Opinion
A Strange World Where Only Republicans Can Be War Heroes
By REG HENRY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Aug 18, 2004, 07:13

It is my sad duty today to have to defend myself against scurrilous charges alleging that my distinguished service in Vietnam was distinguished mostly by drunkenness and unsoldierly behavior.

A group calling itself Slowpoke Veterans for Truth is making base allegations in order to pre-empt my political aspirations to become the dogcatcher-in-chief of Sewickley, Pa.

(This, by the way, is a job no one else will touch because would-be dogcatchers fear they will be called upon to apprehend Labradors, which are considered sacred animals in Sewickley, much like cows are in India.)

These veterans, funded by rich Republicans who own kennels full of pedigreed Labradors, allege that I don’t deserve my medals—the General Showing Up Medal and the Vietnam Star for Witless Allies.

Specifically, they say that I didn’t fearlessly drive the colonel to lunch in Saigon every day; they claim it was to dinner.

Moreover, on the famous occasion when I climbed up on a stool to toast the virtue of a bar girl in a Tu Do Street tavern, thereby almost decapitating myself with the overhead fan, the revisionists now claim that I had measured the bar stool beforehand and knew that I was in no real danger.

Let me say categorically: I made no such measurements. I ask you: How could I have done that in the condition I was in?

This is all the thanks I get for answering the bugle call. Decades later my honor is impugned, yet never once back then did I cease operating the most dangerous weapon in my unit’s arsenal, the armored typewriter, on which I banged out numerous press releases there on the besieged ramparts of freedom.

Ah, I should have known it would come to this. Republicans don’t believe that anyone else can be a patriot or a hero. To them, that idea is absurd—indeed, against the order of nature.

The Democrats, poor saps, don’t understand this. Their touching naivete is underscored by what has happened to John Kerry, who did slightly more than drive the colonel heroically to lunch.

Because the Democrats wanted to reclaim the flag and live down Bill Clinton’s record of nonservice, they picked themselves a presidential candidate who was a decorated war hero. (Unfortunately, they have in Kerry a politician you couldn’t get a spark out of even if you attached jumper cables to his ears, but that’s another matter.)

Kerry gets no credit for his war service at all. He might as well not have gone. Indeed, his opponent in the White House is thought to be more heroic for staying home and flying airplanes to protect Texas from the Commies.

This absurd affair has little to do with the facts of the matter. (If you want a nonpartisan take on those, I would suggest factcheck.org, which operates under the auspices of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)

What the discrediting of Kerry’s war record is really about is the conservative belief that liberals can’t be heroic. How could they be? How would they fit military helmets over their horns?

The way they talk, you’d think Kerry had presented his medals to himself. The Republican faithful repeat a little mantra to banish any troubling doubts: Kerry was over there for only four months, he lied about his service, and even if what he did was somehow true, he was only doing his job and anybody would have done the same. Yeah, sure.

If Julius Caesar were running for president, they would question his conduct in Gaul. If Hannibal were running, they would complain that he had stolen their elephants.

If Sgt. Alvin York, the great hero of World War I, were running, they would dispute the fact that the squad he led captured 132 Germans on the grounds that the simple country boy from Tennessee wasn’t very good at arithmetic.

Oh, by the way, guess how long Sgt. York was at the front? About four months.

As the aspiring dogcatcher of Sewickley, Pa., I can only hope the American people have the fairness to see all shameful revisionism as barking up the wrong tree.

(Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. E-mail )

It’s not the service; it’s the lying STUPID.

[QUOTE=Unregistered]Opinion
A Strange World Where Only Republicans Can Be War Heroes
By REG HENRY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Aug 18, 2004, 07:13

It is my sad duty today to have to defend myself against scurrilous charges alleging that my distinguished service in Vietnam was distinguished mostly by drunkenness and unsoldierly behavior.

A group calling itself Slowpoke Veterans for Truth is making base allegations in order to pre-empt my political aspirations to become the dogcatcher-in-chief of Sewickley, Pa.

(This, by the way, is a job no one else will touch because would-be dogcatchers fear they will be called upon to apprehend Labradors, which are considered sacred animals in Sewickley, much like cows are in India.)

