Re: Old wars...

Delvieron@aol.com
Thu, 4 Mar 1999 07:01:31 EST

On the Viet Nam war and the Anti-War Movement

I was born in 1971, so none of this is from personal experience. I don't think most of the protesters were motivated by cowardice, as making yourself a visible target is not the best protective strategy...no, I'm thinking the cowards of that time were probably keeping fairly quiet on the issue, just making sure that they flunked their physicals and had their college deferments (not that anyone who flunked or went to college was a coward, just that the cowards wanted to fall within these groups for their own protection). I believe in the early phase of the Anti-War Movement, when the slogans were,
"Bring the Boys home," that these people were honestly concerned and
expressing their feelings about what American policy should be. I have no problem with that. When the Anti-War Movement mutated into, "Bring the War home," is what I found reprehensible. At that point, the Movement began to revile their nation and the soldiers who fought for it as somehow Evil, and further, by their actions they gave aid and comfort to our adversaries. No, this wasn't cowardice; it was traitorous. Take for example the famous case of Jane Fonda; as a woman, she was not in danger of being drafted. On the contrary, she voluntarily placed herself in harm's way by visiting North Viet Nam. And by doing so in from of the media, she handed our adversary some great propaganda. In my opinion, the best thing to do would have kept the
"Bring the Boys Home" motto and been true to it. Unless of course you
believed the war was the right action, in which case I would have taken the kids gloves off and occupied North Viet Nam. One or the other, but instead we had limbo.

Glen Finney