Here’s Jim Webb pointing out that maker-not-taker Mitt Romney didn’t serve in Vietnam, so maybe he should STFU about the 47%, many of whom are vets, or at least say thanks. Steve B has most of it transcribed if you can’t watch the video.
Remember, Mitt’s own reason for not mentioning the war or vets in his convention speech was “When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things you think are important.”.
Max Bialystok
Beautiful! The chickenhawks have come home to roost.
arguingwithsignposts
I could only get the video to play about halfway.
From the other piece, this is just sooooo tone deaf:
Does anyone think there’s not enough clear compare and contrast imagery out there for a vicious superPAC ad?
JGabriel
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mistemix @ top:
Maybe Mitt should thank the rest of the 47% too, which many of the people laboring in his companies belong to.
When I connect that realization with the 47% speech, I’m astounded by Romney’s sheer fucking ingratitude.
.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
@arguingwithsignposts:
Which other piece is that? I’d like to read it.
EconWatcher
That’s my Senator. He has an understated, dignified way of demolishing people who deserve it, like W and Mitt. I wish he’d run for a second term. He wasn’t 100 percent with us on the issues, but he was there when it counted (on ACA, and with no unnecessary drama as far as i recall). And i believe his deviations were based on his sincere beliefs of what’s good for the country. I also believe he’s retiring because he thinks the Senate is a circle jerk. And you gotta respect that. I’ll sure take Kaine over Macaca. But Kaine is no Jim Webb.
MattF
Mitt is such a lousy politician. Unlikeable, stiff, no constituency, no empathy, no visible commitments to any set of views, no evidence of being a good manager or having good judgement about other people. Apparently sees all these things as ‘challenges’ rather than compelling evidence that he really ought to be doing something else.
techno
There is absolutely no percentage in arguing the Vietnam War. After all, most the world including quite a few Americans consider someone with Webb’s record a war criminal. And while pro-war Romney on the beaches of France may be especially hypocritical, there are more than a few folks in that age group with stories just as ugly.
arguingwithsignposts
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.): It’s part of the Steve B. link in the post.
ETA: props for shortening the nym.
MikeJ
@techno:
There’s no need pandering to crazy people. That’s how you wind up like the Republicans.
EconWatcher
@techno: Maybe you’re not commenting on Webb’s remarks, but Webb was careful to say he was not rearguing the Vietnam War, and had no beef with anyone who did not serve, as long as they obeyed the law. What he said–devastatingly, i think–is that it’s particularly unseemly for someone who didn’t serve to suggest that those who did are moochers because they receive veterans’ benefits.
geg6
@techno:
Who are these people who consider Jim Webb a war criminal? I don’t and I don’t know anyone who does. I know quite a few Vietnam vets and they are all good people, fine citizens, and excellent fathers/brothers/sons.
And I don’t see anyone arguing the Vietnam War either. What they are arguing is that Mittens was protesting FOR the war and all the while avoiding fighting in it. And then forty years later ignoring that others did the fighting he was so gung ho about in both Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan and calling them takers, who don’t matter enough to even mention, let alone thank.
Jeebus. You obviously aren’t old enough to remember Vietnam and don’t currently know anyone who has ever served. Or you wouldn’t paint them with that broad war criminal brush. What an ass.
Mary G
Heckuva speech. Whatever happened to all the wimpy Democrats? I like these ones better.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
@techno:
Look, Webb and most guys like him were 18, 20, 23, 25 when they went over there. Webb himself couldn’t have been more than 20 when he first went. I can’t fathom the hell of going to a country and having to go out and fight a war. A few Americans really might qualify as war criminals, but kids barely out of their teens, many still in their teens doing things–that their government ordered them to do–that nobody should ever have to do, well, I don’t know what to say to you. If you want to look for war criminals, you should be looking at the people in the U.S. government who sent them there.
So, yes, it is a good move to highlight those like Webb on the one hand, against turd like Romney, who were so eager that other people should head off to get shot at and be made to do and see things I’d never ask anybody to do or see. He’s a guy who was the son of a millionaire governor, akid who was as happy as could be to see kids no older than he was go to war while he trolled for converts on French beaches, and now looks upon those same kids, now long grown up, now veterans, many bearing 40 year old wounds, and he calls them moochers. Shit, yes, that’s a drum worth beating.
