SwiftVets.com

[jrwhite85]

This is a bit long, so bear with it. Colonel Hackworth always replies to you somewhere in the middle of your e-mail - sort of hard to keep track of it. I have therefore put this exchange in chronological order by a succession of cuts and pastes for your ease of understanding. Also, somehow his apostrophes don't work, either you get a little square or a space - I have also fixed that for ease of reading. I was disappointed in what the man had to say, regarding his failure to call Kerry what he so obviously is. Enjoy.

Jeff White

Me:

From: Jeff White [mailto:jrwhite85@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 10:19 PM
To: teagles@hackworth.com
Subject: From a Serving Officer

Dear Col Hackworth,

With all due respect to your illustrious service to the country, your abject failure to call John Kerry what he is -- a traitor -- is a disgrace.

You think Iraq is a mistake. I have my doubts too. One thing is clear: it has yet to be proved, and is probably unprovable that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, John Kerry never demonstrated that he wouldn't have done the same damned thing, except where he would rather deploy US troops only under UN auspices. Considering the Oil for Food bribe scandal, and Kerry's insistence on gaining French support, it looks to me as if Kerry was as lost as anyone on Iraq, and maybe much more so.

"Two divisions: one combat and one support;" and "doubling Special Forces" do not add up to 40,000 people to clean up this "mess." What is a "Support Division" anyway? What is more, using the demagogue scare tactics Kerry uses regarding the draft, is damaging to US national power. Children in High School are scared for no reason. Kerry's weakening our nation, and he isn't even been elected yet!

Bottom line, had we placed direct and unrelenting pressure on north Vietnam until they quit, we'd have saved lives. Heck, had we threatened China directly as MacArthur suggested, bombing their industrial bases, releasing Chiang Kai Shek, etc. we would be better off today. But we didn't. Failing that, allowing slanderers like John Kerry to permanently discredit the American fighting man around the world, one who has been categorically better behaved that the fighting man from any other great power, is wrong.

Benedict Arnold was a great general - but untrustworthy. Kerry is worse. Kerry has worked for the communists more than any member of the American Communist Party, if not purposely, then at least functionally.

I appreciate your having resigned in protest over Vietnam, I've always admired that. If I were convinced that Iraq were somehow a waste, or that we had no intention of sticking it out, or of ultimately ensuring the survival of liberty there, I might do the same. Vietnam was improperly handled at the NCA and JCS level. Agreed. But none of that is any excuse to do what John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Tom Hayden, et al did, full stop. And what senior democrats like Fulbright and McGovern did in their desire to unseat Richard Nixon, reference the hearings featuring Kerry and his crew was absolutely unacceptable.

My father commanded a Battalion in the First Cavalry in Vietnam, and admired you tremendously for your heroism. He bought me your book. I read it while a junior officer in the eighties. Dad was also a maverick, combat commissioned at 21 from a SFC in Korea, 1950. I wish he were alive to write you this note.

My father used to say that he would accept the apology of the liars from the VVAW, and people like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda when they followed it by their own public suicide. I feel generally the same.

I believe that if John Kerry succeeds in his bid for the White House, we will have a real crisis on our hands. Iraq will become exactly what Vietnam was - and more than anything, for America, it was a strategic loss - a defeat. If you can't see that, and can't see that Kerry is unfit, with his Vietnam lies, and if you won't weigh in on this, then may I suggest as a serving officer, that I would take it as a personal favor, and a contribution to readiness if you would just sit on a porch somewhere and sip something warm until you drop off the scene altogether, before you disgrace yourself and hurt us any further.

Jeff White

Major, US Army

Hack replies:
Vietnam was unwinable. Sadly suspect we're in the same mess in Iraq. Read SEVEN PILLORS OF WISDOM.

Sadly, you don't seem to be well informed. Are you RA? Hack

(then here is a blurb which is alsays attached to all of his emails somewhere, I will omit it after this once)

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly Proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their Nation"

George Washington

VIETNAM PRIMER

An updated version of the VIETNAM PRIMER is now available. Please check the website http://www.hackworth.com/ for ordering instructions.

Check out my website for the latest on my new book STEEL MY SOLDIERS' HEARTS.

http://www.hackworth.com/

http://www.sftt.org/

So I (all excited) said:

Sir,

I am RA.

I am impressed, and appreciate your taking the time to respond to me personally - I did not expect that. I will read the books you've recommended.

One thing confuses me. Even if I end up agreeing with you on all the points you make regarding strategy and operational art, I can't concieve how anything there would cause me to think that John Kerry was any less a traitor, or any more reasonable a choice to reverse current trends, and not exaccerbate everything. I agree with many of your thoughts in general on Iraq - we probably made all the mistakes you cite.

