VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
MEDIA COVER-UP OF VIETNAM VETERAN REJECTION OF KERRY REACHING EXPLOSIVE LEVEL
By Leonard Magruder
March 6, 2004
(Part 2 of 3)
The campus war protestors of the 60’s lied to America. We laid out that lying in our last article by quoting directly from the literature the protestors handed out at their marches and demonstrations. And there is no question that in his ’71 testimony to Congress, Kerry shared those arguments.
Dr. Jamie Glazov- noted historian and Managing Editor of FrontpageMagazine wrote recently:
In the March-April edition of International Socialist Review, H. Bruce Franklin, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote an article glorifying the memory of the anti-war movement in America during the Vietnam War. He emphasizes that remembering the anti-war movement is crucial, “since it triumphed in bringing about an American defeat and a Communist victory in Southeast Asia.”
There you have it, the victory of the Big Lie, which as you saw in the first article ran throughout the entire literature of the “peace” movement. The lie that the U.S. was somehow fighting the “indigenous freedom fighters” of South Vietnam, when in fact it was fighting the Communists of North Vietnam and their allies in the South, the Viet Cong.
The entire anti-war movement rested on the lie that North Vietnam was never involved in aggression. This was done to take the issue out of the arena of Cold War containment policy. Faculty knew that if they told students the truth—that North Vietnam was aggressing against the South, there could have been no antiwar movement. With the Big Lie, however, it was easy for students to get all self-righteous and indignant, as well as, how convenient, resist serving. Who wanted to fight “indigenous freedom fighters.” This is how, in their minds, the U.S. became the “aggressor” in an “immoral” war.
On the lie by the anti-war movement that the Viet Cong was an independent South Vietnamese political movement, Bui Tin, the North Vietnamese colonel who accepted the surrender of South Vietnam, said in The Wall Street Journal recently, “It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960.” This one statement utterly destroys the arguments of the anti-war movement. It was further verified in a report in l987 by Hanoi’s Military History Institute.
Said Stephen B. Young in an article commenting on celebrations of the thirtieth anniversary of the Vietnam War, “A generation congratulates itself once again for doing what the North Vietnamese never could have done—defeat the United States. It is no wonder, then, that our national recollection of the war matches that of the New Left.” It is this recollection, rising to the surface in this debate over Kerry’s ’71 testimony, that is really at stake, with media and campus desperately trying to keep it down. For thirty years the media and the university have institutionalized a lie, and gotten away with it. But now that the Kerry candidacy has raised the issue, the veterans of that war want the truth told once and for all. Few have forgotten the suffering many went through when they returned because of those lies.
Listen to what Chuck Lawrence, a Vietnam combat veteran, said about groups like Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War in a recent article:
“Returning veterans from Vietnam met with an interesting sight. People carrying signs and posters declaring the war and those who served in it criminals. Some were spit on at airports. Others had trash thrown at them. Others weathered a hail of name calling. All this from the very antiwar protestors who claimed to be acting on behalf of our service men and women in Vietnam. Where was the outpouring of care and compassion for those that returned from the war? Decisions had to be made fast by each individual returning from Vietnam on how to handle this assult. Join in and become a protestor and disavow your own honorable service? Some did this. Or, fight back with pride and dignity. Then the vets discovered that there were no jobs for them. Who would hire a demented, baby-killing, village burner. Once again, thank Mr. Kerry for planting that image on all of us.”
The Kerry statement to Congress was more than what he now claims, just an anguished cry from those who had seen horror and wanted it ended. There was an agenda involved, an ideology, very similar to the one argued by people like Jane Fonda. Kerry told Congress the whole war rested on “atrocities,” that South Vietnam was a “nothing,” that the idea of Communist involvement was “mystical,” that it was a “civil war” between freedom fighters and an oppressive government being helped by imperialist America. He fed the falsehood that those who fought the war were the young and poor, with minorities being disproportionately represented, that the Vietnam veteran is ashamed of his service, and that the government had used them. Kerry said the U.S. was “the criminal element” in Vietnam, not the Communist North.
Craig Gordon of Newsday’s Washington Bureau wrote in an article on Kerry on Feb. 21, 2004, “Kerry’s speech is considered by many to be one of the peace movement’s defining moments. It helped galvanize the protests and turn popular opinion against the war.”
(Note: A comprehensive 1980 survey found that 91% of those who had seen combat in Vietnam were “glad they had served their country,” and 80% disagreed with the statement,”the U.S. took advantage of me.”)
And now others are beginning to comment on the media cover-up. Shawn Macomber in John Kerry’s Free Media Pass, said, “Most Americans would likely find John Kerry’s past Vietnam behavior important to their decision as to whether he should be president. Right now they have not been given this information.” In the section “This Week” in The National Review, they wrote: “The media have brushed off the issue as irrelevant or a pointless ‘re-fighting’ of the Vietnam War. But Kerry has an obligation to explain whether he still believes his allegations, and if not, to apologize for them. Instead, his campaign seems determined to misrepresent his testimony. Syndicated talk-show host Hugh Hewitt wrote, “The conventional wisdom floating downstream from Washington is that Senator Kerry’s anti-war radicalism following his return from service in Vietnam shouldn’t—and won’t—be an issue in November.”
The media, deciding what’s best for us. Well—they may be in for a surprise. One of the largest bloc of voters in this country, millions of Vietnam veterans, those who know the most about war, in a huge underground controversy on the Internet, are already voting overwhelmingly that they don’t want Kerry to be Commander-in-Chief. In the Wintersoldier.com poll, it is running 96% against Kerry. In The Wall Street Journal letters section, 66%. In a San Diego newspaper an editor reports “100 to 1” against. Hewitt himself reports of his callers, “the vast majority hold Kerry in contempt because of his actions,” and view his antiwar activities as “profoundly wrong and disqualifiying for the presidency.”