Todd
Here’s what Willard was up to in 1968, when he wasn’t demonstrating in favor of the war.
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/27/and-so-this-happened-in-1968/comment-page-2/
And make sure you point out to your conservative friends how much Mittens lerved him some Vietnam war.
geg6
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
I’m being ridiculous because this is just some asshole on the internet, but I’m absolutely furious with this Techno jerk. That comment of his/hers could only be written by someone so entitled that he/she has no clue what it is like to go to war and what it is like to try to live your life afterward. I work with vets every day and I get a front row seat to what war has done to them. To call them all war criminals is so stupid and juvenile, I want to punch him/her in the neck.
This is not how I want to start my Saturday. Pissed off at entitled clueless assholes. That’s how my work week is, so I really don’t need it now.
geg6
Okay, I’m calming down by watching that nice young man, Chris Hayes. Who, if I wasn’t old enough to be his mother, I’d be crushing on like a fan girl.
Baud
@Mary G:
IMHO, this is the type of Democratic leadership you get when the party comes together instead of engaging in internecine warfare over what often are relatively minor differences.
Dennis SGMM
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
The average age of U.S. forces in Vietnam was 23.1. In WWII the average age was 27.
The Ancient Randonneur
James Fallows (Commenting on this same video):
Webb is the maverick McCain can only dream of being.
MikeJ
@Dennis SGMM: I thought it was n-n-n-n-nineteen.
the Conster
@geg6:
He’s really something, isn’t he? He’s wicked smaht.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
O.K., this has nothing to do with Mitt Romney or Vietnam or French beaches, but it’s just too weird not to bring it up.
geg6
@the Conster:
Yes, he is. Cute, smart, awesome glasses, and liberal. Loved his book. All of that adds up to super hawtness.
debbie
Equally offensive was Romney’s response to a voter during some primary somewhere, when he was asked why none of his sons had served their country. He said something like his sons’ idea of public service was to get their father elected.
arguingwithsignposts
@geg6:
And yet you came here. :)
Rex Everything
This is becoming kind of amazing — in defending their values against Romney-Ryan, the Dems have begun to articulate a defense of the very ideas of representative government and civil society. This isn’t liberal vs. conservative anymore. This is the stuff every American agreed on 30 years ago vs. coke-fueled Wall Street. And it goes back much further than that: it’s the social contract vs. exploitation, the ancient idea of the Republic vs. the post-Reagan corporate ethos.
Ayn Rand was idiot enough to try to disparage Plato in her (ahem) philosophical writings. Now we have an election that’s practically become a referendum on Plato or Ayn Rand. Speeches like Webb’s put the Democrats firmly on the side of decency. I don’t even like the Democratic Party. But when they take up this cause, practically the cause of humane civilization itself, everyone who’s not an idiot or a sociopath has to stand up and cheer.
This should be a landslide.
Dennis SGMM
@geg6:
Thank you for choosing to work with vets. For any number of reason that I know personally that can not in any way be easy on your head or your heart.
Techno suffers from not knowing what the fuck he’s talking about. The vast majority of those who served in Vietnam were draftees. If you weren’t in Mitt Romney’s cohort then your choices were stark; get drafted and go where they sent you, go to Canada with the prospect of never being able to return, or go to jail. If someone chose to dodge the draft because they didn’t want to get their asses shot off I understood and respected that choice even when I was in Vietnam – as long as they didn’t sit safely on the sidelines and cheer on the war.
The last thing any non-psycho combat soldier wants to do is to be in a situation where he, or now she, has to open fire.
All that they want to go is to get one more day closer to going home.
WereBear
Ann & Mitt is supposed to be this great love story, but it’s never worked for me.
His parents “took her in” to live with them when she was sixteen, which has always smacked of arranged marriage to me. She tried to break up with him while she was in college, and he “wore her down.” Most people understand the stresses of parenting; it’s all she talks about. And when she tries to connect with shared adversity, like in her “Listen women” speech at the convention, the message that comes across is, Yes, it sucks, it’s our lot in life.
