March 29, 2016, - 11:35 pm
Vietnam Veterans Day: Honoring & Remembering Those Who Thanklessly Served, Got Spit On
I can’t let the day go by without noting that today is Vietnam Veterans Day. And without noting the dark, sickening irony of who created it.
Since it’s Vietnam Veterans Day, I want to thank all of the American men who served thanklessly in Southeast Asia, in many cases giving their lives or their limbs or their stability of mind and mental health. They went there after being drafted while, in many cases, rich kids and the well-connected got out of it through bribes, attending college or grad school, or using minor alleged injuries as excuses for ineligibility. They went there while frauds like Ted Nugent got phony deferments, as Nugent did, illegally and falsely swearing in documents that he was in school when he was really touring with his band.
They went there while all of those who got out of it protested and defamed them on America’s streets. While schmucks like Walter Cronkite went on the news every night and served as the Viet Cong’s PR machine, losing the propaganda war for them despite the fact that they were winning the war on the ground, with their blood, their limbs, and their minds. They went there and for the most part served honorably and yet continue to be defamed in Hollywood movies, TV shows, and the conventional wisdom of false narratives that painted and continues to paint them as murderers and rapists.
And, then, they came back and got spit on and treated horribly. My late father, H.L. Schlussel, MD, was a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, and it rightly disgusted him to see how these men, mostly from working-class White, Black, and Hispanic families were treated like dirt when they came home. That’s why, for most of his post-Vietnam medical career, he always treated Vietnam vets for free. He appreciated their service to our country and their valiant fight against Communism. And he did not appreciate what was done to them by Democratic Presidents who sent them to fight a war, with little moral or physical support, and in many cases, left them to die. Democratic Presidents who were half-assed, half-hearted, ambivalent, and unsure about whether they really wanted to fight this war against Communism in Southeast Asia, but sent these American boys there anyway.
It was the only war after which America’s fighting men came home and were treated like the enemy, like criminals. The only war in which our men went when called and, yet, they weren’t welcomed home. And that’s why it’s ironic, hypocritical, and chutzpah-dik (and not in a good way) to note who created Vietnam Veterans Day in 2012: Barack Hussein Obama, parishioner for over two decades of Jeremiah “G-d D-mn America” Wright.
It was Obama’s friends and mentors who led the protests on America’s streets against the Vietnam Vets while they were dying over there. It was Obama’s friends and mentors who lost them the war in the minds of America while they were actually winning on the ground over there. And it was Obama’s friends and mentors who spit on them and treated them like crap when they came home. Obama’s friends in Hollywood, who made crap like “Platoon,” depicting our Armed Forces in Vietnam as pot-smoking rapists and murderers. Obama’s gurus like Bill Ayers who not only led protests on the streets, but actually engaged in terrorism, including bombing the Pentagon.
Those were and remain Barack Obama’s gang: the men who led the collective spitting on our Vietnam Veterans and continue to spit on them in the public’s perception, in America’s college classrooms, and on the small and silver screens today.
So, today, I remember those who served in thankless service in a war we weren’t serious about. And I don’t forget those who spit on them, including the extended ideological family of the current Commander-in-Chief who pretends to care about what they gave and lost in Vietnam.
U.S. Marines on the Ground in Vietnam . . .
Tags: Barack Obama, Vietnam Veterans Day
“They went there after being drafted while, in many cases, rich kids and the well-connected got out of it through bribes, attending college or grad school, or using minor alleged injuries as excuses for ineligibility.” You forgot “Just plain refused to go” like that great American (and best pal of Jimmy Carter), Muhammad Ali!
Thank you Debbie.
Tommy Thomas
U.S. Army 1974-77
Tommy Thomas on March 30, 2016 at 4:11 am