But how does that indicate that we should put a liar and traitor in the White House? You've invited me to read those books, and I will, but can you have read his Senate testimony from 1971? There is no way I misunderstood the actions of the VVAW. They subverted us, and I think prolonged our withdrawal from Vietnam, if anything. So far as I can tell, in Kerry's case, it was purely for his own political gain. I don't understand how any war horse can feel other than complete contempt and scorn for such as that.

v/r
Jeff White

To which he replied:
Think you shld read IMPERIAL HUBRIS and then lets talk.

I sounded off against the Vietnam war, does that make me a traitor too?

Hack

Again, I said:
Wow.

First off, I got the book you recommended and am pouring through it now. I will send you something definitive within 24 hours or so - Preliminarily, as I read his preface, I think he grossly misunderstands Islam, in both the political and religious senses.

I highly covet the opportunity to make the following points regarding the differences between your resistance to stupidity in Vietnam, and what I believe strongly to have been abject treason on Mr. Kerry's behalf on the same general subject.

Based on what I know about you -- no, I would definitely not have accused you of treason. I deeply believe in the 1st Amendment - even for soldiers, up to a point. Although the VC and North Vietnamese may have been happy to see your resignation on some level - my understanding was that you resigned based on the fact that you believed we had no intention of winning in Vietnam - and not based on it being unwinnable (which might have been disloyal, had you said that at the time -- by the way, it certainly was winnable - if Rome could defeat Carthage - and if America could defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan - it was more than winnable). I also think you were formidable, and the Communists might have individually not wanted to meet you in a dark alley, unlike Mr. Kerry, whom they met with in Paris twice. Kerry has been a consistent friend to adversaries of the United States, I think.

As I understand it, you very legitimately criticized our warfighting approach at several levels - - which was best done concurrently to your resignation, but without calling into question the basic justice of the fight against Communism in SE Asia, or calling into question the fight for the continued independence and basic freedoms of and in the RVN from the specific threat of Ho Chi Minh. I never saw where you indicted the individual American fighting man was a criminal, nor where you challenged the basic morality of our policy in Vietnam, likening us to Genghis Khan. Maybe I remember it wrong, though.

You never met with the Communist delegations that I know of. But John Kerry sure did. Then, the way he covered their takling points before the Senate was a study in manipulation of him by them. They loved him for that. He was a major propaganda coup for them - rivalling Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden - what a dupe.

Moreover, and I really need an answer to this from you, Hack. Was it your experience that we routinely committed war crimes as policy in Vietnam - known and accepted at all levels of the chain of command? Because if you did, it would be the first truly credible source I have ever heard to make that bold claim.

I think John Kerry only posed as being interested in the POWs for a while - in fact, up until the 1990s - but all for his own personal political benefit. You know that would have been gravy for the Commos to have empowered the anti-war movement by giving them a symbolic POW - I think they didn't do it because of what they knew it would do to the largely conservative, but at that point fatigued American mainstream. They realized that they didn't need to do it -- and that it would have been counterproductive -- particularly after McGovern's humiliating defeat.

The most significant thing that Kerry did, which I never heard you ever do, nor could imagine you doing, was to indict the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines "more than any other body" for violating the Geneva Conventions, and committing, in his words: War Crimes. That devastating bit of propaganda was the one thing the Communists really needed to take the wind completely out of our sails in Vietnam - and it was the thing to really start us running. Our own concept of being justified in that war was the friendly center of gravity, I think. They kenw how much it meant to us in Europe, and at home, to be the global crusader and legitmate policeman against Communist expansionism.

He and friends so thoroughly destroyed the military image in America by his sensational unfounded accusations, that we still have not recovered from it. I was accused in Ottawa Canada, while ni my greens, in the year 2000 -- of being a baby killer. No fooling. We never ever heard that before Vietnam -- and more than any other group, we need to thank the VVAW for it. Nobody else began to have the credibility that they had in making that specific charge. But now we know that VVAW was largely a fraud. It is amazing to me that this organisation had as its father, "Veterans For Peace," a Communist Front organization dedicated to undermining domestic support for the Korean War. It is no surprise however, that it has, as it's bastard son, the new IWVAW - Iraq War Veterans Against the War -- assisted I might add, by many former members of the VVAW.

No, you committed no treason in my view. You never weakened the nation that I saw. You pointed out, at your resignation, I think -- and probably increasingly in military schools, at the O'Club, and HQs prior to your resignation -- what I think was your professional estimate of our efforts, and namely, the fact that they were doomed to fail -- (which, incidentally, my Father used to say everybody above the grade of O4 knew after Tet '68, but generally failed to say, for mostly careerist reasons). My father was very outspoken about it at the war college in 1969-1970.

