By W. Patrick Lang
I am not a big fan of Senator John Kerry. His behavior in the US after his return from duty in VN eliminated any possibility that I would ever support him for anything.
Nevertheless, the process of relentless, remorseless, cruel denigration of his character, military record and general “style” which was carried on by the friends of the president was despicable. They attacked his wife for her “foreignness.” They attacked him for being able to speak French and being comfortable with his French relatives. They seem not to have known of Mr. Jefferson’s opinion that “every civilized man speaks two languages, his own, and French.” The assault on Kerry was reminiscent of the kind of fascist manipulation of the opinion of the masses that George Orwell warned us of in “1984.” Now it comes again.
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is a Republican from a state filled with conservative, (not fascist) responsible citizens. Senator Hagel was once Sergeant (E-5) Hagel of the First Battalion, Forty Seventh Infantry Regiment, Ninth Infantry Division. He was a “grunt,” i.e., a Rifleman and a leader of Riflemen in a war in which Riflemen spent an average of 240 days in actual combat out of a year’s tour of duty. By contrast to this, Riflemen in the Pacific Theater of WW2, spent, on average, 40 days in combat during the whole war. CONTINUED BELOW:
In most wars, over 90% of all casualties (killed, wounded and missing) are absorbed by the Infantry. This was true in VN. The artillery does most of the killing in war, but it is the Infantry with their rifles and exposure to fire who are the great majority of the killed and maimed. Senator Hagel served with his brother in the same Rifle Platoon (44 men when I led one). I do not think that should have been permitted but there they were, together. The chance of their being killed together was considerable. Senator Hagel was wounded and decorated for his service and came home to continue to devote his life to the service of his countrymen.
Not surprisingly, Senator Hagel is still, and in some sense will always be, in Vietnam. An experience like that does not “go away.” It becomes an enduring part of the fabric of life. Senator Hagel still lives, every day, with his comrades of long ago. I saw a C-Span progran recently in which a couple of people from the Library of Congress were interviewing him for his “oral history” of the experience of war. It was evident from watching his carefully controlled responses just how much it still means to him.
Senator Hagel has made it clear that he questions the wisdom of the strategic conception of the Iraq intervention, the decision to intervene and the execution of the war. It would seem to me that he has earned the right to have an opinion in this or any other matter.
What has been the reaction from the Republican Party and its “flacks?” The Kerry character assasination machine has evidently been re-activated. Yesterday I watched as a pretty boy 35ish yuppy political hack from the crowd of sycophants with whom the president has surrounded himself described Hagel (with a sneer) as “someone who has lost his way.” He (the yup) went on to say that Hagel has no ideas worth listening to in the matter of the possible resemblance of the Vietnam War to the mess in Iraq. Actually, he said, Hagel no longer knows what the war in Vietnam was about.
Now, consider that. This kid was still crapping in his pants and crying for the pacifier when Hagel and his brother and Hagel’s “boys” were fighting to defeat the VC/NVA in the outskirts of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) but he, from the depths of his marvelous intellect knows better what VN was “about.” You can see where this is going. Are these swine going to spread the rumor that Senator Hagel was an agent and informer for the communist enemy in VN? That’s what they did to McCain in South Carolina.
The Yups should be careful. Senator “Grunt” has friends.
Pat Lang
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio
This is making me cry … I think it has to do with my post last night on a DKos thread about my cousin and brother and uncle who all served in the Vietnam War.
No one knows, but those men and women who have served in such a war, the hell and fear and dread and life-altering witnessing of the worst that men can do to each other.
A couple nights ago, BooMan posted this in Larry’s Johnson’s story:
I just tuned in to Joe Scarborough’s pointless show on MSNBC. His top story? A missing model…. and now Joe is getting a report on the missing teen in Aruba.
That’s Joe’s best turf … the dregs of TV-turned-National-Enquirer news.
How dare he.
I went through hell during the Vietnam War. Initially for the war — as a good Teenage Republican — I was influenced in college and ended up against the war.
