Tag Archives: Vietnam War

military news

Now he weighs in on ending the Vietnam War

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Our draft dodger in chief now says he could have won the Vietnam War in a week. How? I guess by saturating North Vietnam with Agent Orange, the agent known to have killed thousands of people exposed to it.

Whenever this moron speaks openly about Vietnam, and the war that took 58,000 American lives, it’s good to recall the measures he took to avoid suiting up for duty in that conflict.

He got some foot doctor to diagnose him with bone spurs in his feet. Question: Have you ever seen Donald gimping around on a cane, or a walker, or crutches, or any device to help him lessen the pain from the alleged spurs? Neither have I.

This idiot has no business even mentioning the Vietnam War out loud, within earshot of anyone who can hear him.

He also has said the Iran war would be over by now. It isn’t. The Iranians, who allegedly lost their “battlefield readiness” in the initial round of missile attacks and aerial bombardment, remain a threat to the U.S. forces.

So … Donald, here’s one final demand from an American patriot who did serve in Vietnam: Shut the f*** up!

local news

Once more about the Honor Flight

I want to take one more — and final — pass at explaining why the recent Honor Flight I joined meant so much to me. Here goes, then I’m done with telling this tale.

Upon our return from a two-day whirlwind swing through Washington, D.C., our group of 45 military veterans and our guardians received the greeting to end all greetings. Honor Flights are intended to enable citizens to express their gratitude for the service that veterans perform on behalf of our great nation. I was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1968 and served exactly two years before separating in 1970 from the military.

My service was nothing worthy of boasting. In a sense, the gratitude I received personally seemed a bit overdone. That’s beside the point.

The point I seek to make here is the greeting we got when we arrived at Love Field. We heard a Scottish bagpipe band, we walked from the plane to a greeting from about 1,000 folks. We had a lengthy rank of high school ROTC cadets standing at attention, frozen in a hand salute.

Then there were the signs. They said, “Welcome home!” For those of us who served in Vietnam, seeing a sign welcoming us home is far more impactful than a “Thank you for your service.” When I hear that latter greeting these days, to be honest, it sounds a bit like a cliche.

Every now and then, if I am wearing a ‘Nam vet gimme cap, I’ll get a “Welcome home, brother” from a fellow who is as old as I am. Those greetings mean more to many of us, I feel confident in expressing, than a “thanks for your service.”

We didn’t come home back in the day to marching bands and flag-waving crowds. I didn’t get abused by some Americans who heaped verbal scorn on vets returning from the war. However, the difference between what we saw just the other evening at Love Field reminded many of us of the cold shoulder we once received from a public that simply shrugged and looked the other way.

local news, military news

Ready to accept ‘honor’ of grateful nation

Fewer than seven days to go and soon it will be flaps as 44 fellow veterans and I take off from Love Field for an “Honor Flight” designed to thank those who wore the uniform while serving our great land.

Please accept my brutal candor here. It took me some time to consider this a trip worth making. Why is that?

Well, I wasn’t sure a brief sprint through some of our nation’s hallowed memorials and monuments was worth the effort. Time also was a factor. Honor Flights leave in the morning of Day One and return the evening of Day Two.

As time marched on, I kept hearing reports from other veterans who have declared the event one of the highlights of their lives. Hmm, I thought: Well, if it means so much to so many of these veterans, then perhaps there’s more than meets the eye on these honor flights.

The vets who return talk of the immense respect they collect from strangers they encounter while touring the DC Mall memorials. You know, this might be all that it is cracked up to be.

The older veterans on this trip saw service in the Vietnam Era. Many of us actually reported for duty in the war zone. I will exempt myself from in any discussion of combat experience in Vietnam. I was a REMF. The acronym stands for Rear Echelon … you can assemble the rest of what the letters spell out.

And although I didn’t get the “baby killer” epithet or other hostile language, I did receive the cold shoulder from strangers –and, yes, even a few friends — when I mentioned my time in the war zone.

These Honor Flights are an effort to tell us that the nation is sorry for the way it treated us when we got home and to thank all those who wore the uniform that the nation is proud of them.

Six more days of prep — emotional and physical — are on tap for this ol’ geezer. I am looking forward to this whirlwind.

military news

Sappiness to get stern test

A word comes to you from little ol’ me, who I have described as arguably one of the world’s biggest saps.

It’s my sappiness that I want to bring to your attention. In a sort of perverse way, I am rather proud of the tendency to let my emotions show to all the world to see.

It will occur on Sept. 11. I will board jetliner at Love Field in Dallas and will fly with 40-something military veterans to Washington, D.C. We will attend an Honor Flight, which is a lightning visit to D.C. We will arrive around noon on Sept. 11 and will return to North Texas the next day. Twenty-fours in and out, there and back. It’s going to be action-packed.

We’re going to visit several memorials in D.C. dedicated to veterans. We’re going to have volunteer companions who will act as our go-to men and women. They will be there to tend to our every need, request or whatever.

