Senator McCain Should Apologize to the Swift Boat Veterans
Tue August 24th, 2004 22:55 MSTAn Open Letter to Senator John McCain from a Vietnam Veteran
Senator McCain,
I begin this missive with an embrazo, as we call it here in Texas, for your service to our country, as a warrior, as a prisoner of war and as a United States Senator. You have served far better and endured far more in the service of America than most men will ever do. For that, this old sergeant salutes you.
That said, as a Vietnam ground combat veteran, I must take issue with you on the situation of John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans. You have labeled these men “dishonest and dishonorable,” and that, Sir, is nothing more than your opinion based on no direct knowledge of the events they dispute. For you to so condemn these men publicly, without any firsthand knowledge of John Kerry’s performance in their midst and under their professional observation, is unfair to them and all veterans who share their view that John Kerry is unfit to command. Who was best qualified to evaluate you as a naval aviator, those senior officers who flew with you or the enlisted men who serviced your aircraft? Who had the experience, training and knowledge to make a professional military judgment of your performance in the air, the trained naval aviators on your wing or the enlisted flight crew back on the carrier? Certainly the enlisted men were vital in performing the mission but observing and rating your performance was not their role.
It is my understanding that you originally shared our animosity towards John Kerry, but during your senatorial service, you came to know John Kerry more personally and chose to forgive him for his labeling you a war criminal. That you are able to forgive a man even though he had denounced you and your fellow aviators as you languished in North Vietnamese prisons, with your captors using his testimony to try to break your will, is truly commendable. I admire you for your ability to turn the other cheek. However, I must point out that your forgiveness of John Kerry is purely personal and imposes not one iota of obligation to forgive him on those of us who still consider him contemptible.
You carry no mandate to speak for us. Your personal feelings are yours and yours alone; but, emphatically, you do not speak for us. You spoke up to defend your friend and your friend has turned your words into talking points. It is truly reprehensible how the Kerry campaign and the mainstream media are hiding so cynically behind your condemnation of the Swiftvets, using your statement as an excuse to dismiss their claims as baseless, smear politics. Honestly, Senator, did you really intend to provide this kind of cover for those who are so desperate to prevent the truth from coming out?
With all do respect, since you weren’t there to observe John Kerry first hand as were these Swiftvets, may I humbly suggest that the honorable thing for you to do, is to stay out of this fight and allow them and us to have our voice. Moreover, there is one thing you could do to level the playing field: acknowledge that you have no true knowledge of events the Swiftvets describe and that your immediate condemnation of these men was premature. Call on the mainstream media to investigate all parties fairly and determine whose version of events is true. I understand John Kerry is your friend, but that places him neither beyond accountability nor above the truth. You have a unique ability at this moment in America’s history to make a difference. You have long been a dutiful warrior and servant of the people.
Please, do your duty now.
/s/ Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
I would request that all who agree with the sentiments expressed here copy this letter and send it to:
http://mccain.senate.gov/
Yes indeed Senator McCain should apologize to the Swift-Vets and also to the rest of who were slandered by John kerry. To me, McCain saying what he said about the Swift-Vets is the same thing as agreeing with every thing kerry said and did.
I have read that when McCain came home after being a POW he felt the same way about kerry as we do, what changed his mind is not clear. Again to me it is incomprehensible how McCain could be a friend to that traitor. I can understand putting the past behind you but to forget it is to repeat it. And that aint gonna happen.
Mark
I sent mine.
Mark
The letter is as eloquent as it can be.
Here is the correct email address
john_mccain@mccain.senate.gov
and it’s better if it comes throught regular mail
The Hon. John McCain
241 Russell Senate Ofc. Bldg.
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2235
Fax: (202) 228-2862
I can’t say it in my cover letter, so I’ll say it here: John McCain wasn’t on the boat. Neither, for that matter, strictly speaking, Jim Rassmann.
BTW: Since you started using Typepad, previwing a comment clears the content field.
McCain apologizes to no one, unless it can be checked off as another indicator of his greatness.
What’s going on here is very complicated, and it isn’t just McCain’s arrogance that prevents him from staying out of the fight.
Kerry violated a thirty-year old silent agreement in this country, which was to keep Vietnam almost out of sight. The cosmic stupidity of using Vietnam as a campaign theme is enough to disqualify Kerry from any office at all. But to run as a warrior and an anti-warrior at the same time, unless it was just a lapse of sanity, was a cynical attempt to combine two fatally incompatible themes in one figure.
This is lunacy, absolute lunacy. The only place these sentiments come together and coexist is at The Wall, and for the sake of politics, in legislatures; for Kerry to think of himself in this way is beyond comprehension, and McCain’s acceptance of this fraud is evidence that McCain is too far gone in the go-along-world already.
Both Kerry and McCain, who represent the same self-defending and insular class, have lived in the fishbowl of the Senate for so long that they haven’t a clue as the separate peace agreements, unfinished business and coming-to-terms going on among the rest of us. Not a clue. Hundreds of thousands of us, too, rather than two Pols in five grand suits. Guys with some reference and experience to judge both of them as well as ourselves.
And now, here and elsewhere, we are arguing with each other…other vets we would otherwise love and respect…we are arguing about Vietnam all over again, and saying hard and unpleasant things to each other. These miserable Senate bastards have a lot to answer for, and I will NEVER forgive eithr one of them.
The Hanoi Hilton was a long time ago, Johnnie, but remember who remembered YOU when you were there rather than the baying jackass who aided your tormenters and lately rolled the pathetic Cleland up to a dusty gate in Texas, rang the bell and ran away. Is this your man?
It’s too late for any of this, and Kerry, again, is the problem.
Rhod,
This Vietnam issue will not go away because it underlines 2 important issues
1) Veterans were wrong are clearing their names. Accept John Kerry as their leader while he was stabbing them in the back 35 years ago is a moral defeat. It’s worse than a physical defeat. 35 years ago, we can claim we have no idea what was going on in America while we were away (unconscious moral defeat), but today if we accept the nomination without any fight, it is a conscious moral defeat and conscious moral defeat are worse than unconscious moral defeat and physical defeat.
2) We cannot accept the notion that someone will stab our troop from the rear, again. Never, ever again. We might not consciously aware of this issue but it is an important issue for the years ahead because this time it will involve our children, irregard of the double talk and double think of the nihilists such as “anti-war but supporting our troops”. The last many months have proven that this non-sense double talk is resemblance the anti-war of the 60s all over again.
If John Kerry is nominated in 2008 instead of this year, the Swiftvet and veteran will do the samething as they are doing now. I don’t think it will be any difference at all.
The DNC just pick the wrong candidate to stir up the our fear and our despise of the danger are awaiting for our children of what have done to us 30 years ago.
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