Bush finally goes to Vietnam, now that it’s safe
I was going to write a long-winded boring post on how our frat-boy-in-chief finally got up the nerve to go to Vietnam as long as he could ride a pimped-out 747 and bring a small army to defend him, but that pretty much sums up how I feel about it.
I would have tried to get out of going to Vietnam too – it was a pointless conflict – but then I wouldn’t be strutting around decades later talking like mister tough-guy when the most dangerous thing I had ever done was get too drunk to remember what I did the previous night back in college.
UPDATE: Keith Olberman on the lessons of Vietnam probably won’t be to everyone’s liking, but I pretty much agree with it. That conflict – and the safe, comfortable self-serving politicians who persisted in it – made a mockery of the bravery and blood of the soldiers we needlessly sent there.
Not a doubt in my mind that you would have been in Canada.
You could be right – hard to say exactly what I would have done then. And as a Vietnam veteran yourself you certainly have earned the right to see it anyway that suits you.
The antiwar movement made two disastrous mistakes. First, they allowed themselves to blame the soldier. That is reprehensible as well as counterproductive. Second, they ran off to Canada instead of choosing instead to go to prison, which would have made a much stronger statement (and closed the door on any credible charge of cowardace). Both these mistakes had the effect of prolonging the war and cost the lives of American soldiers, to say nothing of more deeply dividing the country. But that is with 40 years of peacenik hindsight.