From Baby Killer to War hero in 30 years

Although the anti-war movement had far too many persons (one would be too many and there were several thousands more) who demonized the troops who fought in Vietnam, I'm not sure if the Democratic party ever did the same. After all, it was Democrats who started (Kennedy) and escalated (Johnson) the war, so I don't think you can say that they were truly anti-war. And I've never read a statement dating from the later years of the Vietnam War from either party that called our soldiers "baby killers." If you have, please share them with us - it would be especially interesting to research anyone who did say such a thing and see what they're doing today.

 

911 changed everything!



Agh! I've got too much work to do today. No time to play!

 

For me it's more of the fact that rich, white kids with his connections could have easily found a way to avoid going to Vietnam. He didn't.

Now the war itself and the atrocities that were commited are a different story. Just like regardless of how i feel about the iraq war and the atrocities commited those soldiers are still heroes.

 

to be fair Dak, I doubt most of the radical hippies that were using the baby killer label ended up as Democrats.....I know a few(old radical hippies) and they are for the most part Greenies and Independents.....only one or two are Dems or Repubs.

btw, am I the only one who thinks the label "war hero" gets throw around way to often? Lots of soldiers got Purple Hearts and Silver/Bronze Stars...I for one think that it takes more than a couple of medals to make one a *true* war hero.

 

I would say that you are wrong on that account. What about Bill Clinton, who was a anti-war protester in England and admitted smoking dope, but not inhaling. How about the activities of Hildabeast, who was a notorious far-left wing radical as a youth (still is today) and defended members of the Black Panthers, a seditious group seeking to overthrow the USG? That's just two for starters. The Democrats are the children of the 60's.

As for the term "war hero," I think that anyone who has to talk about how they were courageous in a time of war are anything but heroes. The Sergeant Alvin York's, Gunny Carlos Hathcocks, Pappy Boyington, Joe Foss's and other real heroes of our age shirked at the label of a war hero. Joe Foss, a highly decorated USMC ace in WWII told me "I was just doing my job. I'm no hero" and he wasn't kidding.

 

I do agree that the people you listed are the guys who I consider true war heroes...the accomplishments of those guys and ones like them that arent as well known deserve the label....

as far as me being wrong.....you dont know that...you dont know me, you dont know the people I know that fit into the catagory as "old radical hippie"....and I simply wont respond to the rest of your partisan baiting...

 

Partisan baiting? Instead of denying that Bill and Hildabeast were rather radical operators in the 60's, just as a good example, you dodge the question with an accusation that I'm "baiting" you. I'm not baiting, but giving you an example of two bigwigs in the party that were 60's radicals. I'd add John Kerry to that list as well after he returned.

 

bama, please stop. That's the kind of stuff that will get this forum closed.

It's simply not necessary for you to preface every single post by saying all democrats are evil...blah blah blah. We know how you feel, all it does is provoke people into arguing about it and it degenerating into a thread derailing pissing match. I should know, I've participated in them many times.

Just stop, please.

 

I never said they were evil at any point in my post. I just simply pointed out that the generalization that most 60's radicals are not Democrats, but Greenies and other far-left fringe operators is not neccessarily true. If I was going to say every single Democrat was evil, I'd just come out and say it.

 

Easy: If he's on "your" side, he's a hero. If he's not, he's a baby killer.

That's a theme you can find throughout virtually any modern political discourse. If you back a candidate, you'll justify what he did or did not do. If you don't, you'll vilify him for what he did or did not do.

It's all about "winning," not understanding.

 

I do not consider John Kerry to be a war hero.

I consider him to be someone who served with honor in Vietnam.

If anything, I consider him to be a hero for what he did upon his return...organizing Vietnam Veterans Against the War and protesting the war in Vietnam. That, to me, took one hell of alot of guts since it pitted him in diametric opposition to many of his war comrades....some of whom we are seeing in "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth".

 

Thank you.
In one of the threads that got locked, I posted about friends of mine who got drafted and went to Nam. Two of them were in units that spent most of their time in the field, when the majority of soldiers over there were in relatively safe postings. (at least until TET) It was one of the screwed up things we did there, sending the same people again and again into combat zones, instead of rotating everyone. (we did the same in WWII, but that's another story) One of my buddies was badly wounded after several months hunting Charlie, and came back against the war. Another became addicted to the heroin that was potent and all over the place there... he was in combat and also came back against the war. (the heroin eventually killed him)

Kerry was high-profile on his return, no doubt about it, but when he gets slammed for protesting the war on his return, just remember that huge numbers of other Vietnam vets felt the same way. They just didn't get the notoriety.

By the way, I didn't vote for Kerry in the primaries, and he was far from my first choice, but I obviously support him over the incumbent.

 

His message, when he returned home, went along with popular opinion

real gutsy, going with the flow there....

 

Popular opinion with the younger set, but definitely not overall.

 

That's for sure. And sometimes people forget how popular the war in Vietnam was in the early years. Anyone could google the poll numbers, I suspect. Things changed as it dragged on and became more and more "messy", and there didn't seem to be an end in sight, and the Brass kept asking for more troops, and LBJ kept micro-managing things, and the news coverage began to swing the other way, and the casualties mounted and mounted. Yes, I remember the time pretty well.

 

I'm glad you posted...it reminds me of stories my ex-girlfriend's dad told me about the war (he was a career NCO in the Army that repeatedly volunteered to stay).

He said that things got worse as the war went on in time. He said that heroin use was a fringe thing that became much more mainstream over the years than anyone would ever admit. He was convinced it was part of Hanoi's war effort, that all the heroin were in the same mass-produced blue vials and was available everywhere.

He said the heroin, political needs of whatever president that was in power, and the growing hostility of new draftees to the war itself was at odds with an Army interested in winning a war.

The Army, he said, was pretty clueless as to how to deal with the drug problem and during his tenure, gave users a week of sick leave and a bronze star (and put them back into their jobs (not kidding). They were too hard up for manpower to just ship people home for shooting up.

That story also made me skeptical after that about judging a guy's military service by decorations, and this isn't really a Vietnam thing. More medals were given out in the great war that is Grenada than there were participants.

He said that it was hard to imagine the US winning a war with conditions they way they were in Vietnam, especially with many of the re-uppers not being patriots so much as not wanting to ruin their steady cheap supply of heroin.

Sorry to go on...I just never heard anyone else talk about the heroin problem in Vietnam...