But when my cousin, an infantry officer, came to visit me before he returned to Vietnam, after going to his father’s fuenral … he was MY FAMILY. I loved him. He was not treated nicely by anyone on that campus except my roommate and a couple anti-war veterans who were mostly trying to get him to go AWOL.
I worked for a TV station in Seattle after college. The company was anti-war — we’d all close down at noon and march, in our business attire, against the war.
Then a close relative enlisted (!) in the Army and did go AWOL … after a terrible experience in basic training … headed north and went to Canada. Called me from and Vancouver and described plans to head to the mountains. I begged the relative to let me drive up and talk, then my boss pitched in and helped me get legal advice. My boss, who was deeply opposed to the war, urged me to tell the relative that there would be far too many consequences of such an action. My boss armed me with great information and informed opinions. I went to Vancouver, and spent half the night talking to relative … relative came home.
And there were countless other such experiences. Me on both sides of the fence throughout.
But I never, ever experienced anything like my cousin. I looked up, and found on the Internet, the official record of the crash of a helcipter into the Mekong River … he was a passenger. He watched three other men drown. They were weighted down by their gear. And he could do nothing to save them. Then he got to shore, and was stripped of everything by some Vietcong, he told me later, who left him alone.
His fear, the night before I drove him up to the California air base, to catch his flight back to Vietnam. Oh, it was so huge that enveloped me and my roommate and our apartment. He was white with fear. He was shaking. He could not eat. He could not talk. He could not sleep.
But, he returned to his men. He was devoted to them…
So, for Joe Scarborough or the other whipper-snappers to blast Hagel is unconscionable. They have NO CLUE what these soldiers went through, or how incredibly lucky they were to survive…. Pat’s stats about infantry service astound me.
(Sorry this is so long … I’m feeling very emotional.)
What’s interesting to me is that the right is going after his military credentials, but giving wide berth to the fact that Senator Chuck Hagel held $1-5 million in a private firm McCarthy Group Inc., which in turn owns ES&S, the election software company that controlled the elections in Nebraska when Hagel was elected. ES&S and Diebold, run by brothers, controlled 80% of the counting of the votes in the 2004 presidential election.
His win was one of the huge upset victories in 1996, winning even the black vote, which raised serious eyebrows.
His reporting of his investment in McCarthy raised a question of ethics violations.
I just want to make sure we don’t lionize this guy just because he spoke out against the war in Iraq. The way I see it, he’s just a canny politician who sees the sentiment in the country and plays to it. I don’t consider him any different than many of the other politicians, and in fact consider his ties with ES&S at the very least, suspicious and the circumstances of his elections worthy of further investigation.
“affluence an influence on recruiting”. Some woman said “our kind just doe not enlist” or something to that affect. My husbands were in the army at the time of the Korean war. Neither went to Korea, but served elsewhere. The oldest was in the Merchant Marines in WWII. We definitely are not affluent, but the oldest was a born warrior. Tough, my God, he was tough! But war created special hells for both of them. Horrors that took a lifetime to work in and out of their systems. Quite frankly, if we were “sapiens” surely we could do a better job! Maybe we should call ourselves “homo almost sapient”!
What behavior of Kerry’s after he returned to the Us, do you find so objectionable.
I have studied his history considerably and am hard pressed to find such a conclusion possible.
What I like is Pat’s willingness to say how he really feels. And, even with those feelings about Kerry, he abhored the Swiftboating of Kerry and his wife.
Other than that, I hope Pat responds to you. Just wanted to say that.
Hi Susan, I am sorry that you were feeling sad in your earlier comment…hugs to you.
Kerry is an issue that ulitmately divided my sister and I during that election, and created a rift that is pretty near total.
Our disagreement came during my intense study of him, which included reading his testimony before congress multiple times, seeing the actual filmed testimony on Cspan and studying his congressional records.
boy I seem to have jumped in all the controversial threads tonight. Me with my laid back profile of late.
