A-HA! I have caught YOU in a lie! That article was NOT written by anyone named Roger Thornhill but by somebody with an EVEN COOLER NAME!
(signed)
drop(no, it’s not a pseudonym, it’s my real name)zone
(After the Aldebaran incident anybody who wants to know more about this will have to track it down themselves.)
I’m on record as to not taking a position wrt Bush and Kerry, and hopeful of a Clinton canditacy in 2008, but the more I hear about Kerry, the more he disgusts me. You liberals think you’ve got an ally? Bullshit ! all you’ve got here is a self serving POLITICIAN whose shown his stripes by denigrating his peers when it was popular. His flip flops clearly respond to media assessments of the mood of the country. If god forbid he is elected, I sincerely fear for the future of all humanity. This man is a LIAR to serve his OWN interests.
The Carter years were a result of the Nixon presidency. God forbid you Americans are going to repeat this bullshit again just because you are LEGITIMATELY pissed off at Bush.
Og give me strength! First off, it was not “denigrating his peers”. He can rightly claim his peers as men who would be shocked and horrified at such disgraceful behavior. Would you suggest that he remain silent, simply because the men who committed these foul deeds wore the same uniform as he? Would you?
Secondly, by no stretch of the imagination was Kerry aligning himself with a popular cause. The anti-war movement was never popular, even when we had proved our case beyond any doubt. As far as Kerry could have possibly known, he was sacrificing his political career to speak truth to power. If there is a better recommendation, I’d like to hear it.
Oh, C’mon elucidator, it is the very veterans who allegedly perpetrated the disgraceful behaviour that Kerry refered to. Oh yes sure, Nixon made them do it. Never mind that Nixon wasn’t the president at the time.
Are you fucking suggesting that young American drafteees actually performed these dastardly deeds as a matter of couse as Kerry suggested? Fuck! You telling me that the boys I grew up with could do such a thing. I grew up with some assholes thats for sure, but cutting off peoples exrtremities is way beyond the norm. If you want to believe that bullshit, go ahead but pray tell me how many people had their extremities cut off by young men (who weren’t doctors) within the continental United States in the last 40 years.
Are you kidding me? As a young man during that time, I was fully aware that to oppose the war was cool. If you supported the war you had to get your validation from the “establishment”
OK, sorry, maybe I’m speaking out of turn here, but I believe a lot of people said the same thing about Pvt. Lynndie England. YMMV.
Are you kidding me? “Cool”? If I recall correctly, so were corduroy bell-bottoms, man-perms, and brown acid. Doesn’t necessarily mean it was popular. Just because the majority of young men and women at the time thought opposing the war was “cool” doesn’t mean that the majority of Americans did. And you could argue that not even a majority of people “your age” thought it was cool, either.
That’s exactly what is being suggested. Ever heard of mob mentality? Do you think that the people involved in My Lai grew up shooting unarmed people? War is the ultimate job stress. My initial reaction every time our base was rocketed or some of my friends were killed or wounded was rage. I would have cheerfully killed the first person that looked sideways at me. Try living the life before making assumptions out of your ass.
Glad you made it back, Chef.
One thing about this gives me pause to wonder. As I’ve said, I knew a lot of anti-war 'Nam vets. Point of fact, didn’t know any other. So I wonder if that has given me an inaccurate slant. Clearly, these Swiftie guys represent some proportion of the 'Nam vets, but how many? From my own perspective, and the perspective of the men I knew, I find it impossible to comprehend how anyone could come away with any other view but loathing and horror.
Perhaps its a matter of when they were there, perhaps in '68 or '69, there was still some hope of “victory”. (I saw The Green Berets a couple weeks ago, astounded to be reminded what a masterpiece of propaganda it was…)
The Swifties number in the hundreds, Veterans for Kerry in the thousands, Veterans Against Kerry in thousands as well. Is there any way we can get a rough approximation of the numbers? Surely some men came back with a sense of proud accomplishment, and others “shot at and missed, shit on and hit.”
And how many simply don’t want to think about it, ever again, for as long as they live?
I think you’re being naive.
Here’s Major Gordon Livingstone testifying before the Vietnam War Crimes hearings in 1971:
“In other words, the system is so large and so well organized that even an individual who finds what is happening to be morally repugnant in some way is led to question his own values. This is true of anybody in a pathological association environment. The question always raises, am I crazy or is what’s going on here crazy? When it is so large and so we organized as it is in Vietnam, it is very hard for an individual to assert himself.”
http://members.aol.com/warlibrary/vwch1.htm
It’s well-documented that some U.S. troops committed atrocities during the Vietnam War. War does that to people, even “good wars” like WWII.
