Soldiers, Protestors, and Kerry

I was thinking about the vets from the swiftboat ads. Thinking about their anger at Kerry. Now that it has become apparent that they are not all Republicans or Bush supporters and that they have felt this way a long long time. It warms the heart that bloggers are mainly responsible for giving this story legs and not letting the media ignore it.

Kerry and the mainstream media would like this to be about campaign tactics and about smearing a candidate. But that is not what it is about at all. It is about the wounds of the soul of every American soldier that fought in Vietnam. I am too young to remember much about Vietnam, my brothers were too young to go. I have read history, seen movies, and seen documentaries on Vietnam. In my mind I chalked it up to a bad war controlled by men in Washington who didn't know how to win the war. But in the wonderful world of blogging I have been able to read about the stories of the men who went there and the men who didn't come back. One story I read was about a man who went there, came back, and then died saving people in the WTC on 9-11. His story is here www.mudvillegazette.com
look under "Best of Mudville" on the right side, and click "911 remembered: Rick Rescorla was a soldier." (Make sure you have tissues handy before reading)

If you want to understand the heart of a soldier read some of Greyhawks archives. Simply amazing. So after doing some of this reading I better understand the anger and resentment of the swiftboat vets. Kerry betrayed them, painted them out to be monsters. Is it no surprise that they don't wish to see him President?

One quote I found at the mudvillegazette stood out to me.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept by the exertions of a better man than himself."- John Stuart Mill

The thing that bothers me the most about the protesters that are descending on the Republican Convention is that these people have never known what it is like to live under tyranny. They take for granted the right they have to protest. They don't see the irony that they protest the very people who make it possible TO protest. Lovers of freedom and democracy. People dedicated to the idea of liberty. These protestors have never had to wait in 2 hour lines for bread. They have never had to live with the fear of government pulling them out of bed in the middle of the night for the dissent they shout, and then being never heard from again. They have never been so desperate to get to freedom that they are willing to put themselves and those they love on tiny self made rafts to endure dehydration, sharks, and drowning. Freedom is taken for granted by them, never thought of, never appreciated.

Our soldiers today are fighting a fight never seen or imagined before. They are our protectors, the ones who let us sleep in peace at night. They are the ones who let us leave our kids at school without worry, let us get on buses without fear, let us dream, work, learn, and live. Everyday since 9-11 that we have not been attacked is a tribute to their work. Honor is too small a word for these patriots. They give us much and ask so little. But what they do ask is to at least not smear their good name, not paint them as demented. This is the heart of the anger at Kerry by these vets. They were strong and true when it wasn't easy to be so. They endured much. Kerry spit in their faces. He took his medals and purple hearts and denounced them then, and now proudly holds them up for honor now. A betrayal of the highest order.

Here we are facing the greatest threat to freedom ever. The men who seek to destroy us, want those that they don't murder, to live without even the taste of freedom, to never be able to decide who is our leader, to never be able to voice dessent or concern, to never be able to listen to music, or dance, or wear what we wish, or worship as we see fit. Do the protestors not see the danger we face? Do they not see all that could be lost?

Kerry and the protestors are 2 sides of the same coin. They both underestimate this enemy and they both refuse to see the damage they have done to the American soldier.