There was a Mitt quote where he explained their move to Massachusetts with the caveat that it was not as good for Ann’s MS as the climate in Utah, but “nobody gets to be President as Governor of Utah.”
Love? I don’t see any.
MikeJ
Bill Marriott (yes, that Marriott) explains how Romney will help dock the yacht of state.
Nancy Darling
@geg6: I’m almost old enough to be his grandmother and I AM crushing on him like a fan girl.
I wish a SuperPac would drop some money in Arkansas with an ad using Webb’s speech. We are not turning blue in this election, but it might have some affect in down ticket races where we have Rove acolyte, Tim Griffin and rodeo clown Crawford running, among others.
Rmoney’s got the electoral vote pretty well sewed up here, but I would love it if Obama won a bigger % than he did in ’08. A front pager wrote something a few days ago about running up the score on the fuckers and I couldn’t agree more.
We have more than a few “bloviating douche bags”, as Cole calls them, saying we should vote 3rd party since Arkansas is going to give it to Rmoney anway.
Not me. Not ever. I want to run up the score and make the fuckers cry!
ETA: Mrs. Cole, I am becoming paranoid about my use/overuse of commas.
the Conster
@MikeJ:
Read that yesterday. It’s a game changer, since everyone will understand that the two situations are exactly the same!
ETA: Willard is named after Willard Marriott, fellow Mormon. They’re all such inbred clueless fucking assholes.
Dennis SGMM
@MikeJ:
Heh. I like Paul Hardcastle’s song a lot, and the official video is still a bit tough for me to watch. IIRC, you didn’t really become draft bait until age 20.
Princess
I think it is sad (and not surprising) that they had to go back to 1968 for a photo of Mitt doing something nice and romantic for Ann. The Obamas wouldn’t have to go further than, oh, say last Tuesday.
As for the video, yes, Mitt is so loathesome he makes even non-partisan fed up people want to stand up and scream at him and expose him. Good on Webb.
arguingwithsignposts
Looking at the picture, and knowing Mitt Romney’s plasticine nature, I have to guess that he didn’t actually make that heart himself. The lettering is too perfect, there’s a bifurcation line in the middle, and the heart itself is perfectly symmetrical. He paid someone to do it.
El Cid
This is completely wrong. Democrats know that Republicans are the ones who represent patriotism and the military and so forth and used to know to shut up and be meek about everything. Now Obama and his Kenyonesian ACORN shock troops has ruined all that carefully crafted imagery.
WereBear
@MikeJ: Cripes, they teach their children nothing.
No wonder they grow up to be so selfish and annoying.
Todd
@arguingwithsignposts:
Dr Soong has several iterations yet to go before the positronic processing will adequately integrate all the input from an emotion chip without causing a cascade failure.
jayboat
@MikeJ:
I watched that clip and wanted to punch that guy in the throat.
“Took the kids for ice cream on the boat (Lake Winni is a LAKE, a rather small lake with lots of size and sound limitations for boats) and the slips were all taken at the city docks. Finally, someone had their fill of grey poupon and left, leaving an open slip. The wait was frightful, and all the kids were screaming for ice cream. Mitt walked out on the dock and helped us tie up.”
My hero. “left me out to sea at the end of the dock.”
geg6
@jayboat:
Plus he keeps calling docking “parking”. He’s no boater, that’s for sure.
raven
@EconWatcher: Ever read what he has had to say about those of us that went to that horseshit and came home and tried to end it?
arguingwithsignposts
@jayboat: boats are people, my friend.
dance around in your bones
@MikeJ:
Gawd. Way to make me start crying at 6am. I’d never seen that before (the video/song) but …..ok, I’m a puddle now.
The draft was like a giant vacuum machine, sucking up all our young boys.
TheronWare
Jim Webb is also quite a good writer as I remember reading his novel “Fields of Fire” many years ago.
raven
@Dennis SGMM: You know I have great respect for you but
“The vast majority of those who served in Vietnam were draftees.”
Is simply not correct.
“Draftees vs. Volunteers:
25% (648,500) of total forces in country were draftees. (66% of U.S. armed forces members were drafted during WWII.)