Where will the sappiness occur? What might bring it to the fore? We are likely to be given thanks, high praise and many of us will be reminded that during our time in service the nation didn’t respond to vets’ service in the same manner that many of our veterans are receiving today.

I served briefly in Vietnam while war was still raging. I didn’t serve in a combat unit. Indeed, I have spent nearly 60 years telling anyone who cares to know that I did damn little during my time there. None of that will matter to the folks who will show us around in quick-step fashion during our visit to the nation’s capital.

So, I suppose I could predict that I’ll be caught up in the good wishes and expressions of thanks and pride I rarely got when I came home for keeps in the summer of 1970.

I’ll be sure to have a hanky handy … just in case I need it. My history of sappiness tells me I will need it.

military news

Where is concern for our troops … Donald?

A sailor jumps off the USS Abraham Lincoln, floats at sea for an hour before he’s rescued.

The Lincoln is at sea for a record-breaking 240 days and the galley is running out of food to feed the 5,000 crew members aboard the massive warship.

Morale is being reported at the lowest ebb possible.

What does the commander in chief have to say about it? He said another carrier, the USS George Washington is en route to replace the Abraham Lincoln and then made some comment that the crew hadn’t spent “nearly enough” time at sea.

Donald Trump keeps feigning support for the men and women who serve in the world’s mightiest and most lethal fighting force in world history. His actions, his statements and his posture betray all of that concern.

Remember that this is the individual who once referred to those who wear the uniform as “suckers and losers.” I cannot let this go.

This moron in chief has no business commanding this fighting force. It is on a mission that no one has defined. There is no plan to end this war with Iran that Trump has boasted has already been won; if the war has been won, as Trump has bragged, then what in the hell are we still doing out there?

I once took part briefly in an unwinnable war. We weren’t all fighting for God and country in Vietnam. Many of us sought mainly to survive, to return home to our loved ones and start building our lives. Trump only worsens the lives of our warriors by blathering the cruelty that spews from his overfed mouth.

The men and women who are fighting a war with no end in sight need the complete respect from the individual who has sent them into battle. Donald Trump needs to keep his trap shut.

military news

Self goes gung-ho on Iran

Keith Self spoke recently to the Farmersville Rotary Club, proclaiming he didn’t have a formal program from which he would speak on this or that.

But the Republican member of Congress who represents Collin County had a good bit to say about a few of the hot topics of the day. The Iran war was one of them and, to be honest, he disappoints me terribly as I learn about his views on Donald Trump declaring war on Iran and then proceeding to seek to bomb it into oblivion. During his talk to the Farmersville Rotary Club, Self could have taken a moment to discuss a still-undetermined exit strategy for ending the Iran war. He could have discussed whether we should pay to rebuild the civilian infrastructure our missiles and bombs have destroyed. He might have talked about how to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was wide open until we started bombing Iran; the strait is where a huge bulk of Iranian oil goes to fuel industries around the world.

Oh, no. He didn’t go there. Instead, he invoked the memory of the late Sen. George Aikin, a Vermont Republican, who said in the 1960s that we could end the Vietnam War by “declaring victory and then just go home.”

Self, a native of Amarillo, graduated from West Point and then became a U.S. Army Ranger. He saw plenty of combat during his 25 years in uniform. I had hope his combat experience would make him a bit more circumspect about sending young Americans into harm’s way to fight a nation of some 90 million residents and with a substantial army and air force.

Instead, Self, came off a bit cavalier about going to war. He was asked about the Iran war in Farmersville. He said Trump should “call for a pause in the action, work real hard” to ensure the GOP retains control of Congress after the midterm election, after which “he could go back in and finish the job.”

That was it, kids. I would call that a “gung-ho” response. If only Rep. Self would react to what many of us out here in the middle of America know … which is that there is little appetite for war against Iran, especially a war launched by a feckless POTUS who has yet to tell us precisely what the hell we’re doing fighting a war he said he never would impose.

 

national news, political news

Never have seen hatred like this …

My interest in politics and public policy goes back a ways … to, oh, around 1968. I had just graduated high school the previous year and was floundering in college.

Military duty awaited me, along with the Vietnam War that was fueling much of the debate in this country. The war and the debate raged on after I donned the Army uniform in the summer of ’68; in fact, I was inducted on Aug. 21 of that year, which means I will commemorate my induction date in just a few days.

I had a preferred presidential candidate that year. It was Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York. He was possibly on track to be nominated that summer as the Democratic candidate for president. Then in June 1968 it ended in a hail of gunfire in the Los Angeles hotel kitchen the night of the California Democratic primary that RFK won.

I went on to serve my country. I returned home in 1970. I got involved in the 1972 presidential election.

