Não faço a defesa de Kerry, mas estranho (como em muitos outros aspectos) uma direita a enveredar pelo descrédito da instituição das medalhas militares. Pelo menos Kerry teve no Vietname, coisa que não pode ser dita por muitos dos seus opositores que decidem sobre acções militares que nada têm que ver com a defesa territorial dos EUA, e tirou as conclusões certas sobre uma guerra que se provou inútil e trágica (teve na provável origem da queda do Príncipe do Cambodja na sequência do qual se deu o genocídio que só parou com a invasão do Cambodja pelos ... Vietcongs).
Cometeu excessos na sua crítica? talvez sim talvez não, mas e os excessos ideológicos de juventude de uma boa parte dos fundadores neoconservadores vindos do trotskismo? O que sei é que coisas certas podem ser ditas por quem diz outras erradas. E vice-versa.
"An excerpt from his Senate statement for Vietnam Veterans Against the War on April 22, 1971.:
"(...)In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to use the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
We are probably much more angry than that and I don't want to go into the foreign policy aspects because I am outclassed here.
I know that all of you talk about every possible alternative of getting out of Vietnam. We understand that. We know you have considered the seriousness of the aspects to the utmost level and I am not going to try to dwell on that, but I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism.
What Was Found and Learned in Vietnam
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. (...)
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties.
We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Vietcong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. (...)
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. (...)
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese ...
Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake.
Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
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