Draftees accounted for 30.4% (17,725) of combat deaths in Vietnam.
dmsilev
@arguingwithsignposts: Has anyone double-checked the kerning yet?
EconWatcher
@raven: No. Was it bad, and was it recent?
raven
@techno: You are a babbling fucking moron.
BobS
@techno: You’re correct that there’s no percentage in arguing the war itself. However, the hypocrisy of a vociferous war supporter avoiding service will resonate, particulary if it’s woven into the narrative of the entitled life Prince Mitt has lived- my understanding is that by 1968 the deferment Romney took advantage of was available to very few Mormon boys.
I don’t know what Webb’s record is in particular that would make you refer to him as a “war criminal”- do you have some evidence that he participated in the act or cover-up of a My Lai type episode?
arguingwithsignposts
@dmsilev: As long as we’re talking about the pic, I’m also curious about the angle. Someone had to get on a pretty tall stepladder or something to get a photo from that angle of Mitt lying in a heart.
Todd
@arguingwithsignposts:
What is it about wealthy assholes and power boats? They seem to like to rip about aimlessly, without a particular destination or leisure activity in mind. They’re usually not dragging skiers, nor are they going from Point A to Point B – they’re just preening and showing off that they bought a big, fast boat that takes no real work or particular skill to run, unlike a sailboat (sailing provides a special set of sensations, and a feeling of accomplishment as you catch the wind).
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Damn. The draft was so ubiquitous at the time that I admit that I had no idea that non-draftees were in the majority. So much for squids being smarter than grunts. :P
lonesomerobot
Seriously, what kind of asshole gets deferments from having to serve during a war, then goes out and protests in favor of the war?
Oh. Mitt Romney. Why am I not surprised?
hope
What does ETA stand for?
arguingwithsignposts
@Todd: Remember that slogan from a while back: He who dies with the most toys wins? To wealthy assholes, it’s not a joke.
arguingwithsignposts
@hope: edit to add
geg6
@raven:
But I know from personal experience that many of those volunteers joined up because they knew they’d be drafted and so they decided to volunteer so as to get some choices in how they were deployed. Both of my cousins who served did that. My brother joined the Navy for that reason. It was a way to have a little control over what happened to you. Not that it always turned out as they thought (my cousins are good example of that; they both saw a LOT of action), but being drafted was a lot worse.
kay
@the Conster:
There’s a long New Yorker piece out on Romney. It’s generally favorable, lots of interviews with wealthy Mormons.
What someone who is not a wealthy Mormon might conclude, as I did, is that the overwhelming theme of Romney’s life is “sheltered”.
He’s genuinely “clueless”. He had no exposure to people outside a small, wealthy, powerful circle until he ran for the Senate. We’ll never know if he has the capacity for empathy or understanding outside his experience. He never had to develop that.
The older men who surrounded him until middle age (including his father) did him a real disservice.
dance around in your bones
@hope:
Edit To Add. Like when you gotta fix something or add another brilliant insight :)
HRA
As I remember it, you had to sign up for the draft at 18. They had a lottery and numbers were assigned. The higher the number meant you were safe for a while or maybe safe if the war ended before your number was called. Those who served were chiefly from the poor or middle class population.
I was against the war. Actually, I must be truthful and say I am against any war. Still nothing struck me as unfair and very sad in how the Vietnam veterans were treated when they came home. To read now where someone calls them war criminal here is totally disgusting.
Central Planning
@geg6: My dad has told me stories of when he was in Vietnam. Some are hilarious like when he took a jeep from the motor pool and smashed the hell out of it and said he got it that way. He also says it was very much like Catch-22
But the thing that really sticks with me is when he told me he was terrified for his life. EVERY. DAY.
I can’t even begin to fathom what that must have been like.
Nancy Darling
@geg6: I have a friend who joined the Navy for that reason and wound up on a swift boat on the Mekong River.
raven
@Dennis SGMM: My dissertation research led me to many “interesting” facts. Do you know about Project 100,000? Starting literally the month I went in, Nov 66, they took 100,000 a year into the military that could not meet BASIC military requirements. I was 17 and a high school dropout but the fact that I was a high level reader put me well above average compared to my peers in the Army. This is not to say they were not great people, just that they were educationally disadvantaged. Combine that with deferments with fuckers like Romney, Cheney, and it’s no wonder we were an Army in crisis.
