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John wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 17:20:57 GMT, Steve Caple
> <stevecaple@commoncast.net> wrote:
>>Purple Heart Veterans
>> * Ya Hadda Be There To Get One *
>
> Whatever happened to the "Quiet Hero?"
Never saw it. Was John Wayne in it? I liked "Local Hero".
The day the RNC chairman, Georgie Girl, Cheney, Saxby Chambliss and Karl
Rove all apologize to Max Cleland for the 2002 Georgia Senate campaign
smear I'll be glad to be quiet, despite being no hero. But with Bush
surrogates nattering on about Kerry getting Purple Hearts for minor wounds,
I doubt that will happen soon. It's not how badly you got wounded (and
mine were minor, despite being four feet away from a 37mm that went off
inside our H-3 over the North, thanks to a flak vest and a lot of luck),
but whether you were "there" getting shot at at all. There are damn few in
the top echelons of the Bush regime that ever did - Tom Ridge and Colin
Powell come to mind.
This from a conservative source (the Cato Institute):
'A generation has passed, and approximately the same amount of time
separates Iraq from Vietnam as separated Vietnam from Munich. Those two
precedents define the paradox of intervention. Munich will forever
exemplify the consequences of appeasement, but Vietnam serves as a reminder
of the dangers of over-commitment.
Curiously, however, now that it has ascended to power, the generation that
lived through Vietnam no longer seems to be influenced by it. President
Bill Clinton was initially cautious about using military force. But by the
end of his presidency he had initiated war in the Balkans. President Bush
has been even more emphatic about the need to use military force. "In the
new world we have entered," he argued in the September 2002 National
Security Strategy, "the only path to peace and security is the path of
action."
Yet for all his talk about sacrifice, Bush never served in Vietnam. He
spent the war flying National Guard aircraft over Texas. "I am angry that
so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle
slots in Reserve and National Guard units," Secretary of State Colin Powell
wrote in his memoirs. "Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class
discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all
Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."'
http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-31-04.html
Bush and Kerry are both "fortunate sons" - but one went and the other
stayed home. That's fine, I've got nothing against folks who joined the
Guard (WITHOUT their Daddy getting somebody to let them jump line) or those
who went to Canada, or college in Britain, or got college deferments, etc.
But when they get all self-righteous about "sacrifice" and start calling
their political and policy opponents "unpatriotic" when THEY THEMSELVES
avoided service, then I get a wee bit pissed off at their hypocrisy.
--
Steve
Purple Heart Veterans against BuSh and the Chickenhawks
* Ya Hadda Be There To Get One *
Re-defeat Bush in 2004