Swiftboating History

American Thinker ^ | December 23, 2007 | Denis Keohane

[vietvet67]

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana... It may be Providential that a book of history is soon to be released dealing extensively with certain shameful events of nearly four decades ago, just as others are now seeking to shamelessly and eagerly repeat those events.

Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler have co-authored To Set The Record Straight with the apt subtitle How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry. The book all but begins with details of the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) of 1971, an event I wrote about here at American Thinker last October. The WSI, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Againt the War (VVAW) was pure anti-American and anti-soldier leftist political theater.

Owing to leading Senators and the monolithic liberal big media of the time, WSI was the primary catalyst in legitimizing the longstanding and widely accepted defamation of 2.9 million Americans who served in Vietnam as baby killers, rapists, war criminals, losers, misfits, drug abusers and psychological "time bombs", to use Makubin T. Owens terminology.

Those broad sweeping charges against the Vietnam vets have survived as a part of our established historical narritive for millions and has been all but enshrined in the arts community, particularly film.

The left side of the web is busy spreading the word that next March the ideological descendent of the VVAW, the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is planning another WSI dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby intending to smear another generation of over a million and a half Americans who have served to date in those wars and those who will serve.

[PA-RIVER]

We need to coin the phrase in a different light:

Examples:

“I saw a drunk driver run over a kid, so I swift-boated him, and called the police with his plate numbers.”

“Ted Bundy was swift-boated by the Florida Penal system.”

“Adolf Hitler killed himself before the Americans could capture and swift-boat him.”

“Bill Clinton insured he would be swift-boated when fondled the employees in the White house.”

My favorite :

“Dan Rather was swift-boated by Buckhead for his real but fake documents.”

[okie01]

In my heart, I feel [Kerry] should pay by way of making an example to others, just the way big tobacco or medical malpractice awards make the perpetrators pay and give others who would follow them something to think about.

In other words, losing is insufficient revenge.

Humiliation would be better.

And I agree.

[CyberAnt]

I’ve been wondering what happened to the $1 mil challenge to Kerry to release his military records ..??

IIRC Kerry accepted the challenge .. but so far NOTHING!

And .. I don’t see the drive-by’s harping on the issue .. but more clearly they are ignoring it .. as usual.

Funny .. they didn’t do that with Bush’s issues!

[Quix]

INDEED.

Duplicitous traitorous demonized globalist Machiavellian idiots.

[jrooney]

I also agree. Well said. Thank you for your service.

[PA-RIVER]

I agree.

I was a 10 year old kid when vets tossed their medals ....
and was so sad for them .... until 30 years later I found out it was Kerry, and they purchased the medals!!

I loved Kerrys explanation about tossing his medals - ribbons whatever, they were symbols bla bla bla....

[AndyJackson]

After reading your grammatical expertise as evidenced by your third atrociously written sentence

Counting 1,2,3 in post 4, I come to this one: "This article may be about something, but hang me if I can tell what it is or why I should even bother reading it."

Now, pray tell, what is ungrammatical? "Hang me" has teh verb in the imperative mood. I meant it literally. Get a rope and put me out of my misery. As far as I can tell I misspelled nothing and I put the comma just where it belongs. And to emphasize. I am allowed to be critical of an article that does not have a point, like this one doesn't. Especially when he starts off all high-brow like quoting George Santayana and all that nonsense. Who is he kidding?

[AndyJackson]

teh = the. I cannot type and admit it.

[AndyJackson]

I am steadfast in the belief that Kerry needs to pay for his degradation of those who gave so much

He did. The 2004 election is done, and the battle is won. It is ok to celebrate Cripin Crispian "from this day to the ending of the world." But once a year at most.

[Obiter Dictum]

“I am sure this guy has something to say, but he should just come out and say it. If he doesn’t know what he wants to say, other than continual basking in the admirable works of the Swiftboat crowd, why should I try to figure it out for him? Why?”

Hi AJ,

I can take criticism. I am married and have teens. OTOH, I hope you can stand having some fun poked at you.

Yeah, the article is somewhat long, and involved. But there is a point to that. Ever see a “book”, AJ? They can be really, really big things, even hundreds of pages. Some people actually think it can take that much written space to make a point or points and back them up! Imagine that! May not sit too well with the short atention span folks, but can’t please everyone.

AJ, that article was written largely based on source materials I found, searched for and read that was volumous! Dozens of hours! Hundreds of pages! Over months.

I intended to establish some of the history of the first WSI in 1971, its aftermath and how that was well developed in To Set The Record Straight. Then cover how Swett and Ziegler document the grass roots movements of 2004 that unraveled the Kerry campaign and showed the power that a whole lot of regular folks now have, media-wise. Finally, and for those in this thread who think this is just history, I pointed out that the left is intending to perform another WSI in a few months to smear the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s a future event.

I can and have made points in a relatively few word, AJ. But here, that wasn’t my point. See all those links in that article? They’re meant to give interested parties (read: folks who maybe read long things!) sources of information and materials.

