ojunk (Steve Mellenthin) wrote in message ...

Speaking out against a war takes courage but doing so in a way that encourages
the enemy, raises the level of danger to the men still in the line of fire, and
denigrates the service record of those who have served is not an act of
courage, it is an act of self serving political gratuity.

Absent the speeches made by Kerry and others like him how much longer
would American forces have remained in Vietnam? How many more would
have died, been wounded or captured. How many more Vietnamese would
have died? How much longer would the POWs have had to wait for
repatriation?

The current government of Vietnam has estimated that we killed 1.4
million of their soldiers. That does not include wounded soldiers
or civilians killed or wounded. The United Staes won every militarily
significant battle of the Vietnam war. And still the communists
did not give up. Kerry realized that the war in Vietnam could not
be won by military means. It could only have been prolonged.

We do not know the answers to the questions I posed above because
men like Kerry did speak out. We did pull out in 1973 and the
surviving POWs did come home. It has been argued that live POWS
were held back by the Vietnamese and others as hostages or slaves
but really, would fewer have been withheld had we remained in the
war longer?

What good would Kerry have done by remaining silent, or by echoing
the lies of his government?

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FF