Ted Kennedy: Iraq war's Jane Fonda (Great Read!)

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.

"Leaving aside that it was President John F. Kennedy who got the United States into the Vietnam War in the first place"

26 Sep 1945 - The first death of an American serviceman in Vietnam occurred.
OSS (Office of Special Operations) Major (Lieutenant Colonel) A. Peter Dewey
was killed in action by the Communist Vietminh near Hanoi.
May 1950 President Harry S Truman authorised $10 million in aid to the French for their war in Viet Nam.
By January 1951, $150 million had been given in aid.
1953-61 Dwight D. Eisenhower 34th US President
1953-61 Richard M. Nixon Vice President
1953 - The US is supporting the French in the amount of $1 billion per year--
33% of all US foreign aid--which is 80% of the total cost to the
. US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (under Eisenhower) first voices the 'Domino Theory':
if one country in Southeast Asia falls to the Communists, they will all fall, one by one.
12 Feb 55 - President Eisenhower's administration sends 1st 350 U.S. advisers to South Vietnam
to train the South Vietnamese Army
8 Jun 56 - The first American of record to die in Vietnam
was Air Force Tech Sergeant Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr.
His son, Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, died in Vietnam Sep 7, 1965.
8 Jun 56 Has been formally recognized by the Pentagon as the first American officially to die in that war.
5 Sep 56 - President Eisenhower tells a news conference that the French are
"involved in a hopelessly losing war in Indochina" 1956 The US believed in that Ho Chi Minh would have won any election held in Viet Nam and used their influence over the government of the State of Viet Nam to ensure that the election was not held

From a Must Visit Site
Vipers Vietnam Veterans Page, A Vietnam Veteran & Proud Web Site
About Vietnam

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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