Well put, John.  I'm truly concerned that I see the same polarization of our country now as I did back in the Vietnam days.  There are those that say we are %100 right to be in Irag, and those that feel we are 100% wrong.  This polarization, while always present in time of war, is troubling because, as was the case in Vietnam, Irag posed no credible threat to the U.S., and just as it was in Vietnam, major U.S. companies not directly involved with arms production are making a financial killing off of this war (let's just go ahead and name Haliburton/Brown and Root).  Once a war becomes big business, the reasons for being in the war can become even more cloudy and ugly.

I originally supported going into Iraq, but that's because I believed what my government was telling me...Iraq had WMD, and Iraq was courting the Taliban.  Hindsight shows neither claim to be credible.

I hear now the same rhetoric I did in the Vietnam era...we must keep fighting, so as to defend the honor of those who've already lost their lives... 

All in all, the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq are too many, and very freighting.

In closing, I pray that our involvement in Iraq remains honorable (and there is honor in admitting we may have been incorrect).  Should we find that our involvement in Iraq is less than honorable, than we as a nation need to ensure that we don't blame our soldiers for Iraq as we did in Vietnam, but rather, we hold responsible, to the correct degree, the politicians/businessmen/military leaders that benefited from it.


Signed, gott'a get some OT thoughts in now and again,

Ray Shahan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Burke
> Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 10:42 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:           [HP3000-L] OT: Enough already. No minds are being changed.
> 
> /RANT ON
> 
> Our country and our world have real problems, none of which are getting
> solved by hashing over what happened 35 years ago.
> 
> Did Kerry embellish things from his past? Probably. As we get older, our
> accomplishments tend to look better and our failures less important. This is
> especially true of politicians, but it is human nature for all of us.
> 
> Did Bush use family and political influence to join the Guard and get
> preferential treatment? Probably. Who among us is above using whatever
> outside influence we can to accomplish our goals? This too is human nature.
> 
> I am a contemporary of Clinton, Kerry and Bush. I spent the better part of a
> year stamped 1-A, USDA prime beef. For those of you who cannot get enough of
> this argument, let me tell you what the world was really like in the late
> sixties and early seventies if you were a young male 18 - 25.
> 
> If you went to college, you automatically got a four year deferment,
> provided you stayed in school. Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of
> young men went to college, not because they necessarily wanted to or were
> ready to, but because it bought them time to avoid the draft. By the late
> sixties it was becoming clear to many of us that our government was lying to
> us about Vietnam. There was nothing noble about what we were doing. We were
> not protecting our country. I probably would have benefited from a year or
> two bumming around the country/world before college, but I knew my
> government was lying. I was not going to go die in some rice patty in
> Vietnam for nothing. I entered college right out of high school.
> 
> All governments lie. Kerry learned this lesson late, much like he learned
> late that we had no business invading Iraq. He believed his government then
> and he believed it in 2002/2003 when he voted to give GWB the authority to
> wage war on Iraq because it supposedly posed a threat to the US. He now
> recognizes Iraq did not pose a threat. Even worse, our government has no> 
> exit strategy and totally miscalculated the response of the Iraq people.
> 
> But I digress. Kerry volunteered for Vietnam because he believed what his
> government was saying. He was patriotic. He went. He served honorably by any
> objective measure, risking his own well-being in the process. I respect him
> for doing that. He learned we had no business in Vietnam doing what we were
> doing. He got out as fast as he could and became an anti-war activist. He
> was not the only one. He was not the first. He was not the last. Now,
> thirty-five years later, he is simply the best known because he is running
> for President.
> 
> When I graduated from college (on time), my deferment ended and I was in the
> same position as GWB. Many of our contemporaries did not have as a strong
> feelings about the war as I did, they just knew it was at best an
> inconvenience and at worse a death sentence and so tried to avoid it as best
> they could. A popular option was the Guard. At that time the Guard rarely if
> ever was deployed overseas, and certainly not in combat. Joining the Guard
> was a safe, but acceptable, way to perform military service. It allowed you