Hugs back to you, and i’m sorry the Kerry issue created rifts in your family.
I voted for Kerry but I was never, ever enthused about him as the best candidate. How they couldn’t anticipate that his anti-war stuff would be used against him is unimaginable to me.
My aunt — her husband retired as a colonel from the army — said that they were disgusted by Kerry’s posturing after such very short service in Vietnam. They voted for Bush, but they’re solid Republicans anyway. However, Kerry’s service was very short — especially compared to my cousin, my uncle and my brother, all of whom were there (I kind of forget) but it was at least two years. And compared to Hagel’s. Still, Kerry was in terrible danger sometimes, and that’s nothing to shrug off.
Then again, how anyone could vote for Bush — a chickenhawk whose daddy’s friends got him out of going to Vietnam and then who inexcusably, unpatriotically disappeared for about a year of his Nat’l Guard service — is also beyond me.
‘nough of that … Thanks for your thoughts, Diane. I always appreciate everything you have to say.
P.S. I sent Pat an e-mail but he is on the East Coast so he may have posted that, and then headed to bed.
Perhaps we need a Kerry diary, now so I can get into that…lol…issue by issue. I think his time of service in Vietnam was 14 mo. my ex service was 11 mo. the normal length of time for service in the time period ex was in. 1970 or thereabouts, but he enlisted and got a 2 year deal, 11 mo. vietnam.
Dear Susan, thanks for your words…
are not getting the lighter sentences – they are being treated like galley slaves! And now they are talking about beefing up the forces (months and months after they should have done so) – the only place to get the troops is to keep the ones they have got and not let them go!
I was in Tennesee a couple of weeks ago, in the county where several guys had just been wounded and two killed from the same unit. There were in tears in the diner where we ate, and feelings were running strong. An older gentleman who helped me in the local library questioned me sharply about being a Democrat (he saw my Democracy for America sticker) – until the questioning ran to Vietnam. He teared up. Had lost men there in his unit, and admitted the service issue had made it “a bit difficult” to pull the lever for Bush. He also knew the families of one of the soldiers killed in Iraq, and he just could not speak.
It changed the whole tone of our interaction, and I became no longer the Yankee apostate.He expressed hate for the Swifties and their ilk who took on Kerry & McCain and others. . .
That’s the rift, right there. This man is past beginning to question his adherence to the Republican line.
Susan, if you haven’t seen “Up River” or seen it recently, you should. I just did again so it’s fresh in my mind. It puts a lot in perspective, including how easy it is to talk about length of service without understanding what it was like to go out on those rivers day after day, under fire at least once every single day, with orders that ranged from foolish to immoral and insane.
Time is certainly relative in more ways than one. People can be tested more, give more and see more in a few months than for the rest of their lives.
In those months Kerry was wounded three times. Even his wounds have been denigrated. How easy it all is from the distance of ignorance. What’s missing far too often in our evaluations of people, even of politicians, is a little humility.
Of course, I’m not directing all this in your direction. It’s more of a comment on the whole Swiftboating obscenity.
Well said, Captain, and I especially agree with this: “What’s missing far too often in our evaluations of people, even of politicians, is a little humility.” And I would add to that a little generosity. I personally dislike the constant nit picking at this or that public figure for every action they take and every word they speak. People are human..
Negativity breeds more negativity…positivity breeds positivity.
My problem with Kerry (although I voted for him!!) was that he didn’t fight the Iraq debacle with the same passion he had against the Vietnam War when he returned from service. Having seen first-hand what a misguided war became, I was disappointed that he did not speak out more clearly this time. And I feel like I’m still waiting for that.
I assume that you are referring to Mr Kerry’s telling the truth of the experiences he and his fellow service men and women had? And so telling the truth as they saw it from their battle experiences is disgusting to you? Perhaps you can expand on that.
served three tours in Vietnam as a Marine. He was wounded in all three tours, with 3 count them 3 purple hearts.
