Posted on 02/12/2005 7:40:07 PM PST by wagglebee
The votes have been cast – if not yet fully counted – and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy owes the brave people of Iraq a profound apology. Some 8 million Iraqis on Jan. 30 defied terrorists' threats of violence and death to cast their ballots for a more hopeful future than Mr. Kennedy was willing to grant them. In so doing, Iraqis, who hadn't voted in free elections in a half-century, gave the lie to the Massachusetts Democrat's nakedly partisan rant three days before the balloting that the war that made the voting possible was "a colossal failure, a continuing quagmire." In fact, although about three dozen people – minus the eight suicide bombers – died in election-related violence, the terrorists' vow to wreak maximum havoc nationwide to minimize the turnout and thereby render the vote illegitimate was what was the true "colossal failure."
Indeed, Iraqi voters gave the collective finger, a purple dye-stained finger, to the thugs and assassins – and to Mr. Kennedy, whose diatribe at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies Jan. 27 gave demagoguery a bad name. For Mr. Kennedy to characterize the Iraq war as "Bush's Vietnam" in advance of the balloting served only to give propaganda aid and comfort to terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi and his henchmen. But beyond that, it grossly misrepresents the Vietnam War – specifically, the U.S. conduct of the war and the lessons thereof.
North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap admitted that the January 1968 Tet Offensive was a disastrous defeat for the Communists – not for the United States, as it was portrayed in the U.S. media – and that in its wake, Hanoi was on the verge of surrendering. More tellingly, Gen. Giap acknowledged that it was the U.S. domestic anti-war movement that kept the North going. In other words, the very people who claimed they only wanted an end to the killing were actually responsible for prolonging the war for several years and by tens of thousands of deaths.
Zarqawi is no doubt aware of, and encouraged by, that sordid chapter of our history, and with the likes of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya transmitting his remarks across the Middle East, Mr. Kennedy has become the Jane Fonda (the Lt. John Kerry?) of the Iraq war. It could be argued that not only are his remarks not likely to bring about an end to the bloodletting in Iraq, but rather, considerably prolong it by giving the terrorists hope that the United States will, in the late Sen. George Aiken's infamous Vietnam-era formulation, "declare victory and get out."
Leaving aside that it was President John F. Kennedy who got the United States into the Vietnam War in the first place, Sen. Kennedy's screed is the antithesis of his late brother's famous credo from his Jan. 20, 1961, inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
If anything, Sen. Kennedy's shameful stance more closely mirrors that of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who as FDR's ambassador to Great Britain during World War II was the chief administration proponent of appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis. While the 1,400 U.S. troops whose lives have been lost in the nearly two years since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched is sad and lamentable, one can only be grateful that Ted Kennedy was not in the Senate during World War II, when during the Battle of the Bulge alone, 19,000 U.S. troops died in six weeks' time. If he had been, much of Europe might well be speaking German today.
But perhaps Mr. Kennedy's most irresponsible and demonstrably false pre-election remark was his drawing of a moral equivalence between our troops and the terrorists. "Our military and the insurgents are fighting for the same thing: the hearts and minds of the people," he said, "and that is a battle we are not winning."
Apart from the fact that the suicide bombers – seven of whom on election day were Saudis, while only one was an Iraqi – are more interested in losing spleens and intestines than in winning hearts and minds, the Iraqi voters showed whose side they were on – with their index fingers.
If anything, Sen. Kennedy's shameful stance more closely mirrors that of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who as FDR's ambassador to Great Britain during World War II was the chief administration proponent of appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis.
If Tubby could sober up long enough to be coherent, I'd love to see these words shoved down his fat throat!
I was thinking a printed copy rolled up and shoved with a twisting motion up.........
that's true, ol' joe was on the side of hitler.
and fdr sent a spy to keep watch on joe kennedy, finally recalling kennedy from the ambassadorship to england.
When FDR recalled Kennedy, he sent his mistress as his "official greeter" to meet the Nazi-loving bootlegger at the airport.
Saying that Kennedy is the Iraq War's Jane Fonda is being very generous.
Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of Benedict Arnold, or at least Alger Hiss.
Teddy...Teddy...I'm from MA. What a disgrace!!!
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A Clean & Sober 1st Term Senator TED KENNEDY in Vietnam-1965
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
(See 5th Photo)
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The only thing Kennedy hasn't done that Jane did was cavort with the enemy on TV - on the enemy's home territory.
Do Senate rules require all members to refer to each other as "honorable" even when the addressee doesn't remotely merit that honorific?
Yep! That's to maintain the collegial atmosphere.
God forbid should Teddy try to impress us by wearing a Speedo!!!
What was he doing there? How long after his appearance did Ia Drang/LZ XRay happen
Mighty sure of yourself!
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Thank you for asking. Great question.
About 3 weeks before our 1965 Battle of the IA DRANG Valley a junket of Senators/Representatives from Congress, including a young Senator TED KENNEDY, came trotting thru our 1st Cav Headquarters at An Khe, South Vietnam.
They were on a trip to survey how a then Free South Vietnam's new civilian war refugees were being affected by our War Operations at the very begining of the Vietnam War.
Our 1st Cav's Commanding General that Senator KENNEDY was visiting was none other than General HARRY W.O. KINNARD, of World War II's "NUTS" fame during the Battle of the Bulge.
It was a young Intel Operations Officer Capt. KINNARD who suggested that very "NUTS" response to his Commanding General MacAuliffe as being the appropriate response to a German Ultimatum of Surrender issued us at a surrounded Bastogne.
All History in the doing.
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The Vietnam war was the longest in our nation's history.
1st American advisor was killed on June 08, 1956,
and the last casualties in connection with the war occurred on May 15, 1975, during the Mayaquez incident. Approximately 2.7 million Americans served in the war zone; 300,000 were wounded and approximately 75,000 permanently disabled. Officially there are still 1,991 Americans unaccounted for from SE Asia.
Vietnam was a savage, in your face war where death could and did strike from anywhere with absolutely no warning. The brave young men and women who fought that war paid an awful price of blood, pain and suffering. As it is said: "ALL GAVE SOME ... SOME GAVE ALL"
The Vietnam war was not lost on the battlefield. No American force in ANY other conflict fought with more determination or sheer courage than the Vietnam Veteran. For the first time in our history America sent it's young men and women into a war run by inept politicians who had no grasp of military strategies and no moral will to win. They were led by "top brass" who were concerned mainly with furthering their own careers, most neither understood the nature of the war nor had a clue about the impossible mission with which they'd tasked their soldiers. And the war was reported by a self serving Media who penned stories filled with inaccuracies, deliberate omissions, biased presentations and blatant distorted interpretations because they were more interested in a story than the truth! It can be debated that we should never have fought that war. It can also be argued that the young Americans who fought so courageously, never losing a single major battle, helped in a huge way to WIN THE COLD WAR.
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