These veterans, funded by rich Republicans who own kennels full of pedigreed Labradors, allege that I don’t deserve my medals—the General Showing Up Medal and the Vietnam Star for Witless Allies.

Specifically, they say that I didn’t fearlessly drive the colonel to lunch in Saigon every day; they claim it was to dinner.

Moreover, on the famous occasion when I climbed up on a stool to toast the virtue of a bar girl in a Tu Do Street tavern, thereby almost decapitating myself with the overhead fan, the revisionists now claim that I had measured the bar stool beforehand and knew that I was in no real danger.

Let me say categorically: I made no such measurements. I ask you: How could I have done that in the condition I was in?

This is all the thanks I get for answering the bugle call. Decades later my honor is impugned, yet never once back then did I cease operating the most dangerous weapon in my unit’s arsenal, the armored typewriter, on which I banged out numerous press releases there on the besieged ramparts of freedom.

Ah, I should have known it would come to this. Republicans don’t believe that anyone else can be a patriot or a hero. To them, that idea is absurd—indeed, against the order of nature.

The Democrats, poor saps, don’t understand this. Their touching naivete is underscored by what has happened to John Kerry, who did slightly more than drive the colonel heroically to lunch.

Because the Democrats wanted to reclaim the flag and live down Bill Clinton’s record of nonservice, they picked themselves a presidential candidate who was a decorated war hero. (Unfortunately, they have in Kerry a politician you couldn’t get a spark out of even if you attached jumper cables to his ears, but that’s another matter.)

Kerry gets no credit for his war service at all. He might as well not have gone. Indeed, his opponent in the White House is thought to be more heroic for staying home and flying airplanes to protect Texas from the Commies.

This absurd affair has little to do with the facts of the matter. (If you want a nonpartisan take on those, I would suggest factcheck.org, which operates under the auspices of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)

What the discrediting of Kerry’s war record is really about is the conservative belief that liberals can’t be heroic. How could they be? How would they fit military helmets over their horns?

The way they talk, you’d think Kerry had presented his medals to himself. The Republican faithful repeat a little mantra to banish any troubling doubts: Kerry was over there for only four months, he lied about his service, and even if what he did was somehow true, he was only doing his job and anybody would have done the same. Yeah, sure.

If Julius Caesar were running for president, they would question his conduct in Gaul. If Hannibal were running, they would complain that he had stolen their elephants.

If Sgt. Alvin York, the great hero of World War I, were running, they would dispute the fact that the squad he led captured 132 Germans on the grounds that the simple country boy from Tennessee wasn’t very good at arithmetic.

Oh, by the way, guess how long Sgt. York was at the front? About four months.

As the aspiring dogcatcher of Sewickley, Pa., I can only hope the American people have the fairness to see all shameful revisionism as barking up the wrong tree.

(Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. E-mail )

[QUOTE=Truth Seeker]It’s not the service; it’s the lying STUPID.

I am sick and tired of people saying our President was lying about the need to go into Iraq. Why should he have listened to the UN and the European countries and all those protestors over our own CIA which we all knew was trustworthy. He didn’t lie, he just went in on the facts as he knew them.

[QUOTE=Unregistered]I am sick and tired of people saying our President was lying about the need to go into Iraq. Why should he have listened to the UN and the European countries and all those protestors over our own CIA which we all knew was trustworthy. He didn’t lie, he just went in on the facts as he knew them.

I meant Kerry’s lying.

Also, how come non of you Kerry Hawks are letting us know about the Senator Kerry lying about items on his web site.
Seems he’s trying to take credit for some of Senator Bob Kerrey’s work.

What’s this crap about Bush waiting 7 minutes reading to the children. Seems by Kerry’s own admission he spent around 45 minutes unable to think when the second plane hit the World Trad Center.

He admits that when they saw the plane hit non of them could even think, then the next thing was hearing the explosion at the Pentegon. That happend 45 minutes later.

I guess if he were President at the time, the first thing he would have done was call Kofi Annen and see what America would be allowed to do.

[QUOTE=Truth Seeker]
I guess if he were President at the time, the first thing he would have done was call Kofi Annen and see what America would be allowed to do.

If all this has meaning for you, that’s very nice, and we still love you.