Er… So what. Japan has a long tradition of aping the west and particularly America, Vietnam doesn’t have the same tradition and it’s major European influence is from France, where Christmas isn’t remotely that big a deal.
So yes, I find the idea of a bunch of drunken Bhuddist soldiers trying to shoot up Kerry during his non-exist any mission to Cambodia in December of 1968 where he heard President Nixon give a Christmas address denying the US was in Cambodia quite ludicrous as would anyone aware that Nixon wasn’t even President at that time.
Why else do you think the Kerry camp has fled from the story.
I can imagine among some of the Protestant converts(who were non-existent back then) it might be, but amongst the overwhelming majority of the soldiers that were Bhuddist and the few that were French-influenced Roman Catholics?
It’s been years since I read Buttinger(sp) but I thought I remember him saying something completely different.
How you get “racist” and “Buddhist soldiers” out of Kerry’s claims would be interesting. After 38 years of the current regime over a united country, Buddhists still only outnumber Catholics at a ratio of about 3:2. The numbers for both groups were quite a bit higher in the early 1970s and an assumption that they were (almost?) “all” Buddhist is not supportable.
Are you saying Catholics make up 40% of the population of Vietnam(3:2) or did I misunderstand you?
Catholics made up roughly 10% of the population of South Vietnam(including many who’d fled the North) but most fled and/or were expelled from Vietnam. In fact I believe almost 40% of the initial wave of Vietnamese immigrants to the US were Catholic.
They were a wealthy elite who were heavily over represented amongst the officers and particularly amongst officers at the rank of Colonel and above but heavily underrepresented amongst the enlisted soldiers who were overwhelmingly Bhuddists.
Well, OK, John, you tell me why you think he was invited to testify. Were they surprised to discover that Kerry was a public spokesman for the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War? Maybe they thought they were getting a different John Kerry? Were they expecting a lengthy discourse on what a splendid little war it all was? Kerry tricked them, is that it?
Do they frequently do that, invite witnesses to speak without having any idea what they are going to say? I’m just going to guess, here, go wait out on a limb and suggest they do that about as often as a lawyer asks a question he does not know the answer to.
But, OK, I’m listening, you tell me why he was there.
You and I seem to be the only participants in this thread interested in whether the Swiftboat campaign affected the election. I think it did; that’s why the affair seems so sad to me, and makes such a mockery of American politics.
Your analysis is flawed in several ways, watchwolf49. Just for starters, unless you think the reactions to Swiftboat would vary greatly state-by-state, it’s simplest and best to focus on popular vote, not electoral. Also, you seem to assume that the only reason 2000 Demo voters would switch to GOP for 2004, or vice versa, was Swiftboat. Instead, Iraq blunders, unemployment, Nader not running (all three issues favoring Kerry) were more important.
You were asked for a cite. All you offered was snark. At least Elvis carried your water and finally offered the cite that you were asked about.
I don’t know why he was invited to testify. That’s why I asked you to back up your assertion. This is not complicated. We’re not here to guess. All you had to do was give us a cite, which you failed to do. And it’s not like this current events that we should all know about. We’re talking about events that happened 40 years ago.
John, has it really not yet occurred to you how pointless and frivolous your demand for a cite was? How deserving of nothing but snark in response? How distracting and irrelevant to the thread topic, or anything reasonably derived from it? No?
The cite was asked by me and I specified it when I made it. Cite Congress asked Kerry for heresay evidence. It’s not a pointless demand. His behavior in the 70’s did not go over well with many people serving in the military. He was looked at with all the love given Jane Fonda and it came back to haunt him in his run for President.
Now you may not like the opinion of those veterans but it is not up for debate. This is how they felt and time didn’t change those feelings. Don’t like it, too bad. Kerry chose to wrap himself up in his military service and got it shoved up his ass for his efforts.
You certainly did not read what I posted. The current ratio is 3:2, that is, a bit over 9% Buddhist to a bit over 6% Catholic. Now, if you believe that Catholics only lost 4% of their membership over the last forty years while Buddhists lost some enormously much higher percent of their membership, that is your privilege, but even then, (and even with the tendency of the Catholics to have gravitated to the officer corps, a point with which I would agree was probable given the fact of the U.S. backed Catholic Diem regime), your assertion that Kerry’s claims on this topic were a “lie” rest on a rather huge number of assumptions on your part.
Ok, I see. I did read what you posted, I merely misunderstood it. Sorry for that.
Yes, perhaps only 9% of all Vietnamese nowadays see themselves as Buddhists, probably a much, much higher percentage back then saw themselves as either Buddhists, Hoa Hao, or Cao Dai, under the South Vietnamese government which was not communist then do now.
The point being that Christians were a tiny minority that was highly under represented amongst the enlisted ranks of the ARVN(South Vietnamese Army) and while it’s certainly theoretically possible to run into a unit made up entirely of drunken Christians strikes me as extremely unlikely.
I’d have found him running into a squad of Navy SEALS made up entirely of Latinos vastly more likely.
Here’s what he said btw.
He also of course insisted that he was inside Cambodia over Christmas in 1968 listening to President Nixon deny the US presence there which is a bit difficult to believe since Nixon never gave such an address till he was President.
Nevertheless, despite being “seared” into him, this shootout with the Khmer Rouge in Christmas 1968 doesn’t seem to have happened and most of his biographers and he himself seem to have backed off from such a claim.
Also, fwiw, you’re correct that referring to this as a “lie” was probably far too strong a word. It’s more like confabulation and the way memories of events change.
I was seriously injured in a car accident when I was 8. I have told of or written of the accident on multiple occasions and I’ve had the chance to compare written accounts from middle school, high school, and college, and each contained significant differences.
Anyway, it certainly didn’t stop me from voting for him and donating money to him.
Asking for a cite never deserves snark in this forum. It’s the essence of honest debating. If it bothers you to be asked for cite, then you shouldn’t post here.
OK, now I see the problem. I thought you were asking for a cite that he was invited, but you were asking for a cite that he was invited to discuss what he discussed. Nonetheless, I think that is part of the set of things that are bleeding obvious. It is possible, of course, the Kerry sandbagged the naive and unsuspecting Congressgits, and they were utterly surprised to hear what he was intent on discussing, and once he began, they were trapped, caught in a prison of their own devise.
I find it hard to believe they had no good idea of what they were going to hear, what to expect from Kerry. Perhaps they were even surprised to hear any such wretched stories, perhaps it was news to them, something they had never expected to hear.
In which case, fuck 'em! They should have gotten a three pound Q tip and clean the shit out of their ears and pay some attention! They never heard anything about any of this? So, if he walked in there and told them things that shocked and horrified them, if they were astonished, then good for him! Men in positions of power like them have no privilege to be ill-informed.
Like that English guy said on his Facebook page, all evil requires to win is for good men to be silent. Kerry spoke truth to power and was willing to risk what he held most dear: his ambition.
I think it did; that’s why the affair seems so sad to me, and makes such a mockery of American politics.