Mr Burke -
I take exception to a few of your statements -
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Our country and our world have real problems, none of which are getting
solved by hashing over what happened 35 years ago.
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This needs to be hashed out, since we apparently have not learned anything
what happened 35 years ago.
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If you went to college, you automatically got a four year deferment,
provided you stayed in school.
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Uh, only if you graduated High School 1969 or earlier, and went straight
to college. After then, college would not get you a deferment. And it
was not just four years, as I remember, if you were accepted to graduate
school, you got a 'stay of execution'.
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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.
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I am not happy about the way we went to war in Iraq, and not very happy
about the amount of planning that went into it either, but something had
to be done, the UN was getting nowhere, and was just keeping the situation
at a slow boil and appeared to want to keep it that way.
John Kerry's position on the matter does not make any sense. It is clear
the CIA's report on the matter had inflated the situation, yet John Kerry
was not smart enough to see through that? Tony Blair's government came
up with the same information, and his party is not conservative. Kerry
voted against the first gulf war, which practically the whole world
supported. So the only thing I can think of is the man had his own
political reasons for doing what he did, with no consideration about
what he should do as a responsible leader.
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GWB had the juice to get into the Guard.
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I have an aquaintance of mine who got into the Guard without using any
'juice', it can be done.
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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.
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We had a treaty obligation to protect South Vietnam. The way we went about
it was wrong, but we had legitimate authority to do what we did. There
were the same issue with terrorism there as now in Iraq.
Our authority to deal with the Iraq situation is not as profound as that
of Vietnam, but the concept of not allowing a troublemaker to continue
to operate is sound. The methods we are using are not as effective as
they could be.
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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.
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I will not waste bandwidth on my opinion of Psychiatric care. I sure hope
this man gets better help. PTSD is what is sounds like from over here.
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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.
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The ends sometimes justify the means, situational ethics. I don't think
we were allowed to finish the job the first time, so now we are doing that.
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