For those of you just sitting around here’s a documentary called
Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny (1970)
Draftees were over represented in infantry and other combat arms MOS’s because of the structure of the Army and Marines. Yes Alice, they drafted into the crotch starting in 66 too. They went down the line in the induction center in Chicago, Army, Marines, Army, Marines. Given the fact that I went in on my 17th birthday, Nov 10, the Marine Corps Birthday, I really “dodged” a bullet!
raven
@Nancy Darling: Dennis can tell you if this is correct but I was under the impression that Brown Water Navy dudes volunteered for that duty?
eemom
@EconWatcher:
I’m in Virginia too, and totally agreed with you about Webb until he turned into a backstabbing SOB about six months ago by publicly dissing Obama over ACA, right while all the world was on pins and needles waiting for the SCt decision.
Also too, he’s not running for reelection because he doesn’t have the balls for another tough campaign. I.e., we’re not worth it to him.
Fuck him, and let the door hit his ass on the way out.
raven
@Central Planning: There was an article on CNN’s site this week quoting the mom of a trooper killed in Afghanistan recently. She said, “he was scared all the time”. Uh, yea, that’s the deal but you get numb and many of us got fucked up as much as possible to help the numbness. It wasn’t that great of an idea in the bush where your reactions were critical in staying alive but, to play on Dennis’s quote, the vast majority of troopers in Vietnam were NOT in the bush.
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
You’re correct; you had to volunteer and you had to be single. You also had to be slightly crazy. I was all three at the time.
When I was handed my orders to training and from there to the Delta, I called up my dad and gave him the news. His reply was “Are you nuts?” This from a man who was aboard the U.S.S. Utah at Pearl Harbor and who subsequently fought through the Pacific campaign. Later, he went on to participate in the Korean war landing at Inchon.
Youth.
ETA: This was in 1970.
Honus
@EconWatcher: I’d forgotten how he reamed W over the “how’s your boy” comment. Watching him eviscerate Ollie North in ’94 like nobody rose could made me like Webb too. (if you don’t know the history between Webb and North, it’s worth a google.
raven
@Dennis SGMM: That’s exactly what my old man, WWII pacific and Korea destroyer sailor, said to me when I volunteered for the Nam after having served in Korea 67-68. Korean DMZ duty was considered a “hardship” tour and I didn’t have to go to Vietnam but I was so fucking brilliant at 18 I just HAD to!
Nancy Darling
@raven: I never got the impression that he volunteered for it, Raven.
the Conster
@kay:
That’s largely true of all kids from upper middle class/rich families, but the Mormon thing takes it to the extreme. That secret outsidery “us against the world” fur lined bunker they inhabit makes contact with the outside world very problematic for them, and in Willard’s case he never really bothered to. It makes me wonder how Huntsman was able to project normal.
raven
@Nancy Darling: What I posted is what I remembered. I was in the Delta in the Army 68-69 and only had what I would call a “common” knowledge of what the squids did. I would suspect that one could find exceptions do nearly anything so it may well be that you are correct in this case.
raven
Laughter on the Rivers of Death: One Sailor’s Humorous Experience
Nancy Darling
@raven: Dana Shuster, Army nurse, knew more love in a few fleeting minutes than the Rmoney’s will experience in a life time.
“You the first white woman ever touch me,”
Too late my heart dodges and weaves, evades the inevitable. Ambushed again.
Damn, I’m in love.”
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Heh! Of course we didn’t listen to them. We were a Navy family so I knew which service I would choose. My friends at the time asked the same “Are you nuts?” question because, had I been drafted, the odds were better than good that I’d spend two years as a typewriter jockey and then be done. The Navy was four years.
When I found myself ordered to a Naval Air Advanced Training Squadron in South Texas I was disappointed because I wanted to go to sea as a WESPAC sailor. I took it because I knew that I’d be up for sea duty in two years. Just under two years later a Personnelman buddy told me that my squadron had sent a request to BUPERS to have me extended to duration of duty. The only certain way out (And I tried everything else) was to volunteer to serve in a combat zone in-country RVN.
