I'm glad the video did not play on my Windows
media player, but I did listen to the audio. It's been some time since I listened to stories such as these. Of the guys I know who were over there, about
half are for Kerry and half for Bush. I've got to give them all the benefit of the doubt since they were there and earned the right to an opinion more than I have. We are still divided over this and the answers do not come easily or painlessly and may only exist in the mind of God.


caritas,

mm <*)))))><

Michael:

From Vet contacts I've had, I'm inclined to believe that some atrocities did occur, which seems to be the case in every war. Not to justify it, but the conditions giving rise to these regrets just can't be rationalized by those of us who weren't exposed to this level of grim reality. I don't think war itself should be romanticized, but without doing so it's still possible to respect the terrible experience Vets undergo, and, IMO, we should be focusing more on the dilemma we put them in than trying to draw solid moral lines of simplistic judgement, as did/do Kerry and his ilk. Their anger should be mostly at the politicians, not the troops; but then, that wouldn't have been good for Kerry's career.

I don't think war itself should be romanticized, but without doing so it's still possible to respect the terrible experience Vets undergo, and, IMO, we should be focusing more on the dilemma we put them in than trying to draw solid moral lines of simplistic judgement, as did/do Kerry and his ilk.

If wars shouldn't be romanticized, and I think you're right, WC, then wars shouldn't be anti-romanticized which is what a whole lot of people did to the Vietnam War. Hippies, peace advocates and leftists of all stripes decided to use the war as a way to ratify and strengthen their own belief system. As this video shows, this was done at the expense of truth � and much more. Clearly people like Kerry promoted their version of events (quite dishonestly much of the time) at the expense of national security, reality, freedom and, of course, the soldiers who were fighting for freedom.

Anyone with half a brain could see that free people everywhere were in a world-wide struggle with communism. It was not all some grand plot by McNamara no more than it is some grand plot by Bush to take over the world. These are the delusions of hateful minds. Fighting for freedom is good. Communism is dehumanizing and bad. The way our prisoners were treated is testament to that. The boat people who would come later is testament to that. The agony and misery of people across the planet who have lived under communist regimes is testament to that. I view communism, in its essence, as an attempt by the intellectual elites to subjugate the masses "for their own good". It's easy to justify the concept of "for their own good", especially if one thinks ones own sh*t doesn't stink. That is why there is so much affinity between the left and communism. Their methods and beliefs are similar. Their sympathies are not a million miles apart.

Even now, in the guise of John Kerry, a whole generation of people are still trying to come to terms with the way they maliciously undermined their own country. Yes, it's certainly true that in a free country we must honor peaceful protests. But we ought not to give protesters the higher moral ground merely because they are protesting something. That seems to have been the ethos over the past forty years.

The reality is that Vietnam was an integral part in the war against communism and the war against tyranny. Even though the immediate outcome back then wasn't what we or the South Vietnamese wanted, it was the opposition to communism, and our willingness to do so, that probably saved many more hundreds of thousands of lives. Although Jane Fonda and her ilk might not admit it, there *are* ghastly horrible and violent people out there who wish to enslave us all. Their own short-sighted and petulant personalities caused them to actually side with the brutal dictators. How people who grew up in such a great country and with such great freedom could ever become so twisted is still somewhat a mystery. It's a combination of a perverted youth culture (don't trust anyone over 30), indoctrination by the colleges and universities into leftist ideology, and an overall culture centered in hedonism and materialism (sex, drugs and rock 'n roll) which leaves very little room for appreciating values or, frankly, appreciating anything that came before they did.

And although some voters will no doubt vote for Kerry in an attempt to erase some of the ghosts of the past, we should not involve ourselves in any similar violence to the truth and vote for Bush to gain back the honor of the soldiers that the left and the press betrayed and left to rot. We should, if one is inclined, vote for Bush because he is the better man with the better plan. It is irrational flights of fancy that get us into trouble in the first place. These flights of fancy are powerful and usually have dramatic consequences as these good soldier point out in their video.

Many vets feel betrayed and views differ as to who betrayed them. John Wayne and Mel Gibson were in the only two pro-US movies made about the war, so we could say that Hollywood has had a point of view
for many decades.
Bill Buckley wrote God and Man at Yale back in the forties, so we know which way acadamia was pointing up until then.
Many churches swung to the left in the fifties and sixties, which shows that the culture wars are nothing new.

This is the environment Kerry came up in. I can't look into his heart and know if he was opportunistic or a true believer. Some people suggest that he was and there may be some evidence against him. As far as I know, he still stands by what he said back then.He seems opportunistic now and I do not trust a man who seems to have his finger in the air to check which way opinion is blowing. True believer or be-LIE-ver?

I don't know if Jane Fonda has had a change of heart or made an apology, but I understand that she has become a Christian now, much to her ex Ted Turner's chagrin.

peacethroughsuperiorfirepower.com

Moving to movie and book reviews. Good topic!

I watched the video online. Very powerful and straightforward, I thought, with a legitimate complaint about how Kerry, Fonda, etc. emboldened the enemy and demoralized the troops, especially those in captivity. Kerry might have been sincere, but he needs to take responsibility for the suffering he brought to POWs. He has never apologized to them for this, and there would have been a way to do it, even at this late date. Also, his political opportunism seemed to have been alive and well at the time.