What were the lessons that Kerry learned from Vietnam?

[King_Crimson]

Deep inide, I hope that our man does address the following and NOT allow it to be exploited by Herr Rove and his lepers of disinformation:

In his convention speech, the candidate declared: "I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President." Let there be no mistake, I will never hesitate to use force when it is required." He pledged to build "a stronger military" by adding 40,000 active duty troops.

Yet when he returned from Vietnam more than three decades ago he described the war not as a defense of the US, but a crime against humanity. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, he said the war was a result of a people "seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever." He further declared: "There is nothing in Vietnam...that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of even one American life in Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia by linking such a loss to the preservation of freedom...is to us the height of hypocrisy."

There was no suggestion from any of the speakers that the war in Iraq is a criminal venture, that the deaths of nearly 1,000 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis had no justification or that the revelations of torture at the Abu Gharib prison in Iraq constituted a national disgrace.

Rather, the Democratic candidates made it clear that they view the war and occupation as legitimate and necessary. That they will not tolerate any opposition to this war was spelled out in their embrace of the extraordinary security measures taken in Boston to suppress anti-war protests as well as in the functioning of the convention itself. When one person on the convention floor tried to unfurl a banner calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq, she was dragged away by police officers and thrown out of the convention center. The incident provides an insight into the attitude a Kerry administration would take toward anti-war dissent.

more...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/dnc-j31_prn.shtml

Now...before I get jumped on and turned every way but loose, keep in mind that much of this was brought out early on this campaign but has been kept suppressed since. I am not attempting to be critical of our guy in a negative sense but am afraid that these very things will once again re-surface and exploited not only by the Republicans...but our old friend NADER as well.

[Eloriel]

1. What lessons did he learn? Not the most important one.

A decorated war hero came home and became an anti-war hero. And then went on to become the very same type of old man who sent young men (and now women) to war that he once protested against.

:-(

But, yeah, he'll be better than Bush. And I like the energy Edwards brings to the team. The two of them became far more than the sum of their parts somehow. Kerry seems a different man with Edwards on the ticket (thank GAWD). I hope that lasts.

[MichiganVote]

2. Well, we'll see about that won't we....

Combating the heresy of the war will be necessary no matter who is in office.

[bluestateguy]

3. The US must always have the right to defend itself

I think that was the point he was trying to affirm here. There is a substantial number of people in the nation who seem to think that a President Kerry would invite Osama bin Laden to the White House for coffee and donuts on Inauguration Day. That assumption has to be challenged and challenged hard. Though some people from the World Socialist Organization may disagree, most Americans believe that this nation has the right to strike back against any foreign attacker, meaning Al Qaeda, the people who actually attacked us on 9/11/01.

The war in Iraq is another matter entirely, as Iraq represented no threat to the US. Everybody already knows Bush is screwing it all up. Why risk anything by piling on even more? For Kerry to make an anti-war speech would have made the corporate media go absolutely banannas, and that would not be productive at this juncture. Winning the election is the most important thing right now, and sometimes that means going along with the corporate media's little games, so as to avoid a media feeding frenzy.