The failure of "Anybody But Bush," part two

Faced with John Kerry's famous 1971 testimony to Congress about Vietnam, Democrats and other assorted lame excuses for bold thinkers have resorted to weasel words to an extent that would make any Rethuglican proud.

A perfect example is provided today by Media Matters for America, run by David Brock, author of the book Blinded by the Right. I keep its box of links on the right because it does a good job of pointing out the latest distortions and frothing idiocy of the right-wing media, but it also shows the limitations of an "opposition" that is afraid to oppose.

Today an item was posted quoting Charles "The Kook" Krauthammer charging that John Kerry "betrayed the comrades [he] left behind" with his antiwar activities.

[P]eople like John Kerry ... betrayed them by telling the world that these soldiers left behind were committing atrocities, as Kerry has said on a daily basis. It was a disgraceful act on his part to indict the soldiers, the veterans whom he had served with....

People ought to ask Senator Kerry, "Have you no shame?" To pretend to be a hero of the veterans after how you treated them 30 years ago and disgraced them?

MMFA responded much as others have, by saying Kooky K. and his ilk "distorted Kerry's actual testimony," in which he "recounted the stories of other Vietnam veterans," accounts for which he did not claim to have first hand knowledge. And he "did not blame these soldiers" but "the leaders at the time."

My gosh, how much more wobbly-kneed a defense could there be? "It wasn't me! It was somebody else! I wuz just, like, tellin' you what they said! Not me!" That cedes the entire argument about the war, about the atrocities, about the wrongs, about history itself to the flaming reactionaries still fighting the Vietnam war 30 years after it was lost, hiding behind semantics and weasel words of the same sort we condemned when the White House said "we never said 'imminent.'"

Well, here's my answer to the creeps and cretins who want to wash the blood-stained facts away:

What the hell do you mean "betrayed?" Are you telling me there were no atrocities? Are you telling me that My Lai didn't happen? That the Tiger Force did nothing? That the Phoenix Program did not exist? That the eyewitness accounts dating back to 1966 were all fabricated? That the tiger cages paid for with our tax dollars were, what, private hotel suites with built-in saunas?

Are you telling me that the three friends of mine who were in Vietnam, all of who came back with stories of atrocities (two of who shrugged it off with "everybody" - that is, all sides - "did it"), were lying to me?

But I notice that. I notice that in all your denunciations, for all your venom, you don't say it didn't happen. You carefully avoid claiming that there were no atrocities. Even Oily North limited his denial to his own unit. So just what was the "betrayal?" Who the flaming hell are you to sit there and say that those who spoke the truth "betrayed" anyone? Are you saying that telling the truth is a betrayal? That we are obligated to lie, to cover up, to deceive, to deny?

Do you, then, stand with those who have threatened the life and family of Joe Darby, with those who have forced his family to live in hiding, in protective custody? Do you think he should have just kept his mouth shut? Didn't he, by your definition, "betray" his comrades, "betray" and besmirch every US soldier? Should Abu Ghraib have been kept a dark secret, safely hidden within folds of a bizarre form of "loyalty?"

You twisted slimebags. You equate conscience with betrayal and truth with treason. You do not deserve to be taken seriously except as threats to decency and justice. You deserve only pity and contempt.

No, that's not right. Not pity. Just contempt.