QandO

February 11, 2004

Veteran backlash?
Posted by McQ

You have to wonder if John F'n Kerry hasn't overplayed his hand in regards to his service in Viet Nam. Why, you ask? Because, as Paul Harvey would hint, there is "the rest of the story" with which he has to contend .... namely what he did after his service in Viet Nam.

"When he stands up with Jane Fonda, someone that is so notorious and hated by veterans, and Tom Hayden, and a couple of others as well and supports their agenda," Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, California Republican, said yesterday, "it diminishes the service some of us almost gave our lives for, and the over 56,000 people that lost their lives —it slaps their families in the face."

A picture, which has been circulating on the internet, shows Kerry at a rally with Jane Fonda at the 1970 Valley Forge Anti-War rally. Kerry's staff responds to the Fonda connection thusly:

"John Kerry and Jane Fonda were just acquaintances," Ms. Cutter said. "What's important to understand here is two things: He met her before she went to Vietnam, and he did not approve of her very controversial trip."

Really? Well some would argue what he did wasn't really any different in principle, just degree.

How can you SAY that, you ask?! Well here, read it for yourself:

Rep. Sam Johnson, Texas Republican, who spent nearly seven years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam, said yesterday the photograph of Mr. Kerry with Miss Fonda will hurt him nevertheless.

"I think it symbolizes how two-faced he is, talking about his war reputation, which is questionable on the one hand, and then coming out against our veterans who were fighting over there on the other," Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson recalled that his North Vietnamese captors played recordings of Miss Fonda telling U.S. troops to give up the war. "Seeing this picture of Kerry with her at antiwar demonstrations in the United States just makes me want to throw up."

Viet Nam vets are NOT going to take kindly to this. Nor are vets in genereal. Plenty were against the war, but they didn't take it out to the streets in displays which couldn't help but undermine the morale of those troops still in combat. Anyone who lived through that era as a soldier remembers well the attitude wasn't "I'm against the war, not against the soldiers" as the Kerry spin machine would have you believe, but it was anti-war AND anti-soldier. Frankly, that was just UNFORGIVABLE. And now he's intimating that National Guard service isn't as "honorable" as his service when we have Guardsmen IN Iraq fighting and dying? Has he no shame?

As I've been pointing out, the two-faces of John Kerry are going to be displayed often in this campaign. And the face he wants the voters to see is going to be constantly undermined by the reality of his past. I see his "veteran's appeal" as something which will rapidly drain away as his anti-war past is given a deeper look.

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