Frodo Speaks Out

The Lefty uses his own analogy to describe what he wishes was the Right’s imagery.

Today’s democrats despise substance, opting instead for innuendoes, empty claims and hype statements that support the feel good liberal clauses and causes.

No substance, no character, no patriotism.

The liar calls the honest person a liar. Case in point; Hillary.

The racist calls the inclusive politician a racist. Cases in point; Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Hillary.

The socialist calls the freedom lover a racist and a liar. Case in point; Hillary.

The reason that we all need to be ever vigilant and ever ready to fight against socialism and blind liberal ambition is because there will never be a time when this country is without liberals and socialists. This is because we operate under a constitution of limited government for the people and by the people; it is not illegal to promote socialism; it is not illegal to lie about the leadership or the military.

This free society that we are fighting for protects patriots and socialists alike. So, the socialist and liberal will always be with us because our laws protect them as well as us.

Thus, Mark McVay has the right to make substance less claims regarding those on the right who speak out for freedom and the good old American way. If there were no Mark McVays of the world, freedom loving Americans would have nothing for which to fight. Freedom would have no enemies.

So, there is an upside to sharing a world with Osama and Mark McVay.

by SubstanceBroker (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Friday, September 21, 2007 at 1:11:34 PM
 

Inaccuracies and silly slander

First off, the 30,000 vs 10,000 figures on attendees came from the March 17th activities, not those of Sept 11th. Secondly, the original claim that it was accidental spill on The Wall was recanted and vandalism has been assumed, and a reward offered for info on who did it. Thirdly, it is true that this time the antiwar people outnumbered the counterdemonstrators, by somewhere between 3 to 1 and 5 to 1, but there were not 100,000 people there by any stretch of imagination. A total of something like 159 were arrested at the "die-in" (Capitol police have that figure available), and that alone tells you the crowd was nowhere near so immense.
Yes, many of the antiwar people are bike riders with jackets and patches, others wear shirts or hats or other clothing and badges that proclaim their pride in service. Is that a matter for ridicule? (If so, how about the Code Pink ladies in their far-out costumes?) Some, like me, are lower key, quieter, less confrontational, but does that make me somehow more or less justified in my beliefs and willlingness to act them out than anyone else?
Oh yeah, and anyone who refers to the "falseness" of the occasional mistreatment of returning Vietvets has not bothered to read the detailed debunking of the book "The Spitting Image" (by a prof at my old college). However, if you like to denigrate old vets and ridicule them, it becomes very convenient to grant that book total credence despite its many gross flaws.
Smeagol was indeed controlled by his fixations. (The books I took to Nam with me to read were the LOTR trilogy, and BTW, the author was a combat vet of WW1.) Of course, you could as easily say that Frodo, forcing himself to bear that awful burden day by day, being eaten away by it, was fixated. Defending what you believe in strongly when you think it needs it is what good people do. (And that includes at least some of the antiwar activists.)
Ad hominem arguments are a poor way to make points in a discussion, and trying to trivialize the cause and sincerity of the pro-troop people is more a commentary on Mr. MacVay than on anyone else.

by MarDivPhoto (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 12:54:11 PM
 

Oops on my post

My apologies, in the early part of the post above I said "antiwar people" are bikers, etc, and that was a slip. I meant to write "counterdemonstrators". And it should go without saying that no sane person, certainly no combat vet, is in favor of war, thinks war is a good thing, or anything like that. That's like saying someone is prosurgery... you don't let your body get cut open by scalpels for the sheer fun of it, you do it only because you are convinced that it has become necessary.
While at it again, let me add that "the country rejected it" is not an accurate statement about Viet Nam, nor is the assumption that the gov't sprayed poison all over us. Again, Mr. McVay puts out the old myths as if they are vetted gospel, when that is most certainly not the case. His positions are political (to which he has a perfect right) but we're back to everyone having a right to his own set of opinions, but not to his own set of facts.

