John Kerry and medal throwing.

Great Debates
221

KERRY RESPONDS!

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash5.htm

I am dumbfounded at this. He could have put this to bed today. But now, the controversy will continue.

First off, Kerry, instead of understanding why many Americans have legitimate questions about this, especially in light of contradictory statements from him, was extremely defensive. He also accused this whole thing as being manufactured by his political opponents, instead of stemming from his own actions. Not a good start, by any means.

He admitted that ribbons and medals are equivalent. He admitted to throwing his own ribbons. But he seems to think that this means he didn’t throw his medals, even though this makes no logical sense. Charlie Gibson appeared dumbfounded by this logical breakdown himself.

I have said before, I have no problem with John Kerry protesting the war. I don’t even have a problem with him throwing his medals, if he was truly disgusted with his government at the time.

I do have a problem with the medals being used as a campaign item now, though, when they were thrown on the ground in 1971. I think if a reappraisal of the medals has been made in these years, John Kerry needs to let us all in on it, since he’s asking for our votes.

This most recent little dustup in the controversy just deepens the mystery. Why won’t Kerry clarify his position? Why is it so complicated? As it stands now, the medals are simultaneously mud-covered and sanctified, to appeal to war protesters and veterns at the VFW hall alike.

Well, I am one. And this “position” infuriates me, because it’s only one a calculating hypocrite would take.

222

Exactly which position infuriates you, Mr. Moto? I’m still baffled as to why any veteran would be more concerned about Kerry throwing his medals than about Bush lying about dodging his dodge of the draft. I would think any veteran would feel more kinship with someone that actually faced enemy fire than with someone that took the easy way out.

223

Well, you’ve been participating in this thread for some pages now. You know why Kerry’s actions regarding the medals are imporetant to me.

I have participated in threads about Bush. Check them out if you want my opinion about him.

BobLibDem, if you don’t care to discuss the medal issue, and you don’t seem to want to, don’t post here. There are plenty more Bush vs. Kerry threads on the board. I’d like to keep the discussion here to the topic at hand.

224

Kerry, in the interview:

Fox News is reporting that Kerry had said that he would refrain from raising that issue. Is that report accurate?

225

But ** Mr. Moto**, that’s the problem you don’t seem to get. Saying Kerry is a whatever you think he is, has to be compared to something in order to explain to people why you think he’s doesn’t have the right to reclaim metals, or he’s a hypocrite or whatever you think he is.

You keep saying that if he wants the votes of the American people he needs to clarify his position, yet you refuse to explain why Bush’s favor pulling makes him better. I shouldn’t have search for your other threads or posts on this. You’re[b/] the one making the choices Kerry did as a vet, the issue in this thread. The least you can do, is explain here and now, why Bush who choose not to serve is somehow a better person, than Kerry who served, got angry, tossed his metals in the mud, and them reclaimed them. Kerry seemed to manage to separate in his mind the government that issued the metals and ** men that died for them.

A grey area to be sure, but life isn’t always black and white.

I have to be honest to you, as a outsider looking in…you’re not making much sense. It seems you’re unable to see the nuances here…it’s all black and white…which considering how the Vietnam era was any but; it’s a strange position to hold.

226

holmes, the Vietnam and Vietnam era veterans I know and work with, to a man, are not impressed with John Kerry’s act of medal throwing.

I have said, all along in this thread (which by now is very long, and quite old) that all I’m after from John Kerry is an explanation of just exactly how he feels he can take pride in the medals after he threw them on the ground thirty years ago.

If he says in response to that that throwing the medals thirty years ago was a mistake, I’d accept that and move on. I’m certainly not closed to the possibility of a changed mind. I see all kinds of “nuances”.

After a certain point, though, nuance turns into hypocrisy. The medals are the thanks of a grateful nation, and John Kerry rejected them in 1971. He is proud of them today, but has not apologized or rejected the medal throwing then.

As to George W. Bush, sure, he is no war hero. Neither is my father, who was an army reservist during the Vietnam war. Frankly, I’m no hero either. I was a successful Navy enlisted sailor, and was decorated for superior service, but I have never seen combat.

