The Vietnam vet will win

[NNN0LHI]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1143402,00.html

No candidate has more relevant personal experience or better policies than John Kerry, the man who'll beat Bush

Will Hutton
Sunday February 8, 2004
The Observer

The two most harrowing parts of any trip to Vietnam, where the war against the United States - even 40 years on - still dominates, are the Cu Chi tunnels north of Saigon and the Mekong Delta. As you emerge from crouching in the warren of once deadly, booby-trapped foxholes and command centres, there are decaying photos, pinned on trees and walls, of Vietcong soldiers with their decorations for being effective 'American killers'. The war's savagery and brutality could hardly be more effectively conveyed.

But as terrifying and futile as trying to penetrate the Vietcong tunnel system was trying to prevent the Mekong Delta - Vietnam's rice basket - from falling entirely under Vietcong control. The maze of slow-moving interlocking rivers and canals with dense, overhanging foliage offered perfect cover for attacks on US patrol boats.

Time and again, as we navigated today's tourist attractions of floating markets and shrines, I thought how it must have felt in a different time to be stalked by an enemy who had such amazing cover so close to their targets. But it was in this delta that Senator John Kerry, then a lieutenant, turned his Swift boat to attack his tormentors directly, going ashore to kill the Vietcong soldiers who were armed with B40 rocket launchers that could sink a US boat.

Vietnam veterans now hold a particular place in US life. They may have fought in America's most controversial war before Iraq, but their physical and psychological wounds are testimony to the fact they served their country even in a futile cause. (Their war culminated in an ignominious scuttle but strategically it bought the rest of South-East Asia more than a decade in which to deliver the capitalist Asian miracle; the immediate war was lost but a bigger struggle for economic power was eventually won.)

more...be sure to read the last paragraph

[lastknowngood]

1. Many of them will never vote for anyone who protested that

war they still want the U.S. to go back and finish the job.

[mot78]

4. There will be vets siding with * in this election because of that

However, most vets will still go for Kerry, because of how * is shafting them, and because of AWOL.

[liberalhistorian]

5. I must respectfully disagree.

My uncle was a Marine in Vietnam for two years, many friends of my parents and other family members were in Vietnam, and I've personally known others who were there, and ALL OF THEM agree with Kerry, even those who are republican or moderates or conservative. And they say that most of the Vietnam vets THEY know feel the same way.

I know of very, very few who really feel the way you say many of them do. While I don't doubt that there are, indeed, a few who feel that way, I think they're a very, very small minority.

[Straight Shooter]

2. I can't wait for Kerry's campaign rally in front of The Wall

He sure has taken that bitter lemon called Vietnam and made some fine lemonade. Remarkably similar to bush's capitalization of 9/11. I've got some veteran friends who think Kerry is overplaying the hero role a wee bit.

:shrug:

[IndianaGreen]

3. Rally in front of the Wall? I don't think so!

That would be in as much a bad taste as holding a rally at the Tomb of the Unknown.

Besides, it was a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress that got us into a full-blown war in the Vietnam when they passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which as IWR in 2003, was based on lies.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Your veteran friends wouldn't happen to be Republicans now would they? n/t

[liberalhistorian]

7. With what he went through, Kerry

deserves more than almost anyone else to "play the hero role." Would they feel that way if he were a repuke? Not that that would have happened, since how many repuke politicians were Vietnam vets, or ANY vets, for that matter?

Just what do they think of Shrub's strenuous and deliberate effort to avoid any kind of major service at all in Vietnam, and his not even bothering to show up for the last year or so, and the fact that some poor, and probably minority, kid had to take his place and no one gave a damn?

Just what do they think of the fact that almost every single one of those surrounding Shrub, with the exception of Powell (who doesn't appear to have learned any real lessons from Vietnam after all, since he's allowing the government to repeat the same fucking mistakes all over again) were arrogant draft dodgers who thought NOTHING of avoiding service (Cheney had "other priorities", DeLay "tried to enlist but found that all of the minorities had taken the spots", etc., etc.), and most were men from families of wealth and privilege who didn't, and still don't, give a damn about the effect of Vietnam on those less privileged. Give me Kerry ANY DAY over ANY of those motherfuckers!

And what about Raygun, who never went near a WWII battlefield, the extent of his "service" being to make newsreels in the safety of Hollywood, but who did everything possible to make people think that he did, indeed, serve in combat, and Dan Quayle, another Chickenhawk National Guard darling who thought nothing of using Daddy's name and money to get out of any kind of real service at all.