Blog of Sin

Deroy Murdock laid out some points, trying to show John Kerry as always saying shit about servicemen.  I’m gonna have to give my opinion below:

Last December 4 [2005], Kerry told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation: “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women…”

Kerry’s not talking shit about soldiers, he’s talking shit about policy.  This is like me saying “no-knock searches are unconstitutional, and U.S. citizens should not be terrorized by police officers in the dead of night” and then people saying I’m shitting on the cops.  No, I’m shitting on the policy that the cops are enforcing.

While running for president, Kerry put forth the self-contradictory proposition that Bush unilaterally took America into Iraq to lead a multilateral Coalition of hapless fighters.

Kerry trying to show the poor bastards of other countries that have to fight along side us in Iraq have been hoodwinked.  Nothing about American soldiers.

On September 6, 2004, Kerry trivialized the international boots on the ground that march right beside ours. He called this “the phoniest thing I’ve ever heard.” At that time, 124 foreign soldiers had been killed in non-phony combat in Iraq.

In terms of men on the ground in Iraq, coalition parters have given a “trivial” amount of help.  While the life of each man is not trivial, going by the non-personal numbers only can lead anyone to say such a thing.  But again, nothing against American soldiers.

In September 2003, Kerry said, “This President’s pride has brought us a coalition of the few, barely willing to do anything at all: 160 Mongolians, 43 Estonians, and 83 Filipinos isn’t a coalition; it’s a cover-up.”

Still nothing about American soldiers.  Compared to something like 155,000 American troops, yeah, that’s a very small amount, not a big help to us.  The problem comes from interpretation of the numbers.  Each number is a life, and sometimes that’s hard to understand.  The callous way these numbers are talked about is the tragedy, but the anchorpeople on the nightly news do it every single night.

On March 13, 2003, Kerry described the then-46 nations supporting America’s liberation of Iraq as “a coalition of the coerced and the bribed.”

He’s describing nations, not our soldiers.  What the fuck?  Talk about reaching, Deroy.

The rest is about Vietnam…

“We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals.”

That’s what combat is about.  If you think the people pointing guns at you across the way are human, you might not shoot.  Best to dehumanize, feel the pain later.  Here Kerry is talking about “America,” not necessarily “American Soldiers”, but even if it was just about American soldiers, dehumanizing the enemy is part of war.

Kerry decried what he called “war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command….”

Did war crimes occur on a daily basis?  I believe that’s been shown to be true, and Deroy admits atrocities happened:

“Despite limited American atrocities in Vietnam [...]“

So Kerry really isn’t shitting on the troops in this one, is he?  He’s talking about officers turning a blind eye to war crimes (something we try to avoid, but I personally don’t see how to not commit “war crimes” in a time of war).

Kerry embraced the pronouncements of Vietnam War veterans at the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit that he helped organize earlier that year. As Kerry put it: 

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Again, talking about war crimes, not all the American troops as stupid, dumb or idiots.

So these examples showing how bad John Kerry is to our troops are a bunch of bullshit.

I think this whole situation is disgusting, that Kerry’s remarks were taken out of context, and it’s a big deal for nothing.  This does not mean that I support John Kerry for President or any other elected office.  I don’t think he’d help America simply because he has no founding philosophy upon which to base decisions.  He just decides by the seat of his pants, as most politicians do, and hope the bread and circuses keep the masses amused.