None of us have ever thrown our decorations at the Capitol Building and felt the need to explain it later, though. That’s a big difference between us.

227

Ah…I get it. Kerry has to admit it was a mistake. That his single defining moment as an American was a mistake…not because it cost the lives of other people, but because it offends.

It doesn’t matter to you that the act, as several Vietnam era poster have said, helped showed the country that the protesters weren’t all draft-dodgers and dopers and perhaps reduced the level of anger between and to the protesters and soldiers. No, that’s not worth the price of dirt on metals.

What’s important are the metals and what honor you think they represent from a “grateful” nation. A grateful nation that didn’t really understand what Vietnam was doing the country…

Funny, I thought an important part of being an American is willing toss away the **trappings of America ** in order to ensure that the Spirit of America survives. I guess Flags, ribbons and pieces of tin are really what honor is about…i thought it was courage to stand for one’s convictions…silly me.

So what you’re saying is:
Kerry disgraced the nation by tossing his metals away. It’s irrelevant WHY he did it…only that he did it. In doing so, he no longer has the right to claim those metals…even if he was protesting the Government and NOT the American people and his comrades who he honours and why he values them today.

Unless he apologizes for the first act, he’ll never be right with you. Because he can’t disgrace something for what it represents and honour it for something else…even 30 years later. All that matters is the first act.

Is that your point?

Geez, Mr. Moto I didn’t realize your grandfather called in favors to keep your Dad out of combat and your father did the same for you…nothing wrong with that of course, I mean what’s the point of having power if you can’t use it…right?

I thought you were a working stiff.

228

holmes, that was one fine post. I salute you. You’re doing a better job than I am, so I’ll sit back and watch you volley with Mr. Moto for a bit.

Mr. Moto, I haven’t tallied the votes in this posts but I’m pretty certain that you’re in the distinct minority. I would even wager that you’re in the minority among veterans. Have you considered that perhaps it just isn’t the big hairy issue that you make it out to be? I’m trying really hard to see your point but to be quite honest it seems much ado about very little.

229

Oh, so now Moto gets to say it’s mean whatever Moto says it means to be most convienient in Moto’s agenda of Kerry bashing, other explanations and interpretations be damned.

So you didn’t like Kerry’s making theater out of his medals to sincerely protest the war. Well, I don’t like you making insincere theater out of SDMB threads. It’s a small world.

230

No, holmes, I’m fine with his gesture. If you read this whole thread, you’ll see that I’ve said as much.

I can accept that a veteran, home from an unpopular war, can be so fed up that he throws his medals in a protest. And I can appreciate the power of that image.

However, for that same veteran to frame those medals in a place of honor in his Senate offices, or note the citations prominently in his run for the Presidency, is hypocritical. There can be no other word for it.

He’s rejecting the awards when it’s politically advantageous to do so, and embracing them when its advantageous to do so. And when talking with Charlie Gibson, he’s trying to do both at the same time, and getting quite flabbergasted.

Why do you think this is in the news at all? Why do you think Kerry was so angry in the Gibson interview? I’m not the only voter in America interested in Kerry’s treatment of these national symbols, not by a long shot. And Kerry knows this.

231

Somehow I doubt that flinging a Good Conduct Ribbon or the “Green Weenie” would make much of an impression.

What we have here is a political establishment that is dependent on getting its political agenda (what’s good for big money, big energy and big armaments is good for the country) implemented on the continuation in office of the present President. One of the obstacles to doing that is that it is difficult to pass the President off as a hero on a horse when he avoided real military service when his service could have been used – after all a congressman’s son’s could stop a bullet as well as anyone else – while his opponent did honorably and valiantly serve in circumstances that, with a little less luck, might well have gotten his name on the wall at the memorial in DC.

The obvious political answer to that dilemma is to make the opponent’s service seem less valiant and to depreciate his service. The fact remains that Bronze and Silver Stars are not given out like penny candy and it is very hard to make the President’s service look like anything but a slightly defensible evasion of duty.