Some of us just have to do it the hard way until we learn better. Sixty fours years on and I’m still learning better.
Mandalay
@Dennis SGMM:
OT, but for those who avoided the Vietnam draft by moving to Canada, what would actually happen to them if they returned now? Would they face jail?
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Thanks much for making me aware of the book. It’s on my list. Never suffered from volunteer’s remorse. Closest I came was on my first day in the Delta. It was pouring as only it can in Vietnam and the mud was Biblical. I stood there on the PSP ramp with my sea bag beside me and, all by itself, the theme from M.A.S.H. started going through my head.
Dennis SGMM
@Mandalay:
IIRC president Ford offered a limited amnesty program to those who left the country and president Carter granted them full amnesty.
MikeJ
@Dennis SGMM:
And all the people who said that Ford just *had* to pardon Nixon were the same people throwing a shit fit when Carter allowed Americans to return home.
johnny driftless zone
@WereBear:
Twenty years ago I was participating in a summer historic preservation program in BFE east Oregon. For an entire month the class was isolated in the middle of nowhere at a research camp in Harney county. It’s a very sparsely populated part of Oregon. It was miles to the nearest town. And one of the enrollees was a young woman who had just graduated from college with a degree in French. She had no interest in historic preservation. Her parents dropped her off so she was effectively stranded. She was from Salt Lake City, Utah.
I asked her why she was there. She told me her family had arranged a marriage for her when she was a teen, and she was to wed the young man upon graduation from college. When she graduated she refused. So they enrolled her in this preservatiion field school and told her to think it over some and she had that month to come around to the familiy’s wishes. I was gobsmacked. She said she was Mormon, as if that explained it all.
I had a car, and when the program ended she asked me to drop her off in Burns, OR, where her parents were waiting to pick her up. Their car was waiting in Burns, a blue sedan with Utah plates. She had me pull up across the street from it. She got out, grabbed her stuff, thanked me and walked over to her parents’ car. The rear door swung open seemingly by itself, she got in, she closed the door and the car drove off out of town, headed west. Toward her awaiting groom in her arranged marriage, I presumed, and whatever future she didn’t really want.
So yeah, that description of Romney’s parents ‘taking in her in’, it’s an arranged marriage. Mormons actually do that kind of shit.
Todd
@MikeJ:
Ford really did have to pardon Nixon. Not doing so would have been catastrophic.
WereBear
@johnny driftless zone: Wow. My hunch was right.
And that’s just sick.
This is how I always trip up those nice Mormon boys on the bicycles who ring my doorbell. I tell them I want nothing to do with a religion which regards women as less than human; and I get blank stares in return.
kay
@the Conster:
He has a sort of blind confidence that scares the shit out of me. There’s never been any chance or chaos in his life. A person describes him as a “natural executive”. It’s a compliment, but WTF does that mean, even if I swallow it whole, as fact?
How did he get there? What informs his views? There’s no “Romney” in the interview or the biographical sketch. His FATHER is there. I have a sense of HIM.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@MikeJ:
‘Park’ a boat? Grab a ‘rope’?
There are no ropes on a boat, there are lines and sheets. You dock the boat and you handle the lines.
Ignorant asshole.
johnny driftless zone
@WereBear: I remember her getting out of my car and into her parents’ so clearly. It felt so weird. I felt like I had been duped to do something I would have objected to otherwise. I thought I was just going to drop her off in town, not be part of what felt like an exchange of property. I would have wanted no part of that.
kay
@the Conster:
I think Ann’s a real window. Her message to women is “take it on faith that he’ll take care of you”
Besides how patronizing and fucked up it is that she believes I’m looking for a personal caretaker in the President, I’m not, Ann, why do I have to take it on faith? How about he tells us?
raven
@Dennis SGMM: Me neither, fuck it, it don’t mean nuthin.
johnny driftless zone
@johnny driftless zone: I mean a hand off of property, not exchange. Nothing was exchanged; it felt more like the transfer of an item. Or a prisoner. Yeecch.