> to keep all your options open for the future - unlike moving to Canada, etc.
> Of course everyone else figured this out at the same time and waiting lists
> abounded. It was common knowledge in the late 1960s that you needed juice to
> get into the Guard. While I did not personally try to get into the guard (I
> mistakenly was blaming the military for Vietnam, not the old men in
> Washington - if you want to get sick and mad all over again, watch the
> documentary Fog of War), I had friends who did. None was accepted, because
> none had any juice. Some ended up being drafted and some ended up enlisting,
> because by enlisting they could have some influence on assignment. Some went
> underground or to Canada. Others, like me, gamed the system hoping that the
> longer we delayed, the better chance we would have that something would
> change and we would not have to take more drastic measures.
> 
> GWB had the juice to get into the Guard. He would have us believe the
> country needed him to play airman flying around Texas and not flying combat
> missions in Vietnam. I respect him if he just admitted he went into the
> Guard to avoid going to Vietnam - because that is the truth. No one joined
> the Guard in the late 1960s because it was a good career move or to earn a
> little extra money. They joined to avoid the draft.
> 
> My father, a WWII vet, was a huge hawk on Vietnam; that is until I got my
> 1-A notice, at which point he became a dove. He supported my gaming and I am
> absolutely certain that if he had any pull, he would have worked to get me
> into a Guard unit.
> 
> As it happened, I worked the system long enough (legal delays) to still be
> out on the street when the first lottery was held. I went to bed thinking my
> number was 63 and contemplating my next move (literally), but by mid-day of
> the next day, I learned I was actually 308 - and safe. Let me tell you, a
> lot of beer was consumed that night. (Get me a little drunk and I do a
> funny - IMNSHO - 20 minutes on my whole military experience, including
> pre-induction physical.) However, in the years since, I've felt pangs of
> guilt because while I was delaying, gaming the system, someone else went in
> my place. I wonder if GWB ever felt any guilt?
> 
> So let's concede that Kerry has embellished and Bush used family influence
> to ride out the war and move on to the real problems facing our nation and
> world today.
> 
> The Vietnam veterans who are so aggressively anti-Kerry are living in a
> state of denial, still victims of Vietnam. I sympathize, but they need to
> move on. They need to come to grips finally with the fact they were sent
> over there to Vietnam to die because some old men in Washington were playing> 
> empire games. Just like today. America was not noble. We were not protecting
> ourselves. We were in fact behaving like common street thugs and bullies.
> And like street thugs and bullies, we met a nasty end. We lost. A whole
> generation, a whole nation, was traumatized. We cannot win the war in
> Vietnam 35 years later by trampling all over Iraq.
> 
> I respect John McCain even though I disagree with him on a number of things,
> because he has been able to put behind him an experience so horrendous none
> of us can adequately comprehend. That folks is courage. The 50,000 names on
> the Vietnam War Memorial are only a partial accounting of the costs and
> casualties of that misguided adventure in imperialism. Add to that the tens
> of thousands of missing body parts, the paralysis, etc.
> 
> Then there are the tens of thousands whose wounds are not visible. My former
> brother-in-law was wounded several times and decorated for his service in
> Vietnam. The doctors put him back together physically, but mentally and
> emotionally, ... At night when he tried to sleep, he would always go back to
> Vietnam --- and wake up screaming. Several years after coming back he
> snapped (nothing else can adequately describe what happened). He became a
> different person overnight. Someone who worked full time in a factory during
> the day, going to school at night getting all A's, suddenly deserted his
> seven month pregnant wife and 1 1/2 year old son and descended into the drug
> and crime sub-culture, bouncing around the country in and out of jail. The
> last I heard, about eight years ago, he was in jail in Florida. It is
> amazing he is still alive. He had the best psychiatric care the government
> could provide, but in the end it did not work. He is part of the walking
> dead of Vietnam, dead as sure as those whose names are on that wall.
> 
> We are doing it all over again.
> 
> And before any of you get your panties all in a knot, I supported going into
> Afghanistan - I just wish we had finished the job - because the Taliban and
> al-Qaeda were a threat.
> 
> While the world is probably better off without one more despot dictator
> (Sadam Hussein), we are being taught the lesson my parents tried to teach
> me: the ends do not justify the means.
> 
> John Burke
> 
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