by MarDivPhoto (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 2:47:09 PM
 

RE: Inaccuracies and Silly Slander

Figures on pro-war attendance were taken directly from michellemalkin.com and gatheringofeagles.org. Antiwar figures were those of the Associated Press and I cited that. They numbers referred directly to the events of September 15-16, 2007. While you may be right about the act of vandalism at the Vietnam Memorial, at the time I wrote the article granite cleaner was still the suspected culprit. There is no doubt, however, that the prowar demonstrators were quick to attribute whatever occurred to anitwar demonstrators. I have nothing against outrageous dress and simply observed that the prowar group seems to exhibit a fondness for military dress and symbols of war - medals, patches, insignias, etc. I just don't wear them all the time. As I stated, the "myth" of spitting and mistreatment of soldiers returning from Vietnam is widely documented. I'm not aware of the publication you mentioned. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying that it happened rarely. I've read similar accounts on right wing blogs about Iraq veterans but have witnessed nothing but the utmost respect for active duty soldiers even among the most rabid antiwar groups. Your point about my use of Smeagol is well-taken. It was a convenient analogy used to make a point, nothing more. Your use of the term "pro-troop" could apply equally to both groups as I indicated above. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs approximately 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides were used in Vietnam between 1962-1971. There are many sources available citing U.S. government knowledge of the dangers associated with exposure even as the Pentagon continued its use in heavily populated areas. Vietnamese people continue to experience its deadly side effects to this day.

While I appreciate the reasonable tone of your comments, I see that you didn't address the missing WMD and the well-publicized fact that this was the justification for the war in the first place (Gulf of Tonkin incident, anyone?) If so, are we still looking for them? I also made a comment about the Vietnam wall being "a memorial, if anything, to unnecessary death, political folly, and prolonged deceit". As a veteran of that war with an understanding about the roles of Johnson, Nixon and McNamara in prolonging the conflict as the expense of tens of thousands of American lives, I urge you to support our troops by seeing to it that no more die while our cowardly politicians invent yet more bogus reasons for them to stay.

by Mark McVay (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 9 comments) on Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 10:40:44 PM
 

further clarification

It seems strange that the numbers reported for Sept are the same ones reported for March. In any case, all of us who were there noted that there were fewer people this time than in March, which you could tell simply by the ease with which you could move around the areas (as allowed by the police) compared to how crowded things were in March. Crowd estimations have been wildly off so often that barring real documentation (aerial photos, for instance), there's no point in hinging arguments on them.
And sorry, if you haven't examined the "extensive documentation" of the spitting/mistreatment controversy enough to be aware that it all began with and hinges on that book, then you really don't know much about it and are giving it credence because it goes along with your own biases.
However, I would agree that really serious mistreatment of returning vets was not widely practiced. Yet there was quite enough of it that the great majority of us heard about it, and were affected by that knowledge. Whether 1 guy in 10, or in 100 or in 1000 got spit on or called baby-killer to his face doesn't make any real difference in the end. It was more than enough to make vets feel unappreciated at the best, rejected and scorned at the worst. (And sad to say, there's already been a publicized incident of a woman spitting on a returning Iraq vet... deja vu to the max for many old vets.)
I don't wear much in the way of badges, etc, either. My choice, but again, if any vet wants to be very public about his service, no one (even another vet) should ridicule that in any way.
Lastly, the hype on "Agent Orange" (a term invented by a newscaster) is one of the worst of all from the war. And heavily populated areas were not sprayed, areas with high concentrations of people (like cities) don't have triple canopy above them or narrow trails with heavy jungle on either side, so there'd be no point in spraying there. Besides which, since chopper gunships often blasted the areas to be sprayed with heavy suppressive fire, if they had been heavily populated the casualties would have been in the thousands every month. Again, you don't really know about the Ranch Hand project, or the chemistry of defoliants. (A week from today I'll be under the wing of the last surviving C-130 spray plane, in the Dayton AF museum, at the Ranch Hand reunion, so I have some expertise in this area.)
Thanks for the comment on my reasonability. I do try, the passions and strong biases that are the hallmarks of what passes for political discourse today are not productive. I am not contemptuous of any sincere person who sees Iraq or Viet Nam as awful mistakes, although some of the rabid leftists who are actually much more anti-US than antiwar do deserve rejection and contempt. Americans should be able to look at the same, valid data (a major challenge to find and confirm such, unfortunately), and then agree to disagree sometimes. Those who oppose the continuation of the war are not all cowardly traitors, those who support it are not all bloodthirsty imperialists.
And those who led us into this one are apparently vying for the record of ignorance, arrogance, and blind stupidity set by LBJ and his gang. However, that doesn't mean the only answer now is a bug-out. Too long a topic by far for today.

by MarDivPhoto (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Friday, September 28, 2007 at 6:18:26 AM