Where am I going with this? At no time, not a single time, did I witness the kind of bad blood flow among activists and politicians that we’re witnessing now in the Age of Donald Trump. We are witnessing the tearing apart of one of the essential threads of our political fabric. It’s the fabric that tells us that civility and decorum have their place … even as we debate with every ounce of mental and emotional strength in favor of policies and politicians we admire.

These days we hear about politicians fearing for their lives, that their political foes could react violently. And I won’t be coy about this aspect of the today’s climate: Pols and activists on the right — especially the MAGA right — are the most guilty of fomenting this fear. To be fair, the violence has its roots across the spectrum. I will cite the gruesome murder of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk as a key example of how dangerous this rhetoric has become for everyone in the public eye.

Can we return to the good old days of fierce debate among friends in high places? I damn sure hope so.

military news

War president, my ass!

Donald Trump calls himself a “war president,” to which I say plainly, clearly and without apology: my ass!

To be fair, Trump isn’t the first POTUS to never have worn the uniform, but he needs to follow the lead blazed by men who have worn it and who have acted with considerable reluctance to commit men and women to battle.

I am thinking at this moment of seven such men. Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter have entered my mind. TR saw combat during the Spanish-American War, Ike was supreme Allied commander of forces in Europe during World War II, “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry saw combat in WWI. JFK served as a combat naval officer in the Pacific during WWII. GHW Bush was a naval aviator in the Pacific and was shot down by Japanese gunners. Jimmy Carter graduated from the Naval Academy and served on nuclear submarines.

Three Republicans and three Democrats all saw war as the same hideous endeavor. No partisanship entered their discussions about warfare.

Yet now we have Trump. He evaded service during the Vietnam War. He has referred to those who served there as “losers and suckers.” Thanks, Donald. I’m one of ’em. He has instructed his staff to avoid showing him in the presence of wounded warriors.

He promised the nation he would avoid future wars. He broke that pledge by launching the war against Iran. Eighteen Americans have died — so far! — in that war.

This individual has zero understanding of the cost of man’s most insane act.

military news

Trump ruins a presidential act

Donald Trump today performed a supreme presidential act by going to Dover, Del., to receive the remains of three American service personnel who died in our nation’s Iran war.

Then he ruined the moment by lying about what he said was coursing through the souls of these valiant American servicemen and women. He said all of them “said that Iran should not have nuclear weapons.”

My first reaction was one of horror. How in this war-ravaged world does the commander in chief know what fallen warriors believed to be right about the war that Trump started for reasons to be revealed? How in the name of God Almighty can he pretend to make such a declaration?

He doesn’t know and he cannot possibly speak for these brave warriors … because he made it up!

Allow me to speak briefly for the millions of Americans who have gone to war for our country. There could not possibly be unanimous in support for the policy that sends them to war. There damn sure wasn’t in 1969 when I reported for duty as part of an Army aviation unit at Marble Mountain, Da Nang, South Vietnam. I was confused about the war. My beliefs about the correctness of the policy we were following to prosecute that war were still forming. By the time I returned home in 1970, those feelings became clear: I opposed the Vietnam War.

I strongly believe such is the case now, decades later, with young Americans being ordered to do battle with an adversary. And yet, Trump decided in this moment of grief and mourning to put words into the mouths of young Americans he didn’t know and declare that they support his policy of going to war with no clear strategy for conducting it … and no idea of how to end it.

military news

Redefining ‘winning’ and ‘losing’

It seems safe to say that Donald J. Trump has reinforced something I have believed for the past 50 years or so, which is that we have redefined winning and losing wars.

I took part briefly in the Vietnam War, which is generally considered to be a conflict that the United States lost to a determined enemy. We won virtually every major engagement on the battlefield. We inflicted far more casualties on the enemy than they inflicted on us.

But we ended the war because we ran out of patience. We ran out of time. Vietnam was fighting to preserve its existence against a foreign power. I now accept the idea that we actually lost the Vietnam War. I am no less proud that I spent some time there doing my duty as ordered by my government.

Trump launched a war with Iran a few months ago. He decided to bomb the crap out of the place. Our aviators along with those from Israel sent bombs crashing into military facilities. Trump declared the war essentially to be over a few weeks after he started it. He kinda/sorta declared victory as well.

Then we entered talks to end the war. The sides emerged with a “memorandum of understanding” that they would stop the fighting. Iran wouldn’t obtain nuclear weapons, according to the MOU. Iran also would be able to sell its oil on the open market. The United States would lift the sanctions it imposed on Iran during the Barack Obama administration.

I have to ask: Is that winning?

Trump’s strategy looks more like that of a loser than a winner.

Now we’re back to bombing Iran. The Iranians have shut down the Strait of Hormuz — again! The price of oil is inching back up. We might lose more American lives; to date, 14 Americans service personnel have died.

To make matters even more maddening to American patriots … such as me: We don’t yet have a detailed explanation from the commander in chief as to our strategy for going to war, nor do we know of an exit strategy that Trump has cooked up in his feeble brain.