so, then hypocrisy is not a problem for you, just a tool of convenience to beat Republicans over the head.
Harley Sorensen is back from his sabbatical, yay!
He does live in another country: San Francisco. (grin)
Thought you might find interesting this message I received today from Amazon: (We're winning!)
Greetings from Amazon.com.
We have some news concerning your order for "Unfit for Command:
Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry."
We are sorry to report that the supplier is currently out of stock. However, please be assured that books are on their way from the publisher and we expect to resume filling orders for this popular title by the end of next week.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience or disappointment this delay may cause.
We have left your order in place, and will ship this book to you. As soon as it becomes available, but we will certainly understand if you wish to cancel the item from your order.
Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
Amazon.com
They better hurry before Kerry's lawyers get to Regnery.
Good response Zhang. Well done!
As the amateur historian that I am, what was the historical timeline from Linebacker II to the fall of Saigon?
Specifically, was there a truce like Korea's for a couple of years before the post-watergate congress handed over So. Vietnam to the commies?
Linebacker 2 was from December 18-29, 1972. This was the time when we finally cut loose the flying battleships (B-52's) on North Vietnam with almost no restrictions. This was in response to NVN walking out of the Paris peace talks, to which Nixon said "We're going to bomb the bastards like they've never been bombed before."
Prior to this point, Linebacker 1 had, as I said, put NVN on the ropes -- a true strategic bombing campaign that totally defanged NVN (very different from Rolling Thunder when LBJ was choosing targets according to how he feared the Chinese would react and hoping to intimidate NVN with gradual escalation of the bombing). This brought NVN to the peace table and a halt was called on October 23 to the bombing, which gave NVN plenty of time to reconstitute their now almost non-existent air defense.
The B-52's were devastatingly effective to say the least in pulverizing air fields, POL (Petroleum/Oil/Lubricants) storage, rail yards, truck parks, warehouses, powerplants, etc. But the psychological effect was even more severe. Karl Eschman's book about Linebacker quotes American POW's comparing the reactions of their guards to the F-105/F-4 strikes up until 1968 and during Linebacker 1 (May-October 1972) with their reaction to the B-52's. With the fighter bombers, the guards were openly defiant in front of the prisoners, even shooting their rifles into the sky.
When the B-52's came -- at night by the way -- they ran and hid in their air raid holes. Many were trembling and some even pissed themselves. The B-52D could carry 84 500-lb. bombs in the bomb bay and 24 750-pounders on the underwing racks -- 30 tons of C4 each. When they cut loose, it was like Godzilla running across the landscape.
Anyway, my point is, as I said in my response to Sorensen, we had NVN on the ropes -- but sadly, with all the public pressure to end the war, all we were fighting for was the release of the POW's.
NVN came running back to the table for more talks and American involvement in Vietnam officially ended on January 27, 1973. At this point, though some B-52 raids continued in Laos until August, it was an all-Vietnam show. Congress refused to authorize any military aid to South Vietnam and thereby sealed their fate. Though there was still fighting, North Vietnam recovered over the next 2 years from the losses and destruction of Linebacker 1 & 2, and went on the offensive in the spring of 1975. They overran Saigon in April and South Vietnam ceased to exist.
It was basically the truce of 1/27/73 that ended American involvement in Vietnam. Kerry & Co. had turned overwhelming American victories in Tet and Linebacker into defeats that cost the lives of millions of Southeast Asians.
So after January 27, 1973 there was a Korea-like truce untill jan 1975?
From what I gather the VC ceased to exist after their imploding Tet offensive?
Ping!
"Thank you very much for the info. So after January 27, 1973 there was a Korea-like truce untill Jan 1975?"
Not exactly. It was known that the fighting would continue (and it did), but the main thing was just getting all American military out of Vietnam by a certain date and removal of the mines from Haiphong Harbor (which prevented resupply of NVN by sea from China/USSR) in exchange for releasing all the POW's. The war between North and South continued and there was still fighting 1973-74 but on a much lower level. This was not due to the truce but because North Vietnam's military and logistical infrastructure was so devastated by Linebacker 1 & 2 that they were just utterly unable to launch another invasion for 2 years.
So, you see, Kerry & Co. really did save North Vietnam...
***
"From what I gather the VC ceased to exist after their imploding Tet offensive?"
There was still a Viet Cong organization (they were signatories on the 1/27/73 truce) but they lost so many men during Tet that they were no longer an effective fighting force. This, though, was perfectly fine with the North because they wanted to run the whole show throughout Vietnam. They were actually happy to see the VC get wiped out.
I'll go out on a limb and speculate that, from the testimony of VC officers who just walked out of the woods and surrendered during Tet, the North may have coerced the VC into military missions that were, as these officers put it, certain death. They'd had enough of ordering their men to die for nothing. These officers said they couldn't take anymore being given missions that had no military value, that were at best just politically symbolic, and were sure to result not merely in high casualties but the wiping out of entire units.
BY THE WAY -- for those who might be interested, Mr. Sorensen has not yet replied to my second rebuttal. I guess I was right; he is militarily ignorant to the point of not even knowing what happened in Vietnam in any detail. He's just running on the fumes of leftist cliches.
(One correction -- the bombings in Laos stopped on February 22. It was the B-52 raids in Cambodia that continued until August 15.)
Concur
That's why the left claims 50,000+ GIs died for "nothing".
The died to prevent the communist genocide that followed once the Kerry/Fonda/McGovern foreign policy was employed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.