What's Different Today

By Semperpapa

As our troops were returning to the “World” from the hell of the Vietnam War, they were welcomed by a society that had turned against them and their families.
Uncounted tales of anti-war protesters spitting on returning Veterans and calling them “baby killers” are the legacy that American society of the 1960s and 70s will hold forever, regardless of the historical revisionism that people like John Kerry may champion.

A friend of mine, Marine Veteran, lost a leg and a kidney to a mortar shell during the Tet offensive in 1968. After spending a year in a hospital overseas, he returned to the World in his wheelchair and was welcomed at the San Francisco airport by his brother. Welcoming him, though, were also bunch of anti-war protesters. After the confrontation, my friend and his brother were the ones who got hauled off to jail.

The efforts of a partisan Media were paying off, as the three Network, ABC, NBC and CBS, were the only game in town, with their daily brainwashing of the American people against not just the war effort, but also against the men and women who had to endure the hell of combat in that conflict.
At the end of the very battle where my friend Roland was wounded, and approximately in the same location, the much revered Walter Cronkite of CBS News, expressed his opinion that the war was lost (it looks like American liberals just love that phrase).

In the living rooms across America, people took his statement at face value and because there was no other source of information, the reaction was “…if Walter Cronkite says it, it must be true…” while small details were lost in the propaganda. Details like the fact that the Tet offensive was a coordinated operation across the whole South Vietnam on the part of North Vietnam and the Vietcongs and that it had been a resounding tactical victory for the American and South Vietnamese forces.

But the details did not fit the agenda.

The portion of America that was protesting against the war and the Military then, has not remained idle since those days, as they have become the University professors of today. Riding the wave of those glorious days, the students of the 60s and 70s have become the indoctrinators of today and the war in Afghanistan and especially the war in Iraq, have given them the opportunity to relive their glory.
Or at least they hoped!

Today, things are different. The anti-war movement, symbolized by the derelicts from Code Pink, has attempted to rally the new hippies to a revived anti-Military, anti-America posturing that had been so much fun thirty five years ago. They thought that by skipping showers for few days and taking their obnoxious circus to the streets, their ranks were going to swell and they would actually have some sort of impact.
But today things are much different.

In the first place, there is no more Walter Cronkite. As much as Brian Williams, Dianne Sawyer or Katie Couric would like to believe that there are the new journalistic elite, they are handicapped by the ability of the American people to seek more balanced information. The monopoly of the Networks is in the history annals of America’s journalism.
Besides Cable News, which sees, for example, Fox News consistently trample everyone else in the ratings, there is the Internet which allows people to search for information from every corner of the globe. And the dinosaur Networks are not handling it too well, as demonstrated by their continuous attacks against their competition.
One would think that the journalistic profession would encourage the massive divulgation of news as a reaffirmation of the principles of the First Amendment. Instead, the Main Stream Media has relegated itself to be no more than a spoke hole for the American Liberal establishment.

There is, though, a much more important and incisive difference between the days of the Vietnam War and today: the Vietnam War Veteran.

While the returning Vietnam War Military was not supported effectively by their parents, the members of the Great Generation, today’s returning warriors have a generation of Vietnam Vets who are dedicated to insure that the ignominy of 35 years ago will not happen again. And personally, if I had the chance of having my back watched by someone, my first choice would be of a Vietnam Veteran.

These are men and women who came home from a hellish war, with visible and invisible scars, only to be treated in a despicable, disgusting manner. And yet, they remain to this day some of the most patriotic people this country could ever hope to have.
They are stepping up to the plate to make sure that the treatment they received will not be imparted to those who are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are there to make sure that the Gold Star families are protected and supported as they try to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of their personal hell.

And even if today the disgrace represented by the offspring of the 60s and 70s, by the successors of Hanoi Jane and John Kerry, has one of their ideological own in the White House, our Nation can still find hope in the Vietnam Vet still manning the perimeter and in the members of the today’s Great Generation, embodied by people like Allen West, Pete Hegseth and David Bellavia, and millions of other veterans who will, regardless of their place in our society, return this great Nation to its founding principles.

So, thank you Vietnam Vets and thank you to our newest Veterans. We, the true lovers of our freedom and our Country, will never forget.

Just my thoughts!