SwiftVets.com

[sparky]

Nothing on the Internet about Carter trying to get Calley pardoned. Maybe you've got some links?

[Craig]

[Greenhat]

Unfortunately, the Atlanta Journal-Constitutions online archives only go back to 1985. Anyone willing to do the legwork and look at some microfiche?
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De Oppresso Liber

[whitecleats]

For those of you who don't believe me or think I am making this stuff up, go and read Jimmy Carter's writings. I have read it in a number of books and for those of you who need a URL, the following link will take you to a 1971 John Birch Society bulletin (very conservative) that proudly cites Gov. Carter protesting the Calley case. "Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia proclaimed April 5 "American Fighting Men's Day" in the state and urged residents to display the flag and drive with headlights on."


http://www.jbs.org/visitor/focus/vietnam/jbs/1971_05.htm

If thats not sufficient, then you guys who rely on the internet will have to get directions to your nearest library and get a librarian to help you find Carter's books. Now, I wonder how you are going to distort my post and take it out of context, again?

[Craig]

[mikest]

I'm having a hard time getting past this graph from the article. Is this guy saying that we fought Vietnam because we wanted Communism to succeed?

[whitecleats]

Here are some other sites I was able to find:


In the case of Vietnam, Carter was hardly a strong critic of the American war, one that killed 2-3 million Vietnamese. As governor of Georgia, he responded to the 1971 sentencing of Lt. William Calley of My Lai massacre infamy by calling upon his fellow Georgians to "honor the flag" as Calley had done, and to leave their headlights on to show their support.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Nevins_Carter.htm

Carter is a moral, even a holy man, yet he is a politician trapped in the venal and compromising snake pit of America politics. That is part of his conflict. He has done things other liberal politicians and many human beings would be ashamed of. He did not oppose the Vietnam war until almost the end. He proclaimed an “American Fighting Men’s Day” which was really a Lt. William Calley Day in Georgia.

http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Jimmy_Carter_Homeland_Security.htm

Rallies for Calley" were held all over the country. Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia, urged citizens to leave car headlights on to show support for Calley. Thompson, who got nasty letters and death threats, remembers thinking: "Has everyone gone mad?" He feared a court-martial for his command to fire, if necessary, on U.S. soldiers.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/heroes/thompson.htm

And no one seems to recall that he led a campaign to free Lieutenant Calley [of My Lai infamy] when Carter was governor of Georgia."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Cockburn_Carter.htm

Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, for example, urged citizens to "honor the flag" as Calley had done.

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2000-03/04shalom.htm

[mikest]

That's unfortunate but the interesting thing is that from what I have seen some people were saying that he was doing what his superiors told him to do. Now to me that seems to undercut your argument against Kerry. He said this was happening and that it was pushed from higher ups and these people are agreeing with him. So all I have really seen from you is a bizarre article saying the war was to further Communism, not defeat it and some other links talking about the huge outpouring of support for Caley. The whole thing just says Kerry was right and the country did not stop supporting the soldiers after his statements.

Just my .02

[whitecleats]

The John Birch society refused to support President Nixon because he was too liberal and felt he was soft on communism. The military also thought that Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger were not using enough military force in Vietnam and did not want Nixon to end the war. In fact, as new Watergate tapes prove (although the media ignores it because it is not as sensational as Nixon cussing) the joint chiefs of Staff were spying on Nixon and Kissinger until the culprit, an Admiral Moorer, was caught. When Nixon opened Communist China and visited the Kremlin, it would further lead to the Extreme Rights fear that Nixon was becoming too soft on communism.

In fact, in 1972, Nixon did not run as a Republican but as the President. He hoped to break the two party system and create a new party composed of moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats. That's why Nixon thought about dumping Agnew (who Nixon did not like and Nixon often joked that he would never be assassinated because no one in their right mind would want Agnew as President) and puting John Connally (at this point still a Democrat) on his ticket as V.P. Of course, Nixon did not want to jeopardize his big win over McGovern so he kept Agnew on. It was a nice idea but it resulted in the McGovernite Democrats making huge gains in Congress and most of the Republicans left felt Nixon had betrayed the party by not endorsing the them. And that left the President with very little support once impeachment came around.

Anyone who says Nixon was a Conservative is way off the mark. It was Nixon who created the EPA, Affirmative Action, massive civil rights legislation, and other liberal domestic programs. In fact, when Reagan cut social programs in the 1980s, they were not from LBJ's failed Great Society, but they were mostly Nixon programs. Sadly, the Watergate tapes are usually used for negative purposes and rarely does anyone use them to study the administration. Since I know all of you are going to call on me for my sources, a good start to Nixon's domestic policies are the Haldeman diaries, the tapes at the national archives, Dean Kotlowski's Nixon's Civil Rights, and Brook Flipen's Nixon and the Environment.

[whitecleats]

My whole argument was that Kerry admitted to "overexagerating" things he had claimed to witness. On the watergate tapes, Nixon is encouraging vetrans that served with Kerry to tell the truth about Kerry's tales because the people that served with Kerry knew his claims were false. And most recently, NBC did a piece that claimed Nixon was trying to "smear" Kerry. Now that Kerry has admitted to overexagerating his claims, it proves that Nixon was the one telling the truth. Now it seems that you guys are trying to create new "claims" that I have supposedly made.

[mikest]

Again, these things were happening. Kerry has said he overhyped things, although most of his testimony was second hand and clearly labeled as such, but they were happening as these links attest. And don't forget that Nixon formed the Vietnamn Veterans for a Just Peace, the grandfather of this group. To deny that Nixon smeared people is to deny history.

But thanks for helping us out.

And your answer to my Birch question, while interesting and informative, does not answer the question of the actual goal of the war. Was it to defeat or help Communism?

[sparky]

Man, if the John Birch Society and zmag agree on something, it MUST be true.

Actually, I found that headlights thing when I searched this before. But I saw nothing saying that Carter fought to get Calley pardoned.

It was weird to think that there were good, solid, freedom-loving and patriotic Americans who went to "rallies for Calley." I wonder if they just didn't believe what was reported or if they thought the mass slaughter was a good thing.

Whitecleats, do you think an argument could be made that Nixon was more liberal than Carter? I've sometimes wondered this. (although in regards to human rights and our foreign policy, Carter does beat Nixon)

I almost posted the following until I saw your last post:
Whitecleats, you're still posting some good stuff, especially that last paragraph about Nixon.

[colmurph]

[mikest]

But according to the Birch article, Calley was a brilliant plot to help the communists that went bad. As a matter of fact, according to the article, the entire war was just a front to increase the Communist influence and power in asia.

[whitecleats]

The John Birch Society thought that traitors in the American government were communists and that they were purposely losing the war to allow Communism to spread. It is very similar to McCarthy's claim that their were traitors in high places undermining U.S. security to help spread communism. That is why I said they thought Nixon was soft on communism and he was a part of this communist conspiracy to purposely lose the war. In regards to Asia, the JBS used detente as evidence of Nixon selling out to communism. My Lai, according to JBS, was a U.S. planned event to lower morale in the U.S. and make it more susceptable to communist penetration. So basically, the author believes there is some strange Nixon-Communist theory that resembles something Oliver Stone would come up with while high on drugs. And since JBS does not have a McCarthy, who claimed truman had lost China and the bomb to the Soviets, the JBS takes it upon themselves to convice their readers of this Communist plot. Of course, very few people took the JBS seriously because it's hard to convinve anyone that Nixon was a communist (one of the reasons that only he could go to China). However, Helen Gahagan Douglas and McCarthy had made the same mistake and no one bought it either.