The “Vets Support Kerry” Myth

(Part 2 of 3)

The campus war protestors of the 60’s lied to America. We laid out that lying in our last article by quoting directly
from the literature the protestors handed out at their marches and demonstrations. And there is no question that in
his ’71 testimony to Congress, Kerry shared those arguments.

Dr. Jamie Glazov- noted historian and Managing Editor of FrontpageMagazine wrote recently:

In the March-April edition of International Socialist Review, H. Bruce Franklin, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote an article glorifying the memory of the anti-war movement in America during the Vietnam War. He emphasizes that remembering the anti-war movement is crucial, “since it triumphed in bringing about an American defeat and a Communist victory in Southeast Asia.”

There you have it, the victory of the Big Lie, which as you saw in the first article ran throughout the entire literature of the “peace” movement. The lie that the U.S. was somehow fighting the “indigenous freedom fighters” of South Vietnam, when in fact it was fighting the Communists of North Vietnam and their allies in the South, the Viet Cong.

The entire anti-war movement rested on the lie that North Vietnam was never involved in aggression. This was done to take the issue out of the arena of Cold War containment policy. Faculty knew that if they told students the truth— that North Vietnam was aggressing against the South, there could have been no antiwar movement. With the Big Lie, however, it was easy for students to get all self-righteous and indignant, as well as, how convenient, resist serving.

Who wanted to fight “indigenous freedom fighters.” This is how, in their minds, the U.S. became the “aggressor” in an “immoral” war.

On the lie by the anti-war movement that the Viet Cong was an independent South Vietnamese political movement, Bui Tin, the North Vietnamese colonel who accepted the surrender of South Vietnam, said in The Wall Street Journal recently, “It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960.”

This one statement utterly destroys the arguments of the anti-war movement. It was further verified in a report in
l987 by Hanoi’s Military History Institute.

Said Stephen B. Young in an article commenting on celebrations of the thirtieth anniversary of the Vietnam War, “A generation congratulates itself once again for doing what the North Vietnamese never could have done—defeat the United States. It is no wonder, then, that our national recollection of the war matches that of the New Left.” It is this recollection, rising to the surface in this debate over Kerry’s ’71 testimony, that is really at stake, with media and campus desperately trying to keep it down. For thirty years the media and the university have institutionalized a lie, and gotten away with it. But now that the Kerry candidacy has raised the issue, the veterans of that war want the truth told once and for all. Few have forgotten the suffering many went through when they returned because of those lies.

Listen to what Chuck Lawrence, a Vietnam combat veteran, said about groups like Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War in a recent article:

“Returning veterans from Vietnam met with an interesting sight. People carrying signs and posters declaring the war
and those who served in it criminals. Some were spit on at airports. Others had trash thrown at them. Others weathered a hail of name calling. All this from the very antiwar protestors who claimed to be acting on behalf of our service men and women in Vietnam. Where was the outpouring of care and compassion for those that returned from the war?

Decisions had to be made fast by each individual returning from Vietnam on how to handle this assult. Join in and
become a protestor and disavow your own honorable service? Some did this. Or, fight back with pride and dignity.

[I * dared* them to spit on me.  Nobody did.]

Then the vets discovered that there were no jobs for them. Who would hire a demented, baby-killing, village burner.
Once again, thank Mr. Kerry for planting that image on all of us.”

The Kerry statement to Congress was more than what he now claims, just an anguished cry from those who had seen horror and wanted it ended. There was an agenda involved, an ideology, very similar to the one argued by people like Jane Fonda. Kerry told Congress the whole war rested on “atrocities,” that South Vietnam was a “nothing,” that the idea of Communist involvement was “mystical,” that it was a “civil war” between freedom fighters and an oppressive government being helped by imperialist America. He fed the falsehood that those who fought the war were the young and poor, with minorities being disproportionately represented, that the Vietnam veteran is ashamed of his service, and that the government had used them. Kerry said the U.S. was “the criminal element” in Vietnam, not the Communist North.

Craig Gordon of Newsday’s Washington Bureau wrote in an article on Kerry on Feb. 21, 2004, “Kerry’s speech is
considered by many to be one of the peace movement’s defining moments. It helped galvanize the protests and turn
popular opinion against the war.”

(Note: A comprehensive 1980 survey found that 91% of those who had seen combat in Vietnam were “glad they had served their country,” and 80% disagreed with the statement,”the U.S. took advantage of me.”)

And now others are beginning to comment on the media cover-up. Shawn Macomber in John Kerry’s Free Media Pass,
said, “Most Americans would likely find John Kerry’s past Vietnam behavior important to their decision as to whether
he should be president. Right now they have not been given this information.” In the section “This Week” in The
National Review, they wrote: “The media have brushed off the issue as irrelevant or a pointless ‘re-fighting’ of the
Vietnam War. But Kerry has an obligation to explain whether he still believes his allegations, and if not, to apologize
for them. Instead, his campaign seems determined to misrepresent his testimony. Syndicated talk-show host Hugh
Hewitt wrote, “The conventional wisdom floating downstream from Washington is that Senator Kerry’s anti-war radicalism following his return from service in Vietnam shouldn’t—and won’t—be an issue in November.”

The media, deciding what’s best for us. Well—they may be in for a surprise.

One of the largest bloc of voters in this country, millions of Vietnam veterans, those who know the most about war, in a huge underground controversy on the Internet, are already voting overwhelmingly that they don’t want Kerry to be Commander-in-Chief. In the Wintersoldier.com poll, it is running 96% against Kerry. In The Wall Street Journal letters section, 66%. In a San Diego newspaper an editor reports “100 to 1” against. Hewitt himself reports of his callers, “the vast majority hold Kerry in contempt because of his actions,” and view his antiwar activities as “profoundly wrong and disqualifiying for the presidency.”