There is a huge difference between that, and publically making false war criminal accusations against your own nation as a nation in the middle of a war.

Now, I am reading 260 pages (307 if you count the endnote pages) at your insistence -- please read these excerpts of what John Kerry said in 1971 -- I have added emphasis in some parts: (what followed was a long exerpt from the Congressional Record of John Kerry's April 1971 testimony - here omitted)

He replied:
Jeff,

Glad you re reading Imperial Hubris. It is certainly the most important work on the struggle we're engaged in, in the last forty plus years. Please don't make a judgment until you ve read it carefully.

Vietnam was one raging atrocityon both sidesfrom beginning to end. I speak from five years ground experience there.

Comparing the war against radical Islamists with Nazi Germany just doesn t work.

Our problem now is we just don't understand who our enemy is, whereas with the Nazis, we damn well knew their objective and why they fought.

Please keep your commo with me short.

Hack


Me:
I also think we forget who we are in this struggle.

But certainly nothing in Imperial Hubris so far is any justification to jump from a Bush frying pan into the Kerry iron smelting furnace.

You say: "Vietnam was one raging atrocity on both sides from beginning to end. I speak from five years ground experience there."

Follow-up. Was Vietnam more atrocious on our part than Korea, or WWII?

My point is this: young John Kerry's testimony and conduct in 1971 were well-informed and phenomenally hurtful to us, as well as being significantly helpful to our enemy. I don't see how you fail to want to absolutely choke this pompous demagogue.

Kosovo, Bosnia or Haiti were stratagems? How bout our exit from Somalia? The blinkin' Democrats haven't been right at the national level on defense policy since Kennedy's initially aggressive posture towards Communism, which he actually engaged on. There's a handful of them who seem to even be able to spell it.

Him:
Your thrust seems to be political and hate Kerry.

I can’t chg that.

Thx you for your svc. Hack

[b]And finally, from me:[/b]

I think your thrust seems to be self-interest, and obfuscation. I further believe that if you ever witnessed a war crime and failed to enforce the law, you are guilty as an accessory after the fact, and that is just a starter. I'll finish with this: physical bravery, of which you may have displayed a great deal in your time, is not the ultimate measure of patriotism, nor character, as you have now taught me. Loyalty to right principles, duty, and honor are worth far more, each of which you appear to have remarkably little.

Thank you for your service. Again, something warm to sip on.

Sincerely,

Jeff
_________________
JEFF WHITE

[Knighthawk]

Looks like to me you really got under Hack's skin. Thanks for posting the exchange between you and him, I really enjoyed reading it.
_________________
Regards,
Brian

Beware of the lollipop of mediocrity! Lick it once and you'll suck forever.

If guns kill people, then I can blame misspelled words on my pencil.

Knighthawk's Pictures!

[2slick]

You're right- Hack is a brave and bold military genuis, and a moral coward. It is quite possible to be both, as we have learned...

Kerry, on the other hand, is a power-hungry opportunist who puts his lust for power in front of any person, any thing, or any cause. If he wins Tuesday, we're totally freakin' hosed.

Can anyone remember the last time someone preyed on people's ignorance about certain issues in order to effectively spread propaganda (disguised as honest testimony and/or news) as a means of achieving power?

[Wing Wiper]

I sent Hack a note, I doubt I will get a reply. If so, I'll post it on here. I called him on Kerry and the Paris trips.

[AboveThe Best]

While I thank Hack for his service to our country, I am very disappointed at his disservice to the morality of our political system. His waffeling in the dialog with Jeff White has cost him my respect. Not to worry; it has been replaced with the honor and respect of all the Swiftees and other Vets on this forum during this trying election year. Thank you!

[jrwhite85]

Hack's latest:
Pls concentrate on your trade rather than passing moral judgments for which you are not qualified.

You will better serve your country and yourself.

BTW, I am the guy who told the Army Chief of staff – as a young Lt Col just back from a year in Vietnam -- that we were losing the war. The year 1966.

Fully documented in About Face. I know a bit about moral courage and don’t appreciate your cheap shot….. Hack
_________________
JEFF WHITE

[badbobusnret]

Wink.. It's all about him Jeff. Now we both know.....

Too bad. He "could've been a contender" and helped the real Viet vets. He has proven himself irrelevant for this fight- I don't have time for him.

Out.

[air_vet]

Re: "Hack"

Hey, guys... despite what some may tell you, Colonels put on their pants one leg at a time just like everybody else... and if they don't have a senior NCO or two to lean on, they can't even do that.

I know, 'cause "I are one" (retired AF O-6).

Some people should be reminded from time to time to never believe their own press clippings.

