nimh wrote:
Have I told ya yet how glad I am you showed up here? You've posted some great stuff.
Meanwhile, I'm a little pessimistic about yer prediction here ... The next SVFT ad, after all, is about Kerry's anti-war actions from after he'd gotten home. And thats a time about which even the most avid Democratic Convention watcher will not yet have heard much at all about ...
a very nice compliment. "dank du well". arghh. phonetics.
and you, along with some others have put up some great stuff as well.
i don't know if the kerry anti-war stuff is gonna have legs the way one would expect, even in these uber-patriotic times.
the vietnam conflict came to be vastly unpopular. maybe for different reasons for different folks. a lot of the older guys in our neighborhood left for boot either cautiously optimistic or fully gung ho. a lot of them came back really pissed off and bitter. some would never admit it, but a slip here or there can tell alot about what someone is thinking.
although eisenhower was the first one to put u.s. personel in vietnam, it was really ramping up just as i started school. it was about finished when i graduated. i still had to register for the draft, though. still have the card in fact.
i grew up JUST KNOWING that i was gonna get drafted and sent to vietnam. the army even sent a team to our school when i was in the 8th or 9th grade ( well which one was it, you liar!? lol ) to give a "mandatory" test called "the armed forces placement battery". my test, for instance, concluded that i was mechanically inclined. boy, talk about a wrong number...
if watching the evening body count didn't make me anti-war, the fact that they classified a guy that could barely indentify the contents of a tool chest as mechanically apt certainly cast doubt on their judgement. must be that reasonable doubt thing...
nimh, some would claim that all of the anti-war people were in s.f., l.a. and nyc etc. i assure you that this was not the case. and not all anti-war folks looked or acted like abby hoffman. thank god. "levitate the pentagon", indeed! i, for one, was anti-war, but pissed at the people walking around with the north vietnamese flag in equal measure with the "love it or leave it" brigade.
vietnam was such a stinker that a whole slew of people were pretty unhappy.
imho, that this vietnam debate is going on probably will, as you point out, help kerry in the long run.
the bush brigade have complained, " people keep wanting to say this (iraq) is vietnam. it's not!" if they thought it was, would they admit it?
but in many ways, for those of us that lived during that era, it is very much like vietnam;
large troop deployment in country based on ideology.
the country is divided and at war with itself. i'm tempted to quote "divide and conquer", but that would leave the question of who be doin' the dividin' 'round here.
anyone who questions the presidents actions is labeled "unpatriotic".
the fbi is investigating people before they have done anything. "well , ya know these anarchists, they tore up seattle, humph!" true and false. while people did act anarchistically in seattle,not a good thing, if the fbi knew who did what, they would probably be breaking rocks.
there are other similarities as well. but for now, let's say that a lot of people are looking around and going " what the hell is going on here?". which is why i believe it is important to get bush out and abort this climate before it can spin out of control again.