Opie_jeanne
@HRA: The lottery came near the end of the war, 1969? Before that a lot of young men stayed in college for as long as possible to avoid being drafted. And each local draft board had a quota, and of it was in a poor neighborhood there were a lot more volunteers to make up the quota.
MikeJ
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Halyards, also, too. On any boat worth being on anyway.
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Being born and raised a military brat helped a lot. “Just another fucked up duty station.”
Original Lee
Two of my cousins served in the Air Force during Viet Nam. One was “lucky” enough to be a damn good test pilot, so he spent the war Stateside and “only” has a messed-up leg from one of his crashes. The other, unfortunately, was shot down and captured and (we’re pretty sure) died shortly thereafter. I don’t remember that his body was ever found.
A third cousin was a conscientious objector and went to Canada, where he married and had a family. He returned to the U.S. a few years ago to be with his dying mother.
So, IMO, Webb has it exactly right. And thank you very much to all of you here who have served.
Drive-by Nomad
Because (photo)Shopping is my patriotic duty…
raven
@HRA: Treated by who? Don’t buy into that shit. The people that gave me shit were right wingers who thought we were pussies because we lets those little gooks kick our ass. The anti-war people I knew were anti-WAR not anti-vet. Now even Obama has bought into “The Spitting Image”.
raven
@Original Lee: Hat’s off to all three of them. There were no simple answers.
gelfling545
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.): Totally agree. I protested against the war but never felt anything but sympathy for the men who had to fight it whether they wanted to or not. Apparently some folks have forgotten that we once had a universal (male) draft and that deferments were easier to get for some folks (rich) than others (not rich).
Nancy Darling
@Drive-by Nomad: Great photo-shop. I’m spreading it around!
Svensker
@Mandalay:
Don’t know, but we do know a woman who was married to a Vietnam era draft resister who went to Canada. He’s still under the radar, doesn’t have a passport, no papers of any kind, can’t leave Canada. Been living that was for over 40 years and will probably die as a man without a country. Strange, huh?
liberal
@Dennis SGMM:
Actually not true, if you read the intertubes.
OTOH, there’s after-the-fact evidence that draftees were on average given more dangerous roles, so there’d be an incentive to sign up.
The best argument for soldiering in Vietnam not being a personal crime is that it’s hard to see how most anyone would know any better. People bitch about the media these days, but back then very few people knew what the hell was up with any of this foreign policy stuff. (And I’m saying that as someone whose dad did know as early as the early 60s that our involvement there was wrong.) To see this it’s easy—go back to the magazines of the era.
Iraq, OTOH, is another matter.
liberal
@raven:
Yeah, that’s really surprising. Not.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Svensker: I thought Carter granted amnesty. It’s one of the Issues of the 1980 campaign. It’s one of those things that made Carter appear to be a hippie when he was actually quite hawky.
cckids
@WereBear: That was my first thought too! My kids knew better before they were in grade school, and they knew it because thats how we lived, not just spouted off platitudes.
liberal
@BobS:
No. Rather, the point is that even if the conduct of a war is just, if the war itself is unjust (as Vietnam obviously was), then all actors on the aggressors side are possibly criminal.
I say “possibly” because there are reasons to make exceptions. A pretty standard one (centuries old) is if the soldier has been deceived by his government.
But the claim that you’re not a criminal if your actions aren’t criminal is wrong, even though people commonly argue to the contrary.
Finally, let’s not forget that millions of Vietnamese died in the Indochinese wars, in a country smaller than ours by population. So while I think “techno” is wrong on the merits (because soldiers then would have a very hard time learning the truth of the situation, and even if they did, they faced conscription), his/her attitude is pretty understandable, if you look at the big picture.
arguingwithsignposts
@liberal:
Fixed for accuracy, and because this is a stupid fucking argument.
