Blog Me No Blogs: MORE SWIFT BOAT LIES

"JOHN KERRY TREATED WITH THE ENEMY"(?)

But, Unfortunately For The U.S.A.,
It Didn't Work

I was talking to some dumb guy the other day about the election. Like most dumb guys, he's for Bush. He assured me that this was true: John Kerry had met with the North Vietnamese in Paris (FRANCE!!!) while he was still in the Navy, back in the Sixties. I've heard this rumour before, but I couldn't recall where. On it's face, it's absurd. While he was in the Navy, Kerry was nowhere near Paris, While on active duty, he was in combat, in Vietnam. Then, after getting shot, and getting medals for it, he came home, and was released from active duty. Whatever he did after that, he did as a civilian. (Paris, {FRANCE!!!}, by the way, now stands in for Moscow, {RUSSIA!!!}, in crypto-fascist iconography.)

Also ridiculous on its' face: WHY would a foreign government negotiate anywhere with some schlub civilian with no political position in the U.S.? And, what could possibly happen? Kerry had no authority or connections to the Nixon government. What would be the point of negotiating with him?

So, I looked it up. Good old Internet. This bit of flummery had completely passed me by, back in September. It seems Kerry, and lots of other people, did meet with Vietnamese officials in Paris (FRANCE!!!). That's where the so-called "peace talks" were being held, for FIVE years, starting in 1968. Tricky Dick Nixon, of Watergate fame, had just gotten himself elected on a Bushian lie claiming he had a "secret plan for peace" in Vietnam.

If he had a peace plan, why not share it with the then-President, LBJ, and save some American lives? Wasn't Nixon, in effect, treating with the enemy, before his election, a la Reagan's arms-for-hostages election-eve deal with the Iranians in 1980, the "October Surprise"? And Nixon, like Reagan later on, was a credible national candidate of the second-largest party in the US, then running for President of the United States. But, just a candidate, not yet the President. Did he negotiate with the Vietnamese, behind Johnson's back? Hell no, he did it on national TV, every night, in campaign ads and speeches, with that phony promise of a secret peace plan! Did that prolong the war, and the suffering of those captured, wounded, killed and bereaved? Hell yes!

Especially since, as it turned out, Nixon's plan was to drag out peace negotiations for years, giving him time to win a military victory in 'Nam, while pacifying us on the home front, by any means necessary, such as COINTELPRO and Watergate. Nixon took a small, three-year-old conflict in an obscure and unimportant (to us) faraway foreign land, and turned it into a major 9-year debacle costing 50,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives. After dragging half a million men over to Vietnam, many of them kicking and screaming, and dropping more bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos than we dropped on Germany, Japan and Italy in WWII, Nixon lost the war, and had to run home with his tail between his legs.

The US has never really recovered from Nixon's acts of treachery on this massive scale. Our image in the world as defenders of freedom and fairness, liberty and human dignity, was forever tarnished. Our military might and honor were called into question, and our ability and willingness to act have been seriously damaged, to this very day. The traitors on the Right, Democratic and Republican "Hawks" alike (who got us into the Vietnam mess against all expert advice, and then blew it through piss-poor planning and execution) are still trying to blame somebody, anybody else for their shameful acts, and ultimate failure.

Sound familiar? Here we are in 2004, almost forty years after we sent that first big bunch of troops into Vietnam, doing the same damned thing in Iraq. Then, as now, it was all based on lies, miscalculations, and unrealistic ideology. If only there had been a young John Kerry, travelling to Iraq three years ago: Maybe nobody would have died. Hey, if we can celebrate our "citizen-soldiers," why not our citizen-diplomats? It's too bad young Kerry didn't have any authority or connections. He could have saved a lot of heartbreak and humiliation, for both sides, who are, by the way, no longer enemies. And, for most of us, on both sides, we never really were...

Swift Boat Veterans rip visits with N. Vietnamese, Viet Cong

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