[jrwhite85]

Cheap Shot? You mean like when someone calls 58,479 dead soldiers and 238 MOH recipients a bunch of murderers? I'm sorry - you failed to call Kerry out on that, and it causes me to lose respect for you, and not to hesitate to be a little direct and a little harsh. That doesn't make me judgmental - it is symptomatic of having standards.

Pls concentrate on your trade rather than passing moral judgments for which you are not qualified. I believe my profession (not a mere trade) is to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Pretty much any commissioning training would qualify me to make these simple judgements on war crimes and treason. When you say Vietnam was one big atrocity - you admit to things you never saw - five years was a lot, but still only half of our involvement in that war - and you were only in one unit at a time. I don't believe you can speak for every corps and division there, and particularly the 1-77th Field Artillery, which my father commanded. You undermine our ethics training to young officers, and the historical record. You have failed to make the case that Vietnam was any worse than Korea or WWII, on our behalf. I scorn that. Who cares? You cheapen all training about just conduct in war - and that relates to creating enemies among the uncommitted in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. By the way - interesting book, the one you recommended - I am glad I spent the $12.00. The author has missed some major points - he definitely misunderstands Islam, and his total war notion is completely unrealistic - and if it were realistic, it would not be practical. He needs to read the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual a little more closely. -- I recommend a book which you will find riveting - Unholy Alliance, by David Horowitz.

You will better serve your country and yourself. At the risk of being repetitive, silence in the face of treason serves nobody. Yes, I focus on issues which don't particularly benefit my career - I do it because I see them as more valuable to the nation than more careerist issues like force structure - which Congress will dictate anyway - ethics training is something we too often minimize.

BTW, I am the guy who told the Army Chief of staff – as a young Lt Col just back from a year in Vietnam -- that we were losing the war. The year 1966. I understand, and you know I admire it. But you say that Vietnam was impossible to win -- that's error. Many veterans agree with me, Stockdale, my Dad, and many others among them. We are limited chiefly by our own will and confidence in America. Now you seem ready to do the same with Iraq -- I think for a professional officer, particulary one of your record, to publicly pronounce that a war is unwinnable - in service or out - while it is being fought, would be erroneous, unhelpful and unwanted by those of us who fight. Recommendations and criticisms are welcome. Defeatism is unacceptable.

Fully documented in About Face. I know a bit about moral courage and don’t appreciate your cheap shot….. Hack

I didn't mean to offend you - but to wake you up. The issue I have is with ethics and injustice. If you say the war was an atrocity - and if you really meant that, I tell you that this word is rich with meaning. There is responsibility that goes with it. I will hold m people rsponsible for their adherence to the Law of Land Warfare, as I thought we all would. Now, I'm not talking about some silly, ".50-caliber-can't-be-used-against-personnel-targets-proportionality" nonsense, or about burning uninhabited huts, but the deliberate killing of noncombatants, including children, which everyone will agree is a crime against humanity in the international legal sense.

I was called a "baby killer" by virtue merely of my green uniform in Ottawa Canada. That deeply offended and troubled me, since I was raised to believe that we in the U.S. uniform were the good guys, and will not participate where we are not.

It is an injustice to allow one who lied so blatantly about our forces in Vietnam (your atrocity experiences notwithstanding) to do it without ever being held to account - and then to allow him to use his record, including medals he disavowed in a bid for high office. I can take your note and consider it with the other evidence and it is still not a compelling case that war crimes and atrocities were a matter of policy, as Mr. Kerry stated.

Please show some evidence that you are reading what I am writing and don't hone in on one minor point, saying a lot of nothing in return. Neither of us has time for it.

Jeff White
_________________
JEFF WHITE

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

Jeff, you're making a hell of a lot more sense than anything Hackworth has said in probably ten years.

Thank you - great read. He did say to keep comments to him short, so no doubt, he's going to be just as dismissive in future emails as he has been so far.

And my copy of Unholy Alliance should be here any day, so I'm glad to hear that you recommend it.

Imperial Hubris was recommended on the last Hackworth thread we had here, so that's apparently a textbook for "Hack-heads"? (Like ditto-heads?)

It's the ONLY time I've read of a recommendation for that book - everything else I read about it says that it starts with a flawed premise and goes downhilll from there.

If you were able to get to the end of it, I congratulate you.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[jrwhite85]

Excerpts from JFKs testimony - it should be running around the marquee at Times Square:

"war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

"The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence,"

"We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum."

"We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country, the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam."

"So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America" [emphasis added]
_________________
JEFF WHITE

[Daschund]

[Nathanyl]

[2slick]

[jrwhite85]

Hack's last word to me:

Jeff, don’t have time for further conversations with you.

If you are a serving RA officer your surely don’t show it.

I think you need to sit down with a shrink and get some help. You rave on like a very sick puppy.

Don’t respond.

Hack
_________________
JEFF WHITE