Pissed off
Aug. 24th, 2004 05:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI've been looking at how the opponents of the Democratic candidates have been playing for the past few years, and I'm pissed off.
I like to think I'd be pissed off even if I'd been in favor of the Republican candidates.
Because the swift boat ads are the latest in a long series of attacks on those who've served.
Max Cleland
Al Gore
John Kerry
What tipped it was probably the fat-headed, intentionally obscurant, and false, statements by Bob Dole.
Max Cleland: He lost three limbs, when an American grenade went off in a hot LZ. He was jumping out a helicopter while people were shooting at him, and Ann Coulter says it was people like him who cost us the war.
Al Gore: Served as an enlisted soldier in Saigon. He was pilloried because it was, "soft" duty, and because he was one of some 170,000 troops whose tours were shortened by Nixon as part of Vietnamization.
John Kerry: He spent almost two-years training to for duties in a war he had reservations about, but went to anyway. He spent eight months in the combat theatre, four of them in some of the hottest Areas of Operation in Vietnam. He got three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star. He's being called a liar, and a sham artist; accused of managing to fake his awards for valor, and manufacturing his Purple Hearts.
How has it come to pass that we accept slurs on service as acceptable.
Dole, in particular (whom I voted for, in the Primaries, for his race for president, though not for the office itself) has earned more than scorn, he has forfeited the respect his valor in WW2 bought him, and now deserves nothing less than the back of my hand, and the cut direct.
He said Kerry never bled for his Purple Hearts, that they were for trivial wounds.
Well he knows better, twice. The Purple Heart is a simple award, get injured while in contact with the enemy, and you get it. Dole's first award of the Purple Heart came as the result of his error with a grenade (which is what those who tried to besmirch Cleland said, though the facts point to someone else making the mistake).
Dole described his as the kind of wound the Army fixed with, "Mercurachrome, and a Purple Heart."
And it was often like that. Bill Mauldin had a Willie and Joe cartoon where Willie tells the medic to just give him an aspirin, because he already had a Purple Heart. It matters not to me that Kerry, or Dole, may not have suffered any great harm for his Purple Heart.
One of the people in my unit got a Heart for getting a small piece of metal in her eye. No real harm. She wore an eye-patch for a week.
But if it had been a little larger, or a little faster, she might be blind in one eye, she might be dead. That could have happened to Dole, it could have happened to Kerry. They were injured, while under enemy fire, in the line of duty.
That's what the award is for. You don't get a bigger Purple Heart for losing a leg than you do for getting a scratch. You get it because it might have killed you. Sometimes your family gets it because it did kill you.
This is unconscionable.
As a vet, these people have lost my vote, until they redeem themselves, they can whistle for it.
I like to think I'd be pissed off even if I'd been in favor of the Republican candidates.
Because the swift boat ads are the latest in a long series of attacks on those who've served.
Max Cleland
Al Gore
John Kerry
What tipped it was probably the fat-headed, intentionally obscurant, and false, statements by Bob Dole.
Max Cleland: He lost three limbs, when an American grenade went off in a hot LZ. He was jumping out a helicopter while people were shooting at him, and Ann Coulter says it was people like him who cost us the war.
Al Gore: Served as an enlisted soldier in Saigon. He was pilloried because it was, "soft" duty, and because he was one of some 170,000 troops whose tours were shortened by Nixon as part of Vietnamization.
John Kerry: He spent almost two-years training to for duties in a war he had reservations about, but went to anyway. He spent eight months in the combat theatre, four of them in some of the hottest Areas of Operation in Vietnam. He got three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star. He's being called a liar, and a sham artist; accused of managing to fake his awards for valor, and manufacturing his Purple Hearts.
How has it come to pass that we accept slurs on service as acceptable.
Dole, in particular (whom I voted for, in the Primaries, for his race for president, though not for the office itself) has earned more than scorn, he has forfeited the respect his valor in WW2 bought him, and now deserves nothing less than the back of my hand, and the cut direct.
He said Kerry never bled for his Purple Hearts, that they were for trivial wounds.
Well he knows better, twice. The Purple Heart is a simple award, get injured while in contact with the enemy, and you get it. Dole's first award of the Purple Heart came as the result of his error with a grenade (which is what those who tried to besmirch Cleland said, though the facts point to someone else making the mistake).
Dole described his as the kind of wound the Army fixed with, "Mercurachrome, and a Purple Heart."
And it was often like that. Bill Mauldin had a Willie and Joe cartoon where Willie tells the medic to just give him an aspirin, because he already had a Purple Heart. It matters not to me that Kerry, or Dole, may not have suffered any great harm for his Purple Heart.
One of the people in my unit got a Heart for getting a small piece of metal in her eye. No real harm. She wore an eye-patch for a week.
But if it had been a little larger, or a little faster, she might be blind in one eye, she might be dead. That could have happened to Dole, it could have happened to Kerry. They were injured, while under enemy fire, in the line of duty.
That's what the award is for. You don't get a bigger Purple Heart for losing a leg than you do for getting a scratch. You get it because it might have killed you. Sometimes your family gets it because it did kill you.
This is unconscionable.
As a vet, these people have lost my vote, until they redeem themselves, they can whistle for it.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 12:35 pm (UTC)How has it come to pass that we accept slurs on service as acceptable.
Most important line in your whole post.
I cannot believe the other day I got into a shouting match with someone about this -- I said about Kerry at least he went, and then she said crap, and then she started to play martyr because 'she bled for this country' and she meant that because her husband was in Vietnam WAY before he married her, and I topped off with no, you have no idea what it is like to be a military wife because YOU weren't one and I was, and besides, I put on a uniform, you didn't , so STFU. (I was in ROTC, which was no big deal, but she acted like she went overseas and singlehandedly saved the day, after sitting at home working at the PX tirelessly day in and out.)
People have no idea what it is like. I have less of an idea that some, more than others. And this swift boat crap isn't helping. More people should be outraged on the attacks of the service of a man who has served his country. And even if he didn't get wounded, I cannot imagine how awful it is to go off to a war. It's not like just getting stationed over in Frankfurt and going to Sachenhausen on Friday nights with your wife, taking your kids to the Oktoberfest, whatever.
I'm getting so ranty I can't make myself coherent! Bah.