The Dishonor Of John Kerry

Sadly I can’t get Hugh Hewitt where I live, much to my annoyance, so I missed his show where he played audio from John Kerry’s Congressional testimony in 1971. Fortunately Mitch Berg was all over it, and from what he says, it was damning indeed. Fraters Libertas has this to say:

Hearing Kerry’s testimony has also gotten my political blood boiling. This SOB should must be beaten (and beaten badly) in November. You want to fire up your conservative base Mr. President? Air this testimony from now till the election.

There are those who think that the actions of the anti-war crowd don’t matter and was based in trying to help soldiers still in Vietnam – of course Hugh Hewitt noted that it had quite the opposite effect:

Paul Galanti learned of Kerry’s [1971] speech while held captive inside North Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison. The Navy pilot had been shot down in June 1966 and spent nearly seven years as a prisoner of war.”

“During torture sessions, he said, his captors cited the antiwar speeches as ‘an example of why we should cross over to [their] side.'”

“‘The Viet Cong didn’t think they had to win the war on the battlefield,’ Galanti said, ‘because thanks to these protesters they were going to win it on the streets of San Francisco and Washington.'”

“He says Kerry broke a covenant among servicemen never to make public criticisms that might jeopardize those still in battle or in the hands of the enemy.”

“Because he did, Galanti said, ‘John Kerry was a traitor to the men he served with.'”

“Now retired and living in Richmond, Va., Galanti, 64, refuses to cool his ire toward Kerry.”

“‘I don’t plan to set it aside. I don’t know anyone who does,’ He said. ‘The Vietnam memorial has thousands of additional names due to John Kerry and others like him.'”

I have a feeling we are going to be hearing many more comments from this as the real legacy of Kerry’s shameful actions come to light. Those who protested the war were either directly or tacitly supporting one of the most murderous regimes in the 20th Century. Many were true fifth columnists, being funded by the North Vietnamese and the Soviet Union to sap the will of the country to oppose the spread of Communism into Southeast Asia. The results of the American surrender in Vietnam were millions of dead and displaced people throughout the region, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, and others either brutally murdered by the Viet Cong or the Khmer Rouge or forced to flee, many to America.

As John Kerry is so fond of saying, if he wants to make this election one based on who did what in Vietnam, "bring it on." No amount of battlefield heroism insulates one from the consequences of their later actions, and Kerry’s actions in 1971 can be called nothing less than disgraceful.