Wrong...he repudiated what his country was making its military do.
Well, he did that, too -- but he also verbally attacked soldiers who were serving in good faith.
This is the problem. When you're a soldier, you don't get to make the call. Whether you're drafted, you enlist, whatever, it is your duty (think of it as a down payment on your freedom), to do whatever it is you're told. You do not have the right to say, "No, that war is one I don't want to fight".
Today's soldiers understand this, for the most part, because they are not draftees. Those who make the commitment today are individuals who understand the nature of freedom, and the need to defend it. Sometimes, even when an individual soldier thinks it is the wrong thing to do.
During the Vietnam war, many people served who never wanted to. And that is fine, but if they come back from fighting and bash those who are still there, repudiate their own service by discarding their medals it is their prerogative. But don't then throw it up as though you served heroically in an effort to get elected.
It was a sorry episode, start to finish. But I'm not really seeing what the "swiftboaters" did that was so outrageous. Seems to me they told it like it is. |
