SwiftVets.com

[Twidget]

I wrote a letter in response to this, just a typical "this is dirty politics" op-ed, but it set something off in me:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/16/opinion/schieffer/main636333.shtml


Here is the letter:

Two weeks ago, I would have agreed with your piece "Swift Boat to Dirty Politics". Then I read Unfit for Command. It is a highly powerful, highly charged book--not because of a Michael Moore-like partisanship and flair; the words are the dry verbage of a lawyer--but because the it brings back to the public eye wounds from Vietnam that never healed.

I am a 26 year old who spent 4 years in the Navy; I never heard much about what America went through during that time other than the basic timeline of events. All I knew was that the country was divided as much as it's ever been since the Civil War. Unfit for Command is the perfect book to inspire renewed debate and hopefully give us some closure on an issue that was never really resolved...people eventually just stopped talking about it. It juxtaposes the immediate issue of Kerry's candidacy with his involvement with the anti-war movement and asks if we were right to listen to the likes of Kerry and spit on our real heroes.

I read the responses of Vietnam Veterans to this book and I weep. You see, a soldier's pride, his bravery, his self of self-worth come from the fact that he is fighting for good, for something honorable. It is difficult to put your life on the line without that belief. When you take that away, the soldier says to himself "I suffered and risked my life...my friends died...I killed human beings...and it was all for nothing." I will leave parallels to the Iraq and Afghanistan action for another time. After reading these veterans' experiences, I can understand a little bit how devastated they must have felt when John Kerry impugned their honor.

The journalists and the cynicists and the extreme anti-war crowd will try to shout them down and claim that they are Republican lackeys, but I believe that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are on a mission for just that--truth. The person most responsible for the abuse and tarnished legacy of the Vietnam Veterans is running for president, and the eyes of the nation are focused squarely on the issue of Vietnam. Is this not the proper time to tend to the festering wounds that we ourselves caused? To set the record straight? To expose the damage done by the false accusations of the radical anti-war movement? To admit that we asked the utmost of our soldiers, and then failed them utterly?

It's not about Bush. It's about a selfish man and a country that has never come to grips with the fact that it still owes a lot of men a lot of thanks.

[Me#1You#10]

Twidget...magnificent...yet another from this forum for the ages.