If there were  a National shame, it's because those of draft age; who resigned themselves to accept being fed to the monster; in the belief they and only they were serving their country.

In reality those who opposed the Vietnam war, were the servants of the country; WE  saw through, the war profiteers reasoning for war. 

Those who fled to Canada and other regions to avoid being nothing more than cannon fodder were labeled cowards. 

Some returning vets joined ranks with those, who would shout "Love it or leave it."or because "they went to war; everybody else, should have to".

Those in command, weren't about to speak up, for those with a conscience, (the monster needs to be fed) 

You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated.

 WHY? 

How long before the ghosts of Vietnam are laid to rest?

Hope a new generation learns; its not only those in uniform who serve their country.

Who abused our brothers and sisters, our fathers and sons, our soldiers?  

Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange

http://www.fredawilcox.com/waiting_for_an_army_to_die__the_tragedy_of_agent_orange_99219.htm

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto

Thanks for reminding me of my duties as a black man. I don't use RedState