Does Bush support Vietnam Veterans? I think not.

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Sun Aug-22-04 07:33 PM
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Does Bush support Vietnam Veterans? I think not.

I have been a member of DU for about 10 months now. I mostly lurk but I do post and put in my 2 cents every once in a while.

A post I read earlier today by Anj in which he talks about the service of his two brothers in Vietnam, one of which comitted suicide and the other is in a mental institution. It broke my heart and now I want to share my own story.

I don't see how anyone can support Bush. All of the smearing of John Kerry's Vietnam record is making me sick. Remember, they did the same thing to John McCain in the primaries in 2000. Karl Rove, the political advisor for Bush spread around the rumor that McCain was with a prostitute and fathered a child with a black woman.

The worse part was because McCain spent nearly 6 years as a POW the Bush campaign in 2000 said he was mentally unstable to be president.

My grandma came over today. We talked about the smearing of John Kerry. My mom is voting for John Kerry and I am voting for John Kerry too. My grandma said that if she were still voting it would be for John Kerry too. She hasn't voted for several years because she is getting too old and it is a lot of effort to leave the house.

In this election I was voting for John Kerry because I don't think Bush deserves another 4 years. We have record budget deficits that me and my children will be paying off, Unless Bush creates 1.1 million new jobs or so in the next few months he will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs. It seems very likely since only 32,000 new jobs were created in July. Oil is nearly 50 dollars a barrel and the economic recovery is stalled. Meanwhile the death count is almost 1000 in Iraq, it is 963 or 949 depending on which source you use. Bush has also cut veterans benefits. I have read a few stories about injured troops paying for their own meals in the hospitals.

Does Bush and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth really support veterans?

My dad was a Vietnam veteran. He dropped out of high school when he was 17 to get his GED and go to Vietnam. He served in the U.S. Marines from 1966 to 1969 which was the height of the war. He was an artillery director and a sharpshooter. He was in Da Nang and also up in far north Vietnam near the chinese border. I still have his Marines pin. It is a globe with an anchor on it. He died of a cocaine overdose in Janurary of 1984. The police came to search the house and left him in handcuffs on the front lawn. His heart stopped. I was 4 months old. I don't speak of this very often at all. Whenever I am asked about my dad I just tell people he died in a car wreck. Or it was my uncle or whatever. I was just too embarrased. Now after the smearing of John Kerry I am proud of all that serve. I can tell the story now without feeling bad. My mom told me he never talked about the war. She said during the 4th of July when fireworks were going off he would duck his head and have a few panic attacks. Remember, he was an artillery director and screeching fireworks and popping brings back memories and sounds awfully familiar to howitzers.

I remember my mom talking to me when I was about 4 or 5 years old when we went to put flowers on his grave. She told me he served in Vietnam and came back alive. She said he came back home alive but many also came home in a casket. I of course had no idea what she was talking about at the time.

I can't believe it has been 20 years since he passed away. I saw the travelling Vietnam wall when it came to Las Cruces. We all know 58,000 troops died in Vietnam. When we hear that number it doesn't really affect us. It is just a number. However seeing 58,000 names hits you like a brick wall. I still remember the emotion. There were families behind those 58,000 names.

My mom talks with a Vietnam Vet from Texas via e-mail. He has terrible pains and also has MS. He was a grunt in Vietnam and was exposed to agent orange when they dumped it on the trees. He goes to the local VFW hospital for treatment daily. If Bush cuts veterans benefits what will he do?

Where do you draw the line on who earned their medals under fishy circumstances? Is it only John Kerry, John McCain, Max Cleland and anyone who runs against Bush that are attacked? If you attack how those men earned their medals and their courage under fire then you attack all Veterans of wars who witnessed atrocities, had limbs blown off, seen friends die, and served their country honorably.

As fighting continues to rage in Iraq and the death toll nears 1000 I am worried about the future of our soldiers. It is not just those that die in war, it is those who come home with PTST and become alcoholics, become homeless, and have to rely on treatment from local VFW hospitals to stay alive. 58,000 is the number that died during combat in Vietnam. Many more have since had their lives ruined and either died of drug overdoses or comitted suicide.

Vietnam was a preemptive war. Vietnam was no threat to the United States. We were told we were attacked at the Gulf of Tonkin. We were told we were fighting to keep the South Vietnamese free from the Communists. We hear almost the same thing in Iraq. We were told that Saddam's WMD program was an iminent threat to the United States and the free world. Since the WMD didn't pan out we now hear that the war was about giving the Iraqis freedom and freeing them from a horrible dictator. They say Iraq is just one step in the never ending war on terror. If we are going to invade countries just to overthrow dictators and give the people freedom where do we go next? Cuba? China? Almost every country in Africa?

Ask yourself, was Iraq worth it? Was it worth it to possibly ruin a generation? Does Bush support the troops?

We should have learned our lesson about pre-emptive wars 30 years ago.

I wrote this pretty quickly so there are probably some typos and grammatical errors in it. I am thinking of submitting it to the local newspaper at my university after I make some revisions. My university has 15,000 students and another 2,000 or so staff. The university paper is read by everybody. On the days it is published you can see everybody reading it around campus. 17,000 people is a lot. Especially since New Mexico is a toss up state. I am probably going to submit it in early October.

I wonder if Anj will let me refer to his brothers in the final article? If he doesn't see this thread I will just PM him later asking for permission.