Good War, Bad War
The other day, talk in the newsroom turned to those supple tools of Satan, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. (I have no trouble couching that in terms of religious moralism, even though these are secular liberal folks, because I've heard the word "evil" far more often from Bush-haters than I have from Bush himself.)
The topic of the harrangue was what John Kerry did, or didn't do, to earn his medal in Vietnam. My co-worker was pumping up the fact that, yes, in fact, Lieut. Kerry was a gung-ho soldier, fighting the good fight against the Viet Cong, shot up a whole village, and killed one of their big bad men, not just some wimpy teenager (as SBVT say). He got quite agitated about the questioning of Kerry's battle heroics, and how dare anyone say otherwise, and why didn't Ted Koppel expose their lies?
The odd part is, the person doing the ranting is someone whose stock of stories, until this election season, largely hinged on his activities as an anti-war protester during the Vietnam era, all the big marches and disruptions he participated in, and how proud he was of everything he had done to stop that unjust and illegal war.
The topic of the harrangue was what John Kerry did, or didn't do, to earn his medal in Vietnam. My co-worker was pumping up the fact that, yes, in fact, Lieut. Kerry was a gung-ho soldier, fighting the good fight against the Viet Cong, shot up a whole village, and killed one of their big bad men, not just some wimpy teenager (as SBVT say). He got quite agitated about the questioning of Kerry's battle heroics, and how dare anyone say otherwise, and why didn't Ted Koppel expose their lies?
The odd part is, the person doing the ranting is someone whose stock of stories, until this election season, largely hinged on his activities as an anti-war protester during the Vietnam era, all the big marches and disruptions he participated in, and how proud he was of everything he had done to stop that unjust and illegal war.