This is a man that rehabilitated himself the first time, and reenlisted to go back. He started as a Grunt private, the second time he was a sergeant and was wouunded again. Rehabilitated himself again, going to college to reenlist as a 1st Lt. and wounded a third time. He rehabilitated himself the third time, taking nearly four years before the Corp would let him reenlist a fourth time, this time as Capt. in the JAG office. Seems he went to Law school during those four years.
My step brother recently retired from the Corp. as a Lt Col. and I am sure he would like nothing better than to wring that scrawny little yuppies neck for disgracing another Purple heart wearing Grunt.
These Chickenhawk cowards have no honor, no decency, no credibility. They are morally bankrupt and without a shred of humanity.
The problem is they do not care about anyone but their kind. Hagel is not saying, acting, believing like they would want him to do. This is why they are turning against him. If he can not lie and hate and kill and do things to ppl that is wrong, then he is not one of them.
They are infected with such vile,,,, behavior of bullying ppl that do not do as they say.
They can’t imagine the hell that war is! It will never and shall never be an answer for wrongs done, lies told…..They trully are sick in their minds.
The SwiftBoating in the first sentence of this Diary is so indicative.
I’m not Kerry’s biggest fan but he did nothing upon his return to be ashamed of. Kerry and all the other Veterans as well as other anti-war supporters were the Vietnam soldiers BEST FRIEND. Without all of them we would still be in a Civil War we never belonged in to begin with. Who else got those soldiers home safe and sound…. WHO?
I am so tired of people like Kerry, Fonda, RFK, MLK, and all the other people who could have been out there like so much of America with their heads up their behinds taking care of #1, and these people put their time and risked the wrath of others to do what they knew was right (and they WERE right). ‘Nuff said.
How is his first sentence Swiftboating? He’s just giving you his honest opinion. He is NOT spinning anything .. that’s what Swiftboating means .. defamatory spinning. Pat’s just being frank. That’s different.
You can disagree with his opinion. Probably almost everyone here disagres with his view of Kerry.
But at least Pat said that he deplored the Swiftboating of Kerry.
That’s maybe the first time i’ve ever read anyone who didn’t like Kerry deplore what was done to Kerry. Have you read that elsewhere? I haven’t.
in using the term Swiftboating i equated it with bait and switch, one of their tactics, vague insinuations on his character while (supposedly) offering other goods…
and where were you in the abortion thread today susan? it could have used a Boat load of your comments.
I don’t think that Pat was taking a swipe at Kerry … merely using his feelings about what was done to Kerry in 2004 as a pretext for his lengthier description of his views of what the right is currently doing — in August 2005 — to Hagel.
I stay away from abortion threads. I made that mistake one Sunday on DKos. I have complex feelings that I’ve decided not to expose any longer to political battering.
That I didn’t consider him taking a swipe at Kerry, just finally felt safe enough to discuss the issue, as I had not been willing to face the ‘squad of fire’ at dk when this came up before.
Glad you agree on that, Diane…. what squad of fire at DK when “this came up” … what exactly are you talking about?
Was that during the primaries when even Democrats were attacking Kerry’s war record?
It was before during and after the election. I didn’t find DK until Aug. 2004…Many were opposed to him, and then after the election the rancor was heated. Didn’t feel safe to be a Kerry supporter after the election on the DK site.
read the first paragraph again.
“His behavior in the US after his return from duty in VN eliminated any possibility that I would ever support him for anything.”
The piece starts, the very first paragraph, with the same jingoistic claptrap about John Kerry that the smear machine used 30 plus years ago.
And the point of emphasis is that the very same people who tried to smear Kerry 30 plus years ago are still doing it, and still doing it from within the White House.
If mr. Lang wants to find fault, have him set his sights on the Nixon operatives still in the Republican party.
And remember, the very same cast of players that sold this country a bill of goods and a corrupt policy on Vietnam, have done the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq. The very same people.
The very same people.
The same fvcking idiots.