Svensker
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace:
He may have. But the guy was (and is) paranoid and also at that point had been in Canada technically illegally for a number of years — if he went back to the States, he probably wouldn’t get back into Canada. So there he sits, to this day.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
There’s something I’ve been wondering. Could you have signed up but said, “Look, I’m willing to serve, but I’m not willing to kill anybody.”? I don’t think I could ever find it in me to kill anybody. This isn’t to imply that I’m some kind of saint or anything; I know nobody who went there–well, nobody aside from the few psychopaths you find in any society–went to Vietnam to kill anybody, so I’m not trying to accuse anybody of beig bloodthirsty or sadistic. But I’ve never had to kill anybody, and I don’t know that I could make myself pull the trigger if I ever found myself stuck somewhere where I had to. What could somebody like me have done if I’d been born in 1950?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@MikeJ: Halyards. I knew I was missing some. What’s the anchor attached to? The rode? Any others?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@gelfling545: And don’t forget that the National Guard was impossible to get into unless you were connected (e.g. Bush, Quayle).
It wasn’t like today, where the Guard volunteers do multiple deployments ’cause the Chickenhawks who start these wars won’t start a draft to go with them.
LanceThruster
@MikeJ:
If you’re on a lake, are you left out at sea or merely on the water?
This is about as big a non-story (sorry Mr. Marriot) as one of Mitten’s DILs at the “Women for Rmoney” event shown on C-SPAN talk about how he brought a TV and built a stand for her in her hospital maternity room because she was bored and he was soooo caring. Now go vote for him.
Seriously.
Effum.
Seriously.
LanceThruster
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
I believe military research has shown it’s quite common throughout history for a certain percentage of combat troops to not fire or purposely fire not to kill (even in WWII). That’s pretty remarkable.
Mike G
@LanceThruster:
Research showed that (I don’t have exact numbers, but this is what I remember of it) in W2 only something like 10-15% of combat soldiers fired their weapons during an engagement. In Vietnam, because of changes in training and a different type of warfare, it was more like 90%.
Rex Everything
I guess the GOP going batshit crazy has allowed the Dems to become the party of sanity & decency. And they’re really beginning to run with it. Sweet.
Rex Everything
I guess the GOP going batshit crazy has allowed the Dems to become the party of sanity & decency. And they’re really beginning to run with it. Sweet.
James E. Powell
What is most frustrating about all the talk of the Viet Nam war is that it seems that no one is willing to come out and admit that the whole thing was stupid, that we never should have done it, and that the lesson we ought to have learned is to be skeptical and cautious when some big shot claims we need to go to war.
Mechwarrior Online
@raven:
Yeah the running joke in the Navy is that Navy = Never Again Volunteer Yourself. What was a cushy job can rapidly end you up on ship boarding parties, riverine duty, on the ground with the Marines, or being shot it in a helicopter or plane.
Of course, that’s party of the job, but the Navy has a long history of not informing people what’s going on and often failing to train people for this sort of duty.
Today, most of that work is done by SEALs rather than your average sailor, EOD and SWICC are also special operations capable but you can still land up doing that sort of work really fast. And once you’re trained up to do it, you’ll find yourself on the short list any time it needs to be done again.
@James E. Powell:
Think about it this way. Was the Korean war stupid? In many ways it was worse than Vietnam. However we “won” Korea, and South Korea has been a fantastic success in the region and an amazing ally.
It’s hard to say because hindsight is 20/20, but had things gone differently we might think Korea had been the stupid war and Vietnam was the right one.
JoyfulA
@liberal: My late husband’s 1963 ROTC instructor told the class about stuff going down in SE Asia that wasn’t going to be pretty. He couldn’t see the point of learning to build bridges in engineering school and then using his knowledge to blow them up in some strange country, so he transferred to a state U without mandatory ROTC and tried to take enough time to graduate that war would be over. That didn’t work. He could have been a deferred cop or got a spot in Navy officer school and didn’t. A tech job with a deferment turned out not to have a deferment. He became a teacher of the learning disabled and loved it!
I wonder if everyone realizes that in the 60s, many (most?) colleges were male only, including Harvard and Yale. And that most of these male colleges had mandatory military training like ROTC.
AxelFoley
@Princess:
LOLOLOLOL
Starlit
@Nancy Darling: I am not fit to wipe Mrs. Cole’s boots, but your post was, I thought, immaculately punctuated, and a joy to read.