| EVERYONE here has missed the point on the campaign by the Swift Boat Brotherhood to stand against Kerry's run for the Presidency. Did Kerry serve? Certainly, and the stories coming out will always be debated. Was he "under fire"? Did he "make up" his achievements to earn extra Purple Hearts? Was he truly in Cambodia for Xmas? Quite frankly, all minor points, and rather silly to argue. In fact, I speak for all the military members I know when we salute the fact that he DID go "over there" (unlike quite a few other politicians we can point fingers at who avioded that situation like a plague, and used any and all means available to them at the time to get out of it). No, he answered the call.
And if had stopped there, not ONE veteran would have given a hoot about how accurate his military record was. He was a brother in arms, who served his time. I little chiding for getting the facts confused, certainly. But we would have let it slide, he would have been one of us.
But the real issue that EVERY VIETNAM VETERAN I have met and spoken to, every veteran of every conflict before and since tha I have had theprivilege to serve with and meet, found what he did UPON HIS RETURN distasteful, disengenious, and down-right against his own brotherhood. His lies to Congress about the"atrocities" he saw, commited, and supported "over there" only added to the image most Americans had of the Vietnam vet: a muderous brut, liar, and criminal only worthy of distrust and contempt. No, thank you John Kerry for trying to convince America that a generation of men who proudly served were somehow now equivilant to Charles Mason, and only a hair trigger away from "snapping" and eating the neighbors kids. His act of symbolically throwing his medals away had added symbolism to the Vietnam veterans who proudly served their country and came home to be spat on by their neighbors: he also threw away any chance he would ever have to be accepted as a brother by the rest of the veteran community (expcet for a few other bitter few who came back vehemently against the war, enough so to also lie about their expereinces to Congress).
As a veteran of Desert Storm, Northern Watch, and OIF, he gets a pass from me for serving his time; we honor that. But I will NEVER forgive him (and neither will the rest of the veterans I work with and know) for throwing the rest of his fellow brothers under the bus. No, you don't get to renounce your service, besmirch your brothers, trounce thier names, THEN get to claim your time as a "war hero". Not in our book.
To us, "Swift-boating" is not about the lying of some to bring an honorable man down. It's about the righteous "what goes around, comes around" of those few who couldn't stand to see the lying of the ONE not be brought to justice. |