Ilaine, re: I was proud to shake the hands of the Swiftboat vets and thank them for their service.
Good for you. They should be thanked for their service.
When it comes to accepting the pyramid of half truths, rumors and outright distortions that formed the basis of their smear of John Kerry's service, however, what is about you personally that should lend additional weight to their point of view?
Are you especially discerning?
Have you somehow accumulated special knowledge?
Does your assessment that John O'Neil is the "salt of the earth" somehow lend weight to the accuracy of the smear?
Have you shown yourself to be an objective thinker, unburdened by strong prejudices or locked-in, ideologically inflexible views?
Or are you just another Bush/Cheney/pro-war/right wing extremist who swallows every message they send to true believers whom they privately ridicule for being stupid sheep?
You might want to take a look at a Ted Koppel Nightline piece on Kerry and his silver star actions. Nightline went to Vietnam and found the village where Kerry grounded his boat and attacked the Viet Cong who were ambushing them. Your attack-Kerry buddies had made a big deal out of how Kerry shot an unarmed "boy" in the back.
The villagers remembered the incident. The guy Kerry ran down with a rifle was carrying a grenade launcher. He was full grown, had come from outside the district to attack American boats and had a reputation for being a tough soldier.
What Kerry did was, in my view, not very sound from a tactics point of view but it was certainly brave. When you grab an M-16 and get Rambo on the shore of river by attacking a force of unknown size that had just ambushed an American River Boat the one thing you prove is that you've got more guts than brains.
That's what the navy gave him the silver star medal for. You disagree?
He got the bronze star for personally pulling the green beret soldier out of the river with bullet flying overhead.
The SwiftBoat smear crew said there were no bullets. The Green Beret soldier said the bullets were slapping the water all around and that he thought he was a goner. Kerry's crew said there were lots of bullets in the air. It was a three boat sized ambush and Kerry's boat was the boat that went back into the kill zone of the ambush to pull the guy out. One of the smear-Kerry Swift Boaters was given a bronze star for action in that battle. Why would he say there was no shooting?
Here's what I think. I think the navy wanted it's share of "heros." I think John Kerry, because of his rashness, was the guy they picked for a poster boy. I think the other boat captains were a little envious of the guy that got a little more recognition than they did. That's common in combat. If anyone gets medaled and survives there's always some talk about how their action wasn't that big of a deal.
There are so many acts of bravery in battle that they're usually correct. In addition, officers often receive medals for doing things that enlisted men do every day. There are many different standards for the award of medals and some of it is political.
So you probably had fellow officers with some resentment of Kerry that would have evaporated except for one thing; Kerry came back home and criticized the war. That was unacceptable to the group of gung ho riverboat captains. Each of them were volunteers who would never have had to see combat otherwise. They were "true believers" who wanted to "win the war," or at least wanted a combat resume for their future in the military.
Those kinds of guys were the last guys who wanted to hear that the war was ill considered, sure to be a lost war and was creating atrocities by the bucketloads. In addition, they were on the water and the place where the war was by far the ugliest and biggest was on the ground. They didn't know much about that war.
When Kerry attacked the war and started talking about atrocities they immediately did what you seem to do as a matter of natural personality; they took everything rumored against Kerry as fact, dismissed everything in his favor as false and justified their growing hatred of him. But were they right?
Their "proofs" have been reviewed exhaustively.
The common wisdom on the matter has progressed to the point where we have a new American term; "Swiftboating." Swiftboating is a term that today refers to an organized, false and effective attack on the character of someone for base political purposes.
Most of America, when they hear the term, Swiftboated, feel revulsion and shame. Only a few of you feel glee.
That, in itself, says a lot about how reliable your "salt of the earth" opinions are. Ed |
