Letters to the Editor
Garry Owen
Published Letters: 2821 Editor's Choice: 151
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There are few heroes
[Read the article: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth just won't die]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The SBVT have actually done me a favor, and you too. I'll get to that in a minute.
I grew up in the early 1950s when war veterans were given a special respect because a half million of them died saving this land from a very real threat. There was an unwritten code of conduct about how civilians treated those who fought and returned home. No questions asked. If you didn't like a particular individual veteran, you could attack anything about him except his service. That was off limits.
But along came Vietnam and things started to change. Sure, all returning vets were "heroes" but there was a string attached. You only remained a "hero" if you shut up and waved the flag. Guys who came back from Vietnam disillusioned and mad as hell didn't fit the image any more.
The American public in general have always been hero worshipers. They love their heroes and the feel-good myth surrounding them. If you returned home with issues about the war you just came through, you must be weak, perhaps a coward, even though you wore the CIB, the Bronze or Silver Star and a Purple Heart or two.
Americans, I've found, are funny like that. Hero worshipers of the Nixon era were exasperated by men like John Kerry. Why couldn't he just keep his mouth shut and be their hero? He must be either a lying Communist traitor, or a mental nut job. Sure, war is hell, but real men don't come home and cry about it. Look at John Wayne! He was a real American hero, wasn't he? You'd never picture him coming home whining about injustice. He'd just belly up to the bar, have some booze and punch out the nearest faggot.
Hero worshippers believe war is a noble thing. There are rules. It's a fair fight. Our World War II heroes were the victim of atrocities like Malmedy and Bataan, not the perpetrators.
Hero worshippers have a blind spot when it comes to G.I. Joe rounding up civilians and unarmed prisoners at the edge of a ditch and murdering them. If it doesn't fit the hero myth, it must be a lie. If it wasn't a lie, then it must be explained away somehow and forgotten.
Now here's how the SBVT did us all a favor:
They are hoist by their own petard. They drove the final nail into the coffin of war hero worship. They banded together and told the American public that it's OK to make distinctions about veterans who wore the same uniform and bore the same scars of war as they did. The SBVT said it was OK to pick apart a man's (or woman's) service to their country and to use it to smear him and shame him.
The Bush campaign, fearing John McCain, smeared him with innuendo that he was "crazy" from his six years in the Hanoi Hilton, and therefore unfit for the presidency. Saxby Chambliss, a certified draft-dodging coward, smeared war amputee Max Clelland by saying he was weak on American defense. And then George W. Bush let the SBVT rip apart John Kerry's service. More recently, Iraq War veteran Paul Hackett was not only smeared by mad dog, hero-worshipping Jean Schmidt, but his own Democratic party leaders left him high and dry.
So here's the deal, people: You now have permission to let the shit fly at any war veteran you like. The SBVT have made it OK. You can discard any of those quaint reservations about not going after somebody because they once fought with courage for our country. The SBVT and the Republicans have declared a free fire zone on veterans running for office. Democrats can do the same.
Look out John McCain, what's good for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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Bush's little Texas (word) Twister today
[Read the article: White House wordplay]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Those who violated the law, if they did, will be punished." -- Bushy
It was not so long ago, I recall, that when the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame story broke, it was Bushy Boy who said that there would be a complete investigation and that if anyone in White House had anything to do with it, they would be fired and face criminal charges.
He has since reneged on that.
Now notice his choice of words today, "if they did", which he carefully threw in there. "If they did." It's as though the White House staff has not briefed him on the preliminary findings, including the fact that the battalion commander on the ground authorized payments of some $38,000 each to the families of the slaughtered. If the Jarheads were innocent, then why the blood money?