The situation is made all the more difficult by the fact that the cabal that surrounds the President has a record of service during those divisive times even more tawdry than the President’s. It is incongruous to wrap your self in the flag as our President has done if, back when your time came to rise up and follow that flag across the field and into the fire of the guns, you found something more interesting to do in the rear. This little fight has nothing to do with awards and decorations and everything to do with reviving the old ghosts of that ill-advised and ill-conducted war for the partisan benefit of people who seek to be rewarded for getting my country into a new ill-advised and ill-conducted war.

232

Right, so Kerry is forever the Kerry of 1971. According to you, he should have left the metals in the dirt…forever stuck in 1971 or admit that it was a mistake to do so or keep them in a shoe box in the basement.

Do we KNOW that he pulled out the medals when he ran or were they always in the Senate Office…secondly that still doesn’t mean he can’t evolve and value the medals…even if he’s running for prez.

So you’re saying that Kerry was playing the Game in 1971 and not sincere? I could have sworn you said, “I’m fine with his gesture. If you read this whole thread, you’ll see that I’ve said as much…” Well what was he 1971, sincere or not?

You know the answer to take, unfortunately I don’t think you’ll ever own up to it.

233

I’d rather not speculate, guess or presume.

There’s a disconnect between how the medals were treated in 1971 and how they’re treated now. Given the circumstances, all I have ever said is that an explanation is warranted.

Unfortunately, any statement Kerry makes on the subject makes him look like more of a self-serving hypocrite, not less. I refer readers to the Gibson interview for proof of that.

234

Just read a web news report which included a statement by Senator Kerry that I paraphrase as: This is a contest between John Kerry who left no man behind and George Bush who just left. That to my view is a very telling comment.

235

I haven’t jumped in because I didn’t have anything new to add to Mr Moto’s position, but seeing as how Bob wants to see a show of hands - I’m raising mine. Please note: I’m not thinking (or am concerned) that I’m taking a stand with the majority on this board. Just acknowledging my view.

While the medals themselves are not a huge issue with me, Kerry trying to use them for his political advantage at both ends of the spectrum is. Just another example of a man who will do and say anything for a vote, but mean nothing.

236

Spavined Gelding :

Well now Gelding, our President George W Bush has yet to leave Iraq. May God bless him.
But if memory serves John Kerry left 50,000 of his mates in Viet Nam fighting and dying for the freedom of the Vietnamese people while he was safe in the states testifing before Congress about the atrocities that he claimed his brothers-in-arms who were still in Vietnam were committing daily while he sat around and acted cool and courted air-brained hippie chicks and showed them his three purple metals.

What a guy.

237

This is still a non-issue, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t give a rat’s ass if he threw his medals or didn’t throw his medals or threw some of his medals or wiped his ass with his ribbons. What does any of this have to do with either the integrity of his military service or his ability to be POTUS?

He mad a symbolic statement with the ribbons but kept the medals. That sounds like a perfectly sensible way to have handled that demonstration, IMO.

The bottom line is that Kerry is still a war hero and Bush is still a war-dodging hypocrite who used family connections to avoid Vietnam but who has no compunctions now about sending kids to die for no reason. This Kerry thing is just a crass and desperate attempt to diminish Kerry’s military cred in a race against against a guy who has none.

238

All this Kerry bashing just shows whta frauds so many conservatives are when it comes to this military thing. If any rebublican was so much as a cook in a base cafeteria they turm him into fucking Audie Murphy. When they come across an opponent who is a legitimate war hero, they do everything they can to smear his service record and even his patriotism. If Bob Dole’s record had been dissected and sneered at the way Kerry’s has been, the Pubs would have decried the other side non-stop.

Hypocrites.

Your president ran away while your opponent went and fought. Deal with it.

239

The republicans weren’t the ones that brought up Kerry’s military record, he did that himself because it now suits his cause and he was hoping it would bring in a few more votes.

As I stated before, I don’t care about him making a protest statement with his medals, ribbons, buttons, whatever. However, if you are going to do that then you need to justify your change of stance if you are going to re-decorate yourself with them in the future.

240

What change of stance? He opposed the war but he was proud of his service. What’s the contradiction?