Mackubin Thomas Owen, a Vietnam combat veteran, now professor of strategy at the Naval War College, wrote in an article recently in The National Review: “Kerry invokes his Vietnam veteran service at every turn. But an honest, enterprising reporter should ask him, “Were you lying in 1971 or are you lying now?” If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn’t possibly be proud of his Vietnam service. But if he is proud of his service today then he should apologize to every veteran of that war for slandering them to advance his political ambitions.”
If the media allows people to see the ’71 testimony as it truly is, there will be questions about his attitude towards Communism. To those of us who fought “the war on the homefront,” what he said sounds too much like the rhetoric of the New Left of the time, the rhetoric of appeasement, those who spread the Big Lie. So he transforms his ’71 statement into something which it isn’t. He knows how many Americans remember that betrayal of the Left. Then there is his trip to Nicaragua to talk to Communist leader Daniel Ortega. And now his announcement that he will drop the war on terrorism. Is he tough enough on the subject of national security? Does he understand the current enemy?
This election may well hinge on whether the media helps to raise these questions, or are they again, as they did in the case of the Tet Offensive, going to rob the American people of the ability to make critical judgments about their most vital security interests in a time of war?
The issue is being covered on a few talk shows and all over the Internet, but the evening TV news and the national newspapers are not mentioning it. If the media removes his earlier radicalism as an issue, then they are outright campaigning for Kerry. But if the media think they are going to shove Kerry down our throats, they can forget it. We are alert. For how they try to do this, see CBS insider Bernard Goldberg’s new book on media bias, Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite.
Kerry has made a few statements recently about his ’71 testimony. But he misrepresents it. The Winter Soldier charges were not “highly documented”; they are totally unsubstantiated. He didn’t “help people understand what was going on”; he helped to publicize lies. He didn’t “honor” the service of vets; he charged them and their officers with daily atrocities. This desperate posturing on his past radicalism tells us a lot. He tries to turn every questioning into an attack on his patriotism, a transparent and ineffective dodge. Remember the bind he is in as described by Owens. If he defends his true testimony, then he can’t be proud of his service. If he disavows it, that is a major blow to the Left that largely supports Kerry, and the Big Lie of the antiwar movement. Clearly panicking over the issue, Kerry wrote a phony letter to President Bush saying, “As you well know, Vietnam was a very difficult and painful period in our history, and the struggle for our veterans continues. So it has been hard for me to believe that you would choose to reopen those wounds for your personal political gain.” The President had done nothing of the sort. Translation: please don’t bring up my ’71 testimony. So here is the challenge: Don’t let Kerry get away with this. Ask him about his real testimony; it’s all a matter of record. Do it any way you can. Call it in to his headquarters, bring it up on talk shows, put in on billboards all over the country, contact friends in the American and foreign media, write letters.
We have just finished editing a special edition of our film How the Campus Lied About Vietnam, reducing it to 43 minutes to leave time in an hour show for a few minutes of commentary by Vietnam vets on how organizations like Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War“ and the antiwar movement impacted returning veterans. It is an amateur production, but still, it was shown once on local Public Access TV, and station technicians tell us that while not perfect, it could be considered for showing by other stations. Kerry’s group is mentioned by one of the vets as an antiwar group that damaged the returning vets. If you would like to try to get it shown, write Magruder44@aol.com and we’ll send you a complimentary copy.Take out a big ad so people will know. The film was based on 68 interviews Mr. Magruder did with Vietnam veterans attending the national parades in the mid-80’s. There was time in 43 minutes to present the views of ten of those interviewed in response to the question “How do you feel about the war protestors?” Here are some short excerpts from what each said. Although all the rest said essentially the same thing.
Veteran A: Now that hurt me a lot. They yelled at us, “Nixon’s hired guns, do one need a college education to do that?
Veteran B: All they cared about was themselves, and those who served in Vietnam they didn’t give jack---- about and that stinks. When a country turns its mind and body against a veteran who fought a war for that country, that stinks.
Veteran C: When I returned I could only keep going if I forgot my Vietnam service, shut it out of my life. But I don’t feel that way any more. I have every reason to be proud of what I did in Vietnam.
Veteran D: Humiliating, insulting, degrading. It hurt, what the protestors did.
Veteran E: They protested the fact that the American soldier was in Vietnam, but when we came back they treated us like dirt—they didn’t care.
Veteran F: When we came home we wanted to fit back into society as soon as possible. But it didn’t work out that way. They kept saying, “you must be one of those baby killers, one of the psychopathic killers of Vietnam.” When you start living with something like that you start telling people you were not over in Vietnam, just out of the country.
Veteran G: They were idots...we came home alone, straight into the jaws of insensitive idiots. The peace movement was very diverse, from Vietnam Veterans Against the War to mother and fathers who couldn’t understand.
Veteran H: Because of them we were portrayed as people that we were not, as “baby killers” and all of that. If they could make those returning feel they had done something wrong it added credibility to their arguments. It was a tack taken so they would not have to go.
Veteran I: Oh boy, do I remember that, spitting at us at the airport and saying we were rapists, that we raped babies, and they left a mark on us making people think that we were no good.
Veteran J: When they got back they were blackliststed as very uncomfortable reminders to those people who opposed the war, and many of them felt the arrogant need to isolate many of those who tried to come home and re-penetrate those peer groups—they were ordered to the closet. It was especially difficult for disabled veterans, who were told their sacrifice was a stupid and unnessary act of patriotism.
This article may be reproduced in any form.
Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
RETURN TO MAGRUDER ARTICLE INDEX
Website design and management courtesy of Annette R. Hall. Hosted by www.i-served.com.