No contradiction at all, as I have said numerous times, Diogenes the Cynic.
However, said protest doesn’t in any way require you to throw your medals away.
Throwing medals got people’s attention. If it helped end the war sooner, good for him…and also good for him for hanging onto the hardware.
Wow.
This has to be just about the most tortuous logic, and the most disingenuous partisanship that i’ve seen in a long time.
In case you hadn’t noticed, George W. Bush is not even in Iraq, so leaving is not really an issue for him. And he has in fact left Iraq–about two hours after he flew in to carve a fake turkey in a pathetic publicity stunt. The biggest turkey in that mess hall was the one holding the knife.
And to characterize Kerry as having “left 50,000 of his mates in Viet Nam” is contemptible, especially given your implication that he somehow deserted them. A soldier’s time in Viet Nam was called a Tour of Duty for a reason–it was generally a tour that had a rather specific duration, after which the soldier was generally able to return home. Some soldiers stayed on for additional tours, while others came home for a period, and then went back to do second or third tours.
Your juxtaposition of the US military “fighting and dying for the freedom of the Vietnamese people” while Kerry “was safe in the states” implies that he was some sort of coward and traitor, and that he wasn’t a part of the military brotherhood. This is one of the most asinine things i’ve seen in a long time.
The issue of whether or not Kerry over-emphasizes his military service is not even relevant to your post. It is certainly possible to make a case that he does. But to question the commitment and the value of Kerry’s military service, and to compare it unfavourably to George Bush’s position on Iraq, demonstrates an astounding level of hubris or ignorance. I’m not sure which of those options would be more surprising in your case. Probably neither.
Ok, that’s what baffled me when he was on Good Morning America this morning (or maybe it was a tape?) defending himself against an old tape they found in which he said (or so the interviewer claimed, I wasn’t paying attention yet) that he said he did throw his metals: He spent almost all of the interview arguing that he threw his ribbons but he did not throw his metals. They were someone else’s metals, and he threw them for them. They discussed it, and he decided not to throw his metals. He’d never throw his metals, just his ribbons…but the very last thing he said was “they’re the same thing.” If they’re the same thing why protest you threw one not the other? 
Yep, elfkin477. He pretty much admitted that his position made little logical sense.
And Kerry squandered another opportunity to end the controversy for good.
Great Debate rules or no Great Debate rules, this comment represents as irrational, as fraudulent, as disingenuous a statement as I have seen on these boards for a long time. By this standard each one of the more than a million young men who served in Vietnam, and the millions more who were in one branch of the service or another during the period from 1965 to 1975 were cowards who abandon their comrades. All I can figure is that the poster whose name I will not repeat searched his mind to find as inflammatory, as unfair, as partisan a remark as the dark pit of human malice could conceive and just flung it out there to rot and fester in the light of day. Any thinking person, any person who lived through those times, will treat the comment with the disdain and contempt it deserves. I make no public judgment about what is due the comment’s author.
Give me the thoughts and opinions of men who have led men in combat and who have followed and who have wrapped their soldiers’s bodies in there own ponchos to wait for the evacuation flight. Spare me the false bravado and phony patriotism of men who chose to evade their duty and now presume to criticize men who did their duty while fearing the cause they served was wrong. I’ve had enough of John Wayne-ism around here; I want to see some Audy Murphy-ism.
I think that Kerry just made a personal distinction between what he wanted to keep and what he wanted to sacrifice. While the ribbons and the medals are the same award from an official standpoint, that doesn’t mean that an individual is not allowed to value them differently from a personal standpoint. The ribbons, as part of the official dress uniform, may be seen as more expendable than the physical medals themselves. I think it’s sophist to insist that an individual soldier must hold the same personal value for both items just because the military does.
And really, Milum, is it your contention that any soldier who returns home after serving his tour of duty is “abandoning” the soldiers still in the field? Really? You think that?
(And what’s wrong with courting hippie chicks…or showing off medals, for that matter? If you can’t use your medals to get laid, then what is this world coming to?)
The objects themselves are null, you can buy military medals in pawn shops, it makes no real difference which of these objects he threw, whose they were, or whether or not they are precisely the same medals he was handed. If he was awarded the Silver Whatthefuck with a whatsit cluster, he is entitled to display any representation of same up to and including press releases that say “John Kerry won a Silver Whatzit”.
Kerry’s antiwar theater was dynamite. It hit like a ton of bricks. When 'Nam vets started marching, the impact was amazing. Kerrys polical statement was almost entirely drama, after all, they are just shiny objects. But it worked. And it worked because it was true, he had earned those medals.
Now, perhaps he wants to exploit those same credentials for another political end, i.e., his election, or to impress visitors to his office. Perhaps it is some sly, post-modernist bit of whimsy. It makes not the slightest. What he earned is his to do with as he pleases.
If this political posturing is to be inflated into something so grand as “hypocrisy!” gasped in horror, it needs more gravity. It was just political theater, then and now, no more sordid than a stirring speech. (Indeed, that is more precisely what it was). Is Kerry a winsome child, innocent of the wiles of political symbolism? Of course not, no virgin is ever elected Queen of the Harlots. He is willing to use the tools at hand, if he wasn’t, I would commend his sterling character and look for a candidate who is willing for fight for it like it matters.