And the same fvcking idiot policies.
Shock and awe is nothing new. Good morning Iraq.
I am tired of jingoistic claptrap.
after the first sentence.
John Kerry served.
Coming home and helping lift the lid to the lies of an Administration and Department of Defense took more courage than anything Hagel came home and did or did not do.
John Kerry is still fighting that fight.
John Kerry is still serving.
So Hagel no longer knows what the Vietnam War was about? Perhaps he doesn’t recall when Dwight Eisenhower promised the French that the Uited States would protect South Vietnam. Maybe he’s too young to recall Eisenhower’s so-called stand against the Communist North. There was a valid reason for the position — at one point in time. The south was mostly Catholic and the non-Communists in the north fled south when the French bailed out. The south was probably 98% anti Communist when the French left and Eisenhower signed us up.
By the time John Kerry came home, 98% of South Vietnam was Viet Cong or Viet Cong supporters. The enemy, at some point, was no longer the Viet Cong. The enemy became those who tried to tell the truth.
The Nixon Administration, the Plumbers, the Roger Stones, Karl Roves… all of ’em (‘cept Lee Atwater) are still up to their dirty tricks…
So Hagel served. Fine. You can keep Hagel.
I’ll stick with Kerry. Kerry served.
And came home and continued to serve. If his actions at home prevented the death of one more draftee, if his actions at home shortened the war by one minute. Those actions were worth the effort.
i only disagree on one thing…. Atwater is still at it, just from a different location 🙂
That’s very funny, Wilfred. Atwater was a fascinating character .. smart, cunning, immoral. Funny that he let Bush Jr. hang with him. Bush is just immoral.
i had my fill of that type of personality with Roy Cohn, enough for a lifetime in fact.
Just out …
Late to the party again. What an interesting thread. I don’t agree with Pat about kerry doing wrong when he came back from Nam. I think he did the most patriotic thing a soldier could do at that time. he spoke out against a quagmire war. He continued to serve his country for the next thirty years. I think he would have made one hell of a president but in some ways I am very glad that George gets to reap what he has sown. I admire Pat for acknoledging that Swiftboating Kerry was wrong “DEAD WRONG” just like everything else these swines have done. Hagel is no star but right now we need everyone and anyone willing to speak out against this illegal occupation based on lies. Especially if they Republicans. I love it when they eat there own.
Don’t you recognize that yup? He was around in another life working for Goebbels.
It’s this kind of shit that makes me spit tacks whenever I hear the wing-nuts spout their “support the troops” crap. Because this is more proof that they don’t care about the actual troops a bit, and that actual support of people who put their lives on the line is not what they have in mind. Joe Scarborough says Hagel is undermining troop morale. Shows what he knows about what it means to be in a combat situation. Doesn’t it it occur to him that maybe someone who’s actually taken enemy fire might know a little bit more about the real stresses of combat than he does? “Support the troops” means “don’t challenge the tribal orthodoxy” — “don’t threaten the group-think.” Troops, to these people, are nothing but empty symbols. Whenever they’re confronted with the reality that these are flesh and blood human beings who are undergoing a terrifying ordeal, they don’t know what to do. When they come home with their bodies and/or minds broken, and need decent medical care, the cost of actual “support” is suddenly too much. When they come back and have opinions that diverge from the party line, they tear them down for not being good little symbols anymore. They did it to Max Cleland, who left 3 limbs in Vietnam, only to be branded as unpatriotic. They did it to Kerry. Now they’re doing it to Chuck Hagel. These are high profile examples, but there are many more.
That said, Hagel wasn’t comfortable with this war from the outset, and he should have had the courage of his convictions and voted against it. And, as someone else mentioned up-thread, there are some serious questions about his relationship to ES&S. I just needed to get that off my chest.
Maybe I missed something, but when I look at his actions after he returned from duty, I see a person that saw the horrors of the war and was willing to do anything to stop it.
I’m waiting for the photoshopped picture that shows Hagel conspiring with Jane Fonda.