(For example, here’s a link to a photo printed in Life magazine during WWII. It shows a young lady admiring a souvenir Jap skull collected by her boyfriend in the Pacific.)
The real tragedy in Vietnam was that given the guerrilla nature of the conflict many soldiers began to regard the Vietnamese people themselves, not the Viet Cong, as their enemy. Since it was obvious from the beginning to the planners of the war that winning Vietnam required winning the “hearts and minds” of its people, this was a disaster.
While top government officials maintained the fiction that American soldiers were fighting to free the Vietnamese people from the communists, many of the men on the ground were driven to adopt a stance of total war against the countryside, burning villages, taking part in “free fire zones” and so on. It’s not that American soldiers were monsters – they were put an an unwinnable situation by their government and as a result drifted into using tactics that undermined the larger goals of the war.
Despite what you might have learned from the know-nothing chatterers on the right, the congressional hearings in the early 1970’s were about something more serious than hippies smearing vets. They were about acknowledging the failure of an entire nation-building strategy. The war atrocities, particularly those against civilians, were evidence of that strategic failure.
As we embark on another dubious nation-building experiment in Iraq it’s important that we go into battle with our eyes wide open – not blinkered by politically correct ideology.
Milgram wept.
Come back to me when evidence comes out that she cut off Iraqi exremities.
I can’t help but notice that you actually didn’t. Was that becuase you were brought up better than your comrades?
Hey look guys, I’m not ignoring Calley. But I am challenging the impression left by your proposed CiC that as a rule young Americans left their morals behind once they entered Vietnam.
I would hardly tell you, a complete stranger to me, what I did or didn’t do in those situations. I can tell you that if you feel that you have a license to kill or maim, it is likely that you may. Abu Graib is a prime example of humans let off the moral leash.
You could have saved yourself a lot of typing and just left it at “He’s a politician.”
That’s the one thing that always amazes me about the right wing. You guys actually believe in the people you vote for. How do you do it?
Oh, shit! And here I was hoping that no one had even heard of that parochial little journal, let alone read it.
(muttering) Dude’s got like the coolest Welsh name AND lives in Hong Kong while I’m stuck with a generic Merkin name and live in suburban Chicago. Does that seem right to you?
Can I assume this quote had something to do with your choice of a username?
Yeah, I’m continuing my hijack. grienspace totally lost me when he said that Kerry’s testimony was a GOOD and POPULAR political move in 1971. Nope, it was seen as political suicide back then. Telling hard truths is rarely a good idea if you wanna grow up and be a politician. And fighting the War wasn’t cool. It was social suicide that didn’t even get me laid.
Dropzone, and here’s me in Hong Kong dreaming of life in the city that gave the world 1968.
‘In the world of advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie. There’s only expedient exaggeration.’
That’s a line from a film, isn’t it?
Give it a rest already. Bush admits that Kerry has the stronger war record and that serving in Vietnam was more admirable than his (GW’s) service was. GW’s division wasn’t called up for active duty or he would/could have went too.
Even more so, you’d think that those folks attacking Kerry’s Vietnam record would give it a rest, seeing as how even Bush admits his record is inferior. But that’s not going to happen, is it?
Bah! Bah, indeed! Don’t we have a rule that if you take your name from a movie character you must memorize the entire script of said movie? No? Otherwise I’d have to skydive in order to have a name from the world of parachuting? Well, that’ll never happen so I’ll take back one of my bahs. But only one.
How old were you in 1971? Old enough to get laid ? If you read the testimony that Kerry gave, you’ll note the applause he and the anti-war statements get throughout . For examples the applause following the following quotes.
You’ll find several more instances in that particular session with Kerry generating applause. Sort of like Arnold in front of Republicans. You can’t tell me that this young man wasn’t laying the foundations for a successful political career.
At Virginia Postrels site ( http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/001273.html ) she has a letter from a reader hypothesizing that Kerry may have been in Cambodia on Tet (feb 17), 1969 rather than Christmas 1968, which would jive with pretty much the rest of his story (holiday, ARVN’s shooting celebratory bullets, substantial activity on the border, etc.). Purely hypothetical, but hardly implausible. YMMV
I had actually thought that the only dispute remaining about Kerry in Cambodia was one of the date - Christmas '68 seeming unlikely given what else we think we know.