Channel surfing for truth 10/17/04

Last night, I ran across Oliver Stone's "JFK" and, although I've seen it before, and find it difficult to watch any movie in which Kevin Costner has to try a accent, any accent, I found myself compelled to watch just for the views of New Orleans, where my second son is a college student. It may be silly, and I suspect that Stone probably missed the mark in this almost hysterical conspiracy theory film, but seeing movie (or commercial) scenes of New Orleans locations makes me feel closer to my son, somehow. I miss my two boys who live away from home, one in Louisiana and the other in North Carolina. I can't imagine how the parents and families of our troops deployed at war feel, and my heart breaks for them when I think back to the first presidential debate, when President Bush admitted that we were surprised by the ease of our early apparent military victory in Iraq, saying that we expected the Iraqi forces would "stay and fight." I thought this was a shocking admission of our military's failure to be prepared for the possibility that the enemy would carefully dissipate as we invaded, to regroup as a guerilla force, that their fighters would slip into the general population to wage the only kind of war they could win against a larger, stronger, occupying force. I've been married for 23 years to a Vietnam combat veteran, a "Lerp" (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol), and have pieced together his war story over many years. It is not pretty, and while he survived his war experience, he was forever changed, as will be all of those service people who return from Iraq, apparently intact. Being a part of a large conventional occupying force opposing guerilla fighters fully integrated into the occupied country is impossible. It doesn't work. We're not liberating the Iraqis, we're radicalizing them. We're beginning to see the effects of this on the morale of our troops in Iraq. They, more than anyone, know there were no WMDs and have, by now, figured out that the Iraqis had nothing to do with the events of September 11th, 2001. They are fighting for their lives and their buddies, while counting the days until they can come home, against opponents who believe they are fighting for their freedom, who will continue to fight until they win or die. The dynamics that arise out of this are not pretty, because the occupying force becomes frustrated, and it gets ugly. It got very, very ugly in Vietnam and one young officer came back, many years ago and tried to tell the truth about what had happened. I have taken the following quote from the Swift Vets website: 'Kerry testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971, telling the Senators and a national audience that American troops "...had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads... cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan... and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam..." and accused the U.S. military of committing war crimes "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."' Now, that statement would have been appallingly unpatriotic if it had not been TRUE. Unfortunately, IT WAS TRUE, which made Kerry's willingness, even then, to talk about our nation's mistakes, his instinctive need to bring the ugly secret into the light in order to heal the wound, the RIGHT thing to do. Nice boys killed babies in Vietnam. They didn't go over there wanting to do those things, but in a guerilla war, it's impossible to tell who is a "friendly" and who is the enemy. Charlie (the Viet Cong) slipped in and out of view, and women and children were enlisted as combatants (or shields), some against their will, to fight the invaders or die, sometimes working both sides in their desperate struggle for survival. I know for a fact that, driven by the need for a "body count" that would make it look like we were winning (in order to continue to secure congressional funding), our military hierarchy rewarded war crimes with medals in Vietnam. War crimes, such as those Kerry cited in his testimony before Congress, arise out of fear and frustration, combined, over time. Watch enough of your "best friends" blown to bits (which sometimes involves having them splattered all over you), and some soldiers go off the deep end, flip out and seek revenge when and where they can. We know of at least one brave soldier who resisted this, who saw what was happening in Vietnam, to Vietnam, came home and felt compelled to tell the truth. His name is John Kerry. Award-winning writer Hal Crowther wrote recently (http://www.populist.com/04.10.crowther.html): "I don't think it's accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It's polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president's brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood-soaked flag. The most lavishly funded, most cynical, most sophisticated political campaign in human history will be out trolling for fools. I pray to God it doesn't catch you." I certainly can't say it any better than that. Now, my husband doesn't vote. He voted one time in his life, for Nixon in 1968, because Nixon promised in that campaign to end the war in Vietnam, while the man I would eventually marry waited to be drafted. The revelation of Nixon's big lie was all it took to turn the father of my children against our political process forever. He doesn't believe anything any politician says, ever. I think we have, in this election, a unique opportunity to choose a candidate who has proven his willingness, even his need, to tell the truth. I made a decision today. Tomorrow, I'm driving to New Orleans for one night to see my son, to take him a few things he needs and to have dinner with him, because I can.