Vietnam Boomerang

The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be. . . . Just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question.----John Kerry, questioning President Bush's military-service record, February 8, 2004.

So begins an article by the Wall Street Journal demonstrating how John Kerry brought the recent criticism by swift boat vets upon himself. The article states,

A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.


What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes"--as he did back in 1971 and has refused to take back ever since--would somehow go unanswered? That when he raised the subject of one of America's most contentious modern events, no one would meet him at the barricades? Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?


Mackubin Thomas Owens, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. who led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969, had this to say regarding John Kerry,

Most of the veterans I know emulate their fathers after World War II — they are embarrassed when people ask them about what they experienced or what they did to receive their awards. They might finally reveal bits and pieces to family and close friends, and might share reminiscences with former comrades, but they would never talk about the war to strangers. It has been my own experience that those who talk the most about "the 'Nam" were farthest from the action.


Professor Owens then goes on to detail some of the cruel things John Kerry said about his fellow soldiers and gives this striking analogy of the difference between how John Kerry views the Vietnam war and how most vets Professor Owens knows view the Vietnam war, he writes,

As a correspondent pointed out to me in an e-mail, each episode of the HBO series Band of Brothers, begins with a voiceover in which the narrator says of the World War II soldiers portrayed in the program: "I was not a hero, but I was surrounded by heroes." In contrast, what John Kerry is saying in essence about his "band of brothers" is that "in Vietnam, I was a hero, but I was surrounded by war criminals."


I'm starting to understand why these vets dislike him so much.

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