| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
"We were waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said
to push on." --- Lyrics from "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" by
leftist folk singer Pete Seeger, who used the song as an
allegorical attack on LBJ's Vietnam War policies during a
controversial performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour in the late '60s.
Let's say you are a hotshot Democratic Party
campaign-strategizing pooh bah and you're looking for the best
way to overcome the disheartening--and in your mind,
illegitimate--defeat your party suffered in 2000. What do you
do once the wack jobs like Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton et al., are,
thankfully, weeded out and the dour and portentous Kerry
becomes the candidate by default?
Well, how about this. Wouldn't it be jolly well clever to pass
John F. Kerry off as a John F. Kennedy-esque war hero? Think
about it. Kerry served in Vietnam, unlike his opponent;
Kennedy is generally admired by the masses so a comparison to
him isn't a bad thing; and Kerry's got nothing else particularly
notable in his resume to run on.
The problem is--and it's a doozy--we're talking about the
wrong war and the wrong war hero. You would think that
anyone of the Democratic persuasion would understand that
since Vietnam was the most divisive conflict in American
history, making it the centerpiece of a presidential campaign
would be, at the very least, dicey, and at worst, catastrophic,
especially since this particular candidate is the very
personification of the divisiveness epitomized by that war.
So before you could say "Gulf of Tonkin," the Kerry
campaign found itself knee deep in the Big Muddy.
See, it doesn't make any sense to present as a war hero
someone who, after spending four months in the war and
suffering superficial wounds, got the heck out, returned home
and made it his all-consuming passion to slander every
American soldier, from buck private to four-star general, who
ever served in Vietnam.
Anyone who doesn't live in a cave--or , in the case of al
Qaida, even those who do--has heard about Kerry's
congressional testimony in which he charged that Americans
serving in Vietnam routinely "had . . . raped, cut off ears, cut off
heads . . . cut off limbs, blown up bodies . . . razed villages in a
fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned food stocks
and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
News flash for Kerry and the Democrats: Most Vietnam vets
don't like being branded war criminals, particularly by one of
their own, and they tend to have long memories about such
things. Which is why the Kerry campaign quickly got waist
deep in the Big Muddy.
One of the Swift boat guys, Paul Galanti, has said he first
heard Kerry's testimony when it was broadcast by his North
Vietnamese captors over the public address system in the
infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison. How demoralizing would that
be to hear Kerry's damning words bouncing off the walls as
you're rotting away in captivity? Recently, in a television ad by
the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, Galanti said, "John Kerry
gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in
North Vietnam, in the prison camps, took torture to avoid
saying."
Democrats have condemned the Swift boat tv ads as part of
the Republican "smear machine," but as smears go, it pales in
comparison to the one Kerry did on everyone who ever served
in Vietnam. And now the Kerry campaign is waist deep in the
Big Muddy and getting deeper every day.
Look, you can't take away from Kerry the fact that he
voluntarily put his life on the line to serve his country. And he
had every right to criticize the war when he came back if he
thought it was wrong, unwinnable or whatever. But there's a
right way and a wrong way to go about that criticism.
Grotesque exaggeration and aligning oneself with the
commie-pinko, Molotov cocktail-throwing crowd--whose
overarching goal at the time was to overthrow the U.S.
government, capitalism and anything else you can think
of--seem indicative of rather poor judgment, particularly for
someone who may have already been setting his sights on one
day running for president.
For someone who is renowned for his ability to discern and
dissect every nuance of complex issues, the Vietnam War hero
campaign strategy seems like an incredibly boneheaded tactic.
Now, Kerry finds himself neck deep in the Big Muddy--and still
he says to push on.
"We were waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said
to push on." --- Lyrics from "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" by
leftist folk singer Pete Seeger, who used the song as an
allegorical attack on LBJ's Vietnam War policies during a
controversial performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour in the late '60s.
Let's say you are a hotshot Democratic Party
campaign-strategizing pooh bah and you're looking for the best
way to overcome the disheartening--and in your mind,
illegitimate--defeat your party suffered in 2000. What do you
do once the wack jobs like Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton et al., are,
thankfully, weeded out and the dour and portentous Kerry
becomes the candidate by default?
Well, how about this. Wouldn't it be jolly well clever to pass
John F. Kerry off as a John F. Kennedy-esque war hero? Think
about it. Kerry served in Vietnam, unlike his opponent;
Kennedy is generally admired by the masses so a comparison to
him isn't a bad thing; and Kerry's got nothing else particularly
notable in his resume to run on.
The problem is--and it's a doozy--we're talking about the
wrong war and the wrong war hero. You would think that
anyone of the Democratic persuasion would understand that
since Vietnam was the most divisive conflict in American
history, making it the centerpiece of a presidential campaign
would be, at the very least, dicey, and at worst, catastrophic,
especially since this particular candidate is the very
personification of the divisiveness epitomized by that war.
So before you could say "Gulf of Tonkin," the Kerry
campaign found itself knee deep in the Big Muddy.
See, it doesn't make any sense to present as a war hero
someone who, after spending four months in the war and
suffering superficial wounds, got the heck out, returned home
and made it his all-consuming passion to slander every
American soldier, from buck private to four-star general, who
ever served in Vietnam.
Anyone who doesn't live in a cave--or , in the case of al
Qaida, even those who do--has heard about Kerry's
congressional testimony in which he charged that Americans
serving in Vietnam routinely "had . . . raped, cut off ears, cut off
heads . . . cut off limbs, blown up bodies . . . razed villages in a
fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned food stocks
and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
News flash for Kerry and the Democrats: Most Vietnam vets
don't like being branded war criminals, particularly by one of
their own, and they tend to have long memories about such
things. Which is why the Kerry campaign quickly got waist
deep in the Big Muddy.
One of the Swift boat guys, Paul Galanti, has said he first
heard Kerry's testimony when it was broadcast by his North
Vietnamese captors over the public address system in the
infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison. How demoralizing would that
be to hear Kerry's damning words bouncing off the walls as
you're rotting away in captivity? Recently, in a television ad by
the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, Galanti said, "John Kerry
gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in
North Vietnam, in the prison camps, took torture to avoid
saying."
Democrats have condemned the Swift boat tv ads as part of
the Republican "smear machine," but as smears go, it pales in
comparison to the one Kerry did on everyone who ever served
in Vietnam. And now the Kerry campaign is waist deep in the
Big Muddy and getting deeper every day.
Look, you can't take away from Kerry the fact that he
voluntarily put his life on the line to serve his country. And he
had every right to criticize the war when he came back if he
thought it was wrong, unwinnable or whatever. But there's a
right way and a wrong way to go about that criticism.
Grotesque exaggeration and aligning oneself with the
commie-pinko, Molotov cocktail-throwing crowd--whose
overarching goal at the time was to overthrow the U.S.
government, capitalism and anything else you can think
of--seem indicative of rather poor judgment, particularly for
someone who may have already been setting his sights on one
day running for president.
For someone who is renowned for his ability to discern and
dissect every nuance of complex issues, the Vietnam War hero
campaign strategy seems like an incredibly boneheaded tactic.
Now, Kerry finds himself neck deep in the Big Muddy--and still
he says to push on.