Past Forgetting

The second Swiftless Ad, naturally takes things out of context from Kerry's speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Anybody with any curiousity whatsoever, knows that Kerry was merely relating what had been said to him by approximately 150 veterans.

But beyond the cheap shot, there is a deeper lie within the ad. The fact is that the thing Kerry related these Vets as relating to him, were factual both in that we were said to him, and most particularly THEY REALLY HAPPENED.

Americans don't like to hear about us behaving badly, as soldiers from all nations have throughout history. War is a savage business, how surprising it is that it causes savagery beyond killing the enemy (which is savage enough).

Too many Americans alive at the time remember the charges and remember the outrage, among both the elites and the right-wing, who claimed the allegations to be slanders. A great many Americans were willing to believe the denials favoring the image of the Americans as the same Liberators they'd been in World War II. Countries, like people have their own level of cognitive dissonance. If you don't believe me, spend some time in Germany, France or Japan.

To rebuild itself after WWII, all three nations built myths that essentially were found necessary to get on with life.

Germany tried to publicly forget the holocaust, while silently paying reparations. Politicians with thick Nazi lineages were able to return to public life and raise to the highest levels of the German Government. While not exactly constructing myths about the Holocaust or the Nazi crimes happening, the Germans constructed an excuse that they were either terrorized, brainwashed or duped into following Hitler. All to an extent true, but greatly underplays the reality that the vast majority of the country willingly staked its destiny to Hitler and has collective responsibility on its hands. Among the older generation everyone seems to have hated Hitler...any objective visitor knows that is a lie, but a lie they have to convince themselves of.

Japan has built up an even stronger myth -- a myth of not doing anything wrong really. "Comfort Women"? What comfort women? Nanking was a typical operation, there was no extra brutality. The Bataan Death March was just a logistical problem, not an exercise in Sadism. And, of course, the bad stuff -- Emperor Hirohito had nothing to do with that.

France, after WWII immediately began the deification of DeGaulle, and the perpetuated the myth that the French themselves were the major reason that France was liberated. While they didn't try to pretend that tens of thousands of Americans and Brits didn't die to liberate them, they did try to forget that those tanks and artillery they had was American, and that the General calling the shots was an American with a german name. It is the of sort revisionism that they required to forget the nightmare of the Spring of 1940, and the initial popularity of Vichy. While every older person in Germany claims to have hated Hitler at the time, it is very hard to find an older French person that was a collaborator, though its obvious they were the majority at the time.

You may notice something in the subtext of all these things as well. In each instance, for the most part, we as Americans allowed them to get away with such historical revisionism and amnesia. It was in our interest to do so. Just as glorifying Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, or other Southern Civil War military men was necessary for the South for so many years and northerners allowed it -- the necessary value of the "Lost Cause", which in reality was nothing more than maintaining an economic system built on racial feudalism.

But Vietnam is a more recent example of our own collective amnesia.

Many people alive now do not know, nor frankly take much interest in knowing, that at the time Kerry was testifying to Congress the country was not only reeling from the merits of the Vietnam War, but also the brutality of the My Lai Massacre. Lt. Calley had been tried and convicted of war crimes not long before Kerry's testimony.
People had a feeling (fear really) that there was more brutality than just Calley in Vietnam and, of course there was.

This brutality was evidenced by the strategic bombing of North Vietnam, not too long after Kerry's testimony, the Christmas Bombing of Cambodia in 1972. The proportionality of the American response was as brutal and disproportionate as it was ineffective.

But what is more, there were things only rumored at the time that people were afraid of...that there were more brutalities than just My Lai. Kerry picked at that scab in 1971 when he testified. But remember COGNITIVE DISSONANCE people did not want to hear it.

Even after all these years, when the consensus is overwhelming that Vietnam was a mistake, and a waste of lives, especially given its ultimate result, people still do not want to hear what went on there.

Recently, rightwing moron Sean Hannity tried to get General Tommy Franks, who had served in Vietnam, to say that Kerry's testimony regarding war crimes and brutalities in Vietnam were false. Franks having served in "the shit" promptly told Hannity that, in fact, they had occurred.

The Swift Boat Vets want to deny the atrocities committed in Vietnam, they want the public to have history ignored or re-written because the actions of some stain their sense of honor. Of course, shamefully they are doing this to their own honor.

The problem is, the atrocities are historical facts, undeniable, and well documented. Whether those who lived through that period want to deny it or not; whether those not old enough during that period, or born after it, want to remain in ignorace or not; the atrocities...as Kerry related them through what others had told him, are true.

This years Pulitizer for Investigative Journalism went deservedly to the Toledo Blade for their series on "Tiger Force" a group specifically created to cause terror and who created terror. Read it and you will learn the truth of Kerry's words and the delusions of the Swift Boat Vets, and you will learn that one man, David Hackworth who we now sometimes hold out as a hero, is by no means covered just in glory.

A short summary:

Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers. Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed - their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings.

Two soldiers tried to stop the killings, but their pleas were ignored by commanders. The Army launched an investigation in 1971 that lasted 41/2 years - the longest-known war-crime investigation of the Vietnam conflict.

The case reached the highest levels of the Pentagon and the Nixon White House.

Investigators concluded that 18 soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. But no one was charged.

Do not turn away from your own countries errors and crimes, or else they will be repeated...is that too obvious?

But the bottom line is KERRY TOLD THE TRUTH THEN, it is the Swift Boaters and their Republican Enablers that want to lie to the public and to history now.