It’s not just that the rabid right is so utterly without scruples or decency, they have no original ideas. I think people are beginning to get over the stunned incredulity of the first few years of Rovian dirty tricks and are seeing that, like the boy emperor, the little plump one also has no clothes.
Oh, ick. What a gross mental picture. Excuse me.
The feelings continue to run high on all aspects of Vietnam. In her recent book, “The Fifth Book of Peace,” Maxine Hong Kingston writes about her work with Vietnam vets. She taught them meditation, they worked with their memories and feelings. At the end of it, they met with some counterparts from Vietnam, literally the soldiers on the other side, and reconciled with them personally.
But, Kingston writes, the American vets she worked with would not forgive the American protestors.
Those of us who lived through those years, no matter what our personal stories, have things we are proud of and things we are ashamed of, and things we’ve learned, and a lot of us have things we can’t get past.
John Kerry was a leader in war and he was a leader against the war. Even though he is a few years older than me, when I saw him in the Up River film, I saw someone who was a lot more mature than I was at the time. He was tested in a way I can’t even imagine.
I didn’t serve with him in Vietnam, but I marched with him in Washington, I supported him and stood with him in 2004, and I’m ready to do it again. When the Roveians say they attack someone’s strength, they were accurate to attack Kerry’s character, service, intelligence and humanity.
I confess that I haven’t felt any urge to join in the glorification of military service that seems to be all the rage on the liberal blogs these days. Frankly, it strikes me as a little too calculated, a little too concerned about not repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam-era anti-war movement. There have been too many discussions about the need for the Democratic Party to ostentatiously cater to the needs of the troops in the name of political gain.
Mind you, I don’t doubt that most of the folks engaging in such discussions and calculations do really care about the poor slobs in Mr. Bush’s meatgrinder, but I’m also quite sure that there is a lot of political opportunism going on, and I don’t like the way it smells.
The other problem for me, personally, is that I don’t consider military service to be in any way noble. It is certainly necessary on occasion, but there’s nothing noble about the mind-boggling mechanized slaughter of human beings that is modern war. Every war is a titanic badge of shame for a human race that likes to think it is above the animals, but by the very fact of permitting wars to happen, has sunk below the animals. The armies of the world, from the democracies to less savory states like China, are swelled by idealistic young people who are swept up by patriotism and any number of erstwhile motives. And were they not, the great wars of history would either never have happened or would have been much smaller affairs, conducted by freebooters and mercenaries.
And that’s really what sticks it for me. Fetishism of military service and political idolatry disguised as patriotism are what make war possible in the first place. Without the motivation of patriotic service, however twisted you might think it is when it’s on the other side, there would have been no World Wars, no Vietnam, no Afghanistan, no Korea. Mechanized warfare put an end to the era of petty mercenary wars fought for booty. Patriotism that extends to a willingness to kill — the willingness to die is entirely beside the point — is like a loaded gun left on the ground in a room full of would-be dictators. The noble, patriotic, self-sacrificing soldier makes it all possible.
And so, Iraq: a war of aggression fought by the premier member of NATO. That’s a really significant statement, if you think about it. To be a member of NATO, or shit, just to be one of the three nuclear powers in NATO — and that includes us, obviously — means that if you are attacked, the range of responses goes all the way up to having artificial suns ignited over your cities or, in other words, the complete extinction of the aggressor.
You may not have noticed this or thought much about it, but the leaders of every other country on earth obviously have: since the development of the atomic bomb and the formation of the NATO alliance, no NATO state has been directly attacked by another state. All wars involving NATO members are optional wars or, as we used to say before we got all mealy-mouthed as a culture, wars of aggression.
Of course, the perspective I am speaking from is this: I consider the only legitimate grounds for war to be self-defense against attacks by a foreign state. I’m even willing to extend it to the defense of allied peoples, or even un-allied defenseless people — the call we didn’t answer in Rwanda. You may feel differently, but it is important that you know you are rejecting a purely defensive rationale for war if you are to a) be honest with yourself, and b) avoid being manipulated by warmongering leaders. And once you have a few hundred — much less several thousand — nuclear weapons, your borders are safe from other states.
So while, yes, I do want the best treatment for our troops we can provide, and yes, I think it’s downright shitty to impugn the personal integrity of folks who, misguided or not, put their lives on the line for a cause — which is where this rant started before I digressed, I’m not willing to follow the contemporary left’s embrace of militarism, nor am I willing to wrap myself in the flag. I say this not because I think anyone does or should give a damn what my personal opinion is, but because there often seems to be too much enthusiasm and not enough thought in the current military cheerleading.
Certainly, too few people seem to be questioning whether patriotism is such a hot idea in the first place. Patriotism is, after all, a sort of ad-hoc regional racism that places the good of one arbitrary group of people over all others, and if transplanted into a better-examined area of life — like gender or ethnicity — would be greeted by the revulsion of all nice minds. And while there are few if any wars fought over gender, practically all wars are started and sustained past all reason by patriotism.
So I ask, is it possible in a practical sense to be loyal to the human race at the same time one heaps one’s patriotic devotion on a single country? It seems to me that it is not. You may reach a different conclusion, but I implore all those who are caught up in the political currents on the left these days to at least give it some thought if you have not done so already.
in a time of almost totla deification of anyone ion a uniform. Thank you.
What if anything did you have to say at the time John Kerry was being smeared?
Did GWB’s actions during the VN war eliminate any possibility that you would support him for anything?
I refuse to feel sorry for Sen. Hagel..this is his party doing the smearing.
and a lot of concerns. However, his service in Vietnam is not one of them. And smearing him for that is reprehensible. Yet that is who controls the GOP today: toadies and lap-attack dogs. Who holds their leash (or not)? George W. Bush.
That anyone after all this time cannot put two and two together to reach four astonishes me and tells you just how effective the Big Lie technique has been for the “Conservative Movement.”
Like others, I too would like to know what you found so reprehensible about Kerry’s behavior after his return from Vietnam.
As one who was quite active in the anti-war movement (and who did not serve: I was 1-A waiting for my notice–which I would have refused and gone to prison–when the lottery came in and gave me a good number), I appreciated the leadership the returned vets gave the movement. We needed them.
Now, I don’t believe that the anti-war movement did stop that war, but I do think it was important that we tried.
SusanHu, you make a comment about people not liking soldiers on college campuses. As a student from 1969 to 1973, I never saw that, though I knew and went to school with a number of vets. Never did I see anyone active in the anti-war movement disparage vets. Maybe there were people elsewhere who did, but it was not the activists. We needed the vets. In fact, they were our leaders, as John Kerry was.
Like you, Pat, I am no fan of John Kerry, but I must admire what he did at that time.
Also, someone said that Kerry spent very little time in Vietnam. Well, it is true, much of his 13 months was spent on a boat off the coast (only for a short while did he command a swift boat). But he saw more action on that swift boat than did all but a few veterans. Soldiers spend very little time in battle. What matters is what they do with that time. Kerry did what he was sent to do–and more. The argument should end there.
As to Hagel, well, he’s certainly able to take care of himself. The right-wing slime machine is full of steam, but it has jumped the tracks. I think it will do more harm to itself than it will to Hagel.
Patrick Lane is a lifer. One does not become an Army Colonel without being a lifer.
The right wing propaganda machine has worked so well that the Vietnam War has been woven into their lies and the truth dispersed into meaninglessness. As portrayed in “Platoon” there was a mute mutiny by grunts in Vietnam in the last years. Lifers took it personally because the revolt was directed at their gung-ho enthusiasm in getting you killed for nothing. In Vietnam John Kerry was a lifer but when he came home he switched to being a grunt and tried to stop their useless deaths.
The sadness of last election is that the all the lies won. John Kerry ran as a Lifer not a grunt.