See, all of that, and not even one mention of GeeDubya valiantly defending the skies above Amarillo from Viet Cong aircraft. Ain’t you proud?
You sure you haven’t got 'em mixed up with the Amish?
Ever consider that Kerry might welcome the “controversy” as justification for keeping Bush’s record in the spotlight?
Knock yourself out. 
No. I don’t think he welcomes it at all.
If he welcomed it, he wouldn’t take such pains to distinguish between medals and ribbons, even though they are the same thing.
And he wouldn’t insist at every turn that they were other peoples medals, which is irrelevant, since he threw his own ribbons too.
And he wouldn’t give an angry, disjointed interview to Charlie Gibson on “Good Morning America” if he welcomed this.
The medal throwing has dogged him his entire political life. And now, with him courting veterans at every campaign stop, it haunts him still.
This is the stupidest subject people can discuss.
Even if Kerry is “guilty” of the worst allegations in this case, and he is an asshole, that won’t stop people who want to vote for him, because, compared to this medal “controversy”, what GWB has done is much worse (Iraq, WMDs, etc), making him a much bigger asshole.
So what is this “controversy” supposed to accomplish? It’s just another example of the character assassination machine that is the Republican party.
A couple more things:
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You have to admire the chutzpah of the Bush people for bringing this up since their guy did not fight to defend the US, and did not even fullfill the half-ass job he used to avoid going to war.
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If anyone actually changes their mind over whom to vote for in November based on this, then they are morons, and Bush can have the votes of the morons. If this results in him getting re-elected (and I think he will get re-elected), then this country gets what it deserves. Until they start teaching critical thinking in US schools to enable people to distinguish between real issues vs garbage like this “controversy”, there is not much hope.
I don’t think this is an issue that’ll make or break an election. I have said as much in this thread.
However, Kerry’s treatment of the medals is an important one to a lot of people, including me, for the reasons I expressed some pages ago.
And, far from it being an old story, it is very much a current one. Because Kerry cannot, in interviews conducted yesterday, give clear answers about how he can justify throwing medals in 1971 and being proud of them today. The blatant hypocrisy is of very recent vintage.
I’m trying to understand your mindset on this and I confess it boogles me…so let’s try this.
When I was a teenager my father left…in a rage I tore up all of the photos of the two of us together. 30 years and several house moves later, i find a few torn photos in a junk box. I taped them back together and placed them on the mantle with the rest of the family photos.
My wife knows that i don’t like my father and we still don’t really get along. I’ve given no real reason as I why I have done this…just that I wanted to.
Am I a hypocrite?
Oh, piffle! He earned the right to make his political statement, because he earned the medals. Further, he earned the right to be proud at whatever point in time he chooses. There is no hypocrisy involved, despite strenuous efforts. He can do whatever he wants with those medals, or any symbol of those medals, they are his!
Just as GeeDbya is entirely free to display his Rear Echelon Mother Fucker Medallion, and Dick Cheney to display his Different Priorities Rationale Ribbon. Should they be so moved, of course. Perhaps modesty forbids.
Sure. Just as he has a right to with his medals as he pleases, people have a right to judge him on that, as they please.
P.S. It’s snowing. April the 27th, Year of Our Lord 2004, and it is fucking snowing.
Bush’s fault. Kyoto Accords. Hey, we tried to warn you…
I wouldn’t accuse you of being one, holmes.
But follow along with me here, and you might see where I’m coming from.
John Kerry in 1971 decided that the war in Southeast Asia was an immoral one, and that the United States tarnished itself as a nation by its involvement. To punctuate this statement, he, along with others, threw his medals at the Capitol Building in a protest. This made him famous. It was the start of his political career.
In doing so, he was taking the thanks of a grateful nation in the form of those medals and throwing it back at Congress in protest. It was a very powerful political statement.
However, many years later, union officials were nervous about supporting Kerry in his Senate run because he had thrown the medals in protest. Such things tend to turn off union rank-and-file members. Kerry met with the union officials, assured them that he had thrown only ribbons and other people’s medals, and showed them his own medals framed in a shadow box.
Now, running for President, Kerry has copies of his medal citations on his website. He is very proud of his medals. And that’s fine, except that he threw the medals back in 1971, and people haven’t forgotten that he did so.
He is, in essence, trying to have it both ways here, simultaneously wearing his medals in pride and throwing them in protest. All I’m saying is that for him to display the medals in pride now, a change had to have occurred in him. We should all know what it is, since, after all, he is running for President.
The merest suggestion of an explanation, from Charlie Gibson yesterday, was enough to send Kerry into a fit, so I don’t know if we’ll ever be let into the workings of his mind on this issue.
Touche’.
Seriously, WHO CARES about “the workings of his mind on this issue”?
If he came out and said: “I did it because of <insert reason here>”
what in the world would that change? NOTHING.
We would still be in a mess in Iraq, we would still have the unemployment we have, so what is the friggin point?