Ghosts of Christmas Past

Wow. Where does the time go? I can't believe ten days have passed already since I last posted something. For my two regular readers, my apologies. I blame my tardiness on the Olympics, since the NBC television coverage runs from 8:00 PM to midnight, Pacific Daylight Time. That's right during the time I would normally be writing new stuff for this journal. Rather than wasting my time writing for a non-existent audience, I've been wasting my time watching Olympic events that occurred eight hours in the past, for which I already know all the results. Am I pathetic or what?

Hell on Wheels!

For those of you that haven't experienced it first hand, the Seattle area is (in)famous for having really bad traffic. It's my unfortunate lot in life right now to have a pretty long commute in said traffic. I feel like I'm being tested like Job sometimes, especially in regards to my patience. Unlike Job, however, I fail the test miserably way too often. For this morning's commute, though, I think I have to be forgiven for being incredibly frustrated.

You see, today was the first significant rain in the Puget Sound region for quite a while. Yes, go ahead. Laugh if you want. Snort in derision. What I'm saying is true. The Seattle area has had an abnormally warm and dry summer. Until yesterday and today, it hadn't rained in quite a while. Well over a month, I believe.

Whenever it rains for the first time in a while the roads get a little slick (from oil floating to the surface of the roadway) and the traffic slows down even more than usual, and that was definitely the case this morning. Now, my morning commute often takes around an hour typically. This morning? Would you believe three hours!?! That's right. Because of the rain, road construction, and some minor flooding on the highway, my commute took me just under three hours. I left my hometown, after running a couple of errands, at 9:10 a.m. and arrived at work at noon! That's for a driving distance of about 33 miles. Yup, average speed - just over 10 miles per hour. For significant periods of time (over 5 minutes at a stretch) I sat in my car on a 60-mph-speed-limit, four-lane highway, parked, with the engine off. There simply wasn't any point in burning the gasoline, since I wasn't going anywhere for a while.

This sets a new, dubious record for my worst commute ever. Please, Lord, let me never experience anything like that again.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

Roughly 35 years ago, John Kerry went to Vietnam and served his country commanding a "Swift Boat" in missions that were widely regarded as highly dangerous. That much is not in dispute, and I give him credit for doing so, especially since I am old enough to remember the Vietnam War in some detail.

As a matter of fact, when I was a freshman in high school, back in 1972-73, I remember having conversations with my friends about what we would do should the war continue until we were 18 and faced the possibility of being drafted. My plan, if that would have happened, was to enlist in the Coast Guard, figuring that it would be relatively safe, compared to being drafted into the Army. It seemed like a good idea, until someone told my that the Coast Guard did coastal patrols in Vietnam and got shot at all the time. Having read just a bit of history, it probably was a reasonably good idea, especially since the CG was essentially out of Vietnam by then, but as a young teenager, the idea of perhaps having to go to war in any branch of the military was pretty scary. I certainly didn't want to go, and I'm thankful that the Vietnam War had ended by the time I was old enough to be eligible to be in the military. In fact, I happened to be one of those that came of age during that short period of time when the draft had been completely discontinued. I never had to register for the draft at all, but my brother, younger than me by just three years, did have to register (draft registration had been reinstated), even though no one was being drafted at the time (and my brother never was in the military, either).

So, I will never disparage John Kerry for his military service. He went. I didn't. End of story, as far as I'm concerned.

There are, though, a number of men that, like John Kerry, did go to Vietnam. In many cases, they also served with distinction. They were every bit as brave as John Kerry. They were also war heroes. But back in 1971, John Kerry testified before Congress, and he had this to say about what those men did in Vietnam:

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

He went on to say:

The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.

As you might imagine, that testimony, among other things, has upset many of those men that served in Vietnam. It seems obvious to me that accusing your fellow soldiers, sailors. marines and airmen of war crimes is unlikely to win you any popularity contests. By that time, however, the war in Vietnam was so despised that people were willing to believe almost anything if it lead to an end to U.S. involvement in southeast Asia. The people of the U.S. were anxious to get out of Vietnam and put the whole sordid episode behind us. John Kerry's testimony and leadership in the anti-war movement was his springboard into politics.

Thirty-five years later, John Kerry wants to be president of the United States. Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces.

And now, some of the egregious, hurtful and false things that John Kerry said about his past experiences in Vietnam are coming back to the present. He's right in one respect: those men indeed have "a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal." They are angry at him for his betrayal, when he testified before Congress and the American people to accuse his fellow veterans of rape, torture and murder of the very most horrific kind.

These men, and it is not just a few, were there, too. They know the truth, and they want the truth to be known: that John Kerry lied about what happened in Vietnam. Not just in the generalities, but in the specifics. He claimed to have spent Christmas, 1968, in Cambodia, but was not in Cambodia then (and Kerry's campaign has since admitted it), and was likely never in Cambodia. That perhaps two or more of his medals were not honestly earned. That his past actions and personal character make him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

I'm not in a position to question John Kerry's military service, but the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth are. They were there. They served with John Kerry. Does that make them automatically right? Not necessarily, but they do deserve to be heard. They've earned that right, every bit as much as John Kerry, and Kerry's attempts to silence them are disgusting and offensive.

The major media tried first to ignore and then to smear the Swift Boat Vets. Kerry's campaign has threatened to sue them, has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, and has pressured President Bush to silence them, but they persist in bringing their message forcefully, backed with eyewitness testimony and official documentation, to the public. They've already shown that the "Christmas in Cambodia" story that John Kerry told was fiction (at best). Today, Kerry's campaign is reported to have admitted that one of Kerry's Purple Hearts (medals for being wounded in combat) may have been from an unintentional, self-inflicted wound not received in combat, which would make it (as I understand it) ineligible for a Purple Heart.

I've written a number of times in this journal about a Biblical principle from Galatians 6:7: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." John Kerry is reaping the "rewards" of his actions in Vietnam, his subsequent anti-war activism and disparagement of his fellow veterans. He really ought not to be surprised; though his campaign is reacting like it is.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south and turns to the north;
round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from, there they return again. Ecclesiastes 1:5-7

You can't escape your past. The truth eventually wins out, even if it is only in eternity. With the microscopic scrutiny that presidential candidates get, the Democrats and John Kerry, in particular, should have known that his past would catch up to him.

And no one has really even started talking about his record in the Senate yet!

Permanent link