AJ, it is a matter of personal inclinations. I actually like reading long and involved accounts and histories, because I relish the little but crucial details. Others don’t, and nothing at all wrong with that. If you like the short, sweet and to the point, best to ya, sincerely. But I’m probably not the guy you’ll want to read.

The main point of the article is simply this: if folks are ready, willing, able and prepared, history need not repeat itself, when the smear campaign heats up in March.

DK

[AndyJackson]

Ok, but it is now an old story, so well told that we can all say it by heart. It is hard writing sequels. Punch it up a bit, and start off by letting me know what I will get if I see my way through.

[river rat]

The media and the talking head whores, can say all they wish about the SBVFT....

It doesn’t matter..
They ACCOMPLISHED their MISSION — DESTROY KERRY WITH THE TRUTH...

If they were to ask for another $50 Million to do the same to another lying SOB — they could collect it over one weekend...

Last election cycle — ALL my political contribution went to them..
I would gladly repeat that scenario, and the RNC can kiss my hairy white &^%.

[Maelstorm]

The Democrats have nothing to blame but themselves for Kerry.
What person in their right mind would run someone like him at the time of war and then have him run on his very weak “war hero” credentials. All else aside he not only painted his fellow soldiers with a wide brush as if they were murderous thugs killing men women and children with abandon but went even further to meet with the North Vietnamese in France.

All those things pale to the results of the actions of the left and weak willed Republicans because we left those poor people to be overrun after they held their own for nearly two years after the bulk of our soldiers had left. Ted Kennedy and his cohorts cut funding for the South to a trickle and thousands of people many who had worked alongside us and looked to us as friends found themselves left to the reeducation camps and to die.

The swift boat veterans did what George Bush and his advisers didn’t have the guts to do. They called Kerry to the mat for his crimes against humanity. They are heroes for saving us from the atrocity of sitting another coward and traitor as commander and chief.

I thank them and praise them for their bravery for standing against the darkness and the lie represented by the ketchup baron from Massachusetts.

Oh Vietnam,
How the specter of our desertion of you has risen high
And like a phoenix over the thousands of souls who died
Has resurrected our courage from the ashes of our shame.

I hear the helicopters leaving,
I see the smoke and the people climbing up
and a man holding his small daughter to the sky
Our better angels flew away that day.

Oh Vietnam,
It was but for the memory of you
And how we turned our heads away
While some danced and twirled in a technicolor high
Celebrating...
As we left those we promised to save to die.

It was but for the memory of you
That we not be called away again,
Before the setting of the desert sun

Before our duty is done.

Oh Vietnam,
forgive us our shame.

[AndyJackson]

His very presence in our congress is a disgrace to our heritage.

So is the state of Massachusetts. Solve one problem and you solve the other.

[Obiter Dictum]

“Ok, but it is now an old story, so well told that we can all say it by heart. It is hard writing sequels.”

Sigh! Okay, AJ, I surrender. In my younger days in Net discussions, a decade or so ago, I’d been writing things like “read slowly, move your lips, use your finger to trace the words if you have to...”

The left is going to conduct another full court media-press Winter Soldier Investigation NEXT MARCH to smear the Iraq and Afghanistan vets! That’s 2008! According to my day planner, that’s a FUTURE EVENT, not an “old story”.

That’s why the article began with Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Get it, YET? AJ, did you actually read it all, or you gave up when you got a headache after three paragraphs? Okay, I backslid! Sorry!

AJ, I’m not the one mired in the past. I’ve tried to link together past events so others (and myself) can be better prepared and informed for future ones that are being intentionally based on those specific past events.

Not your cup of tea, read about it after the fact, when it is history. Others will be prepared and involved before and as it happens. We’ll let you know how it turns out. :)

[Huck]

It seems pretty clear to me from the first two sentences that this is a book review. How difficult was that to figure out?

[ThePythonicCow]

May I suggest that instead of encouraging us to read your essay because you spent much time researching it, that rather you take the more customary approach: catch our interest, tell us what you're going to tell us, then tell us, then close by telling us what you told us and why this was important.

Usually folks read stuff because of some benefit to them, be that as simple as amusement or pleasure, or something more informative, inspiring or useful.

Except for fan boys reading their hero's scribblings, people don't usually read stuff because the author labored long over the research, nor because it has many good links, nor even because it is written by one of the finest thinkers of our time <grin>.

Your closing actually does that ... you're warning veterans of the current war and those of us who would blog and write in their support, that we're about to see the next chapter in the Book of Swiftboating -- False Claims of Atrocities Committed by American Soldiers, and you encourage us to respond this time with more focus, awareness and speed, informed by the lessons of history which you so kindly provided.

But your opening doesn't clearly make the connection between the history of Swiftboating and this repeat threat. It only implies it, subtly, in the quote from Santayana. It does not boldly alert us to the possibility that we are about to be hit with another tsunami of slander against our finest, nor explicitly and in plain speak offer us the opportunity to be better prepared and quicker responding this time around.

Woo us, romance us, entice us, or alarm us. Somehow draw us in before asking us to read more than about three sentences.

Oh - and thanks for the history and the warning. I suspect your warning is timely.