This was played as straight news…Today Gen. Richard Myers said (paraphrase) anti-war protestors are undermining troop morale in Iraq.
Hello??
This canard is being trotted out yet again. What undermines troop morale is war, (duh) but especially one even many of the troops question the need for. Did the outcome of the American Revolution depend on public opinion in England? (or French support). Many Northerners were sympathetic to the South in our civil war. Did that undermine troop morale?
We who protest this BS war based on a pack of lies and constantly changing rationale are supporting the troops. We want them home alive. We’re also the ones who send donations, phone cards, flak jackets and more to our friends and relatives. We support the troops. We want them home and the insanity stopped.
Myers line made me think of others, mostly from the Vietnam era. Let’s take a trip::
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964
It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.
Ronald Reagan, interview, Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965.
I see light at the end of the tunnel.
Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967
It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
Unidentified U.S. Army major, on decision to bomb Bentre, Vietnam, February 7, 1968.
Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.
Dalton Trumbo, Introduction, Johnny Got His Gun, 1970.
We believe that peace is at hand.
Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972
Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979
I can envision a small cottage somewhere, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends.
Richard Van de Geer, letter to friend before he was killed, May 15, 1975, officially last American to die in Vietnam War, Time, April 15, 1985.
One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight.
Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect, 1995
“Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.”
Max Cleland
“Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.”
Gen William C. Westmoreland
and the best quote by a general:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
Dwight Eisenhower
This war is different. The American public is beginning to get a sense of the truth. There will always be a third who believe the kool aid they drink is truth serum but many Americans are uncomfortable and they are responding to the simple truths. This war was unecessary, the rationale is constantly changing, andreturning troops are telling the truth about how miserable and stupid their tours were. It’s the reason people are responding to a mother’s request. What noble cause? And we ask again, what noble cause?
