SwiftVets.com

[leeinwv]

I cannot say this any better
Stolen Honor
I've just finished watching the documentary Stolen Honor and I sit here with pain and sadness in my heart. It's a pain and sadness that comes from the realization that I am complicit in the degradation of the honor of the Americans who served in Vietnam. How so? After all, I was a mere 10 years old when Saigon was evacuated, how can I be responsible? I'm responsible because I, too, have never demanded that the record be set straight, even as I knew the truth of Vietnam.

In the 29 years since the fall of Saigon, we Americans who didn't serve in Vietnam have allowed ourselves the cowardly way out about it. It's over, we say; and it's so long ago now - sure, we know that the troops were not as described by the so called "anti-war" people, but we've not done anything to defend the honor of those who served. Essentially, out of an unwillingness to engage in an unpleasant task, we've allowed the insult of "baby killer" applied to our brave soldiers to stand.

We've gone to the movies - Apocalypse Now, Casualties of War, The Boys in Company C - and in so doing we paid money to people slandering the American fighting man; paying money to sick liars rather than demanding they be run out of town on a rail. We have been complicit in the maintenance of a lie.

Our national guilt is palpable here - but central to the veteran's tale of Vietnam is John Kerry. Here was the serviceman, himself, participating in the lie - and doing it for naked personal ambition. We all bear our aliquot portion of guilt but John Kerry's guilt is specific. It was John Kerry who with his upper class Boston accent and carefully measured cadence lent credence to what had been just nonsensical and laughably false communist accusations about the American effort in Vietnam. It was John Kerry with his American patrician background which made myth seem like reality - and since John Kerry has not corrected his error and has not been called to account for it, the myth has taken on a life of its own until in 2004 its taken as a given by a large segment of the American population that there was truth in Kerry's communist-inspired lies.

Today we are engaged in war. We have hundreds of thousands of our best and bravest overseas fighting and dying at our behest and in our defense. Already the same sorts of lies told about Vietnam soldiers are being told about War on Terrorism soldiers - they aren't believed outside of the leftist fever swamps; aren't believed, yet. Unless we, as a people, set the record straight and sternly slap down the calumniators of American military personnel then we shall see at a later date these same slanders sticking to our current soldiers. We will betray another generation of Americans who have gone to battle for us.

We cannot let this happen again.

Election 2004 is a last throw of the dice of those who from base motives once upon a time denigrated their own soldiers - their own citizens under arms in their defense. John Kerry is the sine qua non of this species of slick, nefarious operators who wish to leech off the America patriots have died for. They didn't care about their nation back then - how could they have? If they had, then they simply would not have done what they did - and they don't care about it now. In self-service back then they slandered our soldiers and blackened our nation's name - in self-service today they are, once again, passing around slanders and insults.

We must, once and for all, put an end to this - we can no longer allow lies to go unanswered; difficult and distasteful as the work is, we must set to it with a will. Our primary task as patriotic Americans is to ensure that those who, knowingly or not, seek to use national trial as a short cut to person gain are excluded from the levers of American power. Central to our prime task is the defeat of John Kerry, the very personification of the sort of man who watches a house catch fire and instead of plying a hose, wonders how he can gain personal advantage from the tragedy.

Mark Noonan blogged for Bush
http://www.blogsforbush.com/

[fr11]

I'm 21 and have supported the Swift Vets/POWs these past few months, but I never really understood the pain these brave men have suffered through until I watched Stolen Honor. As the NYT review said, this documentary should be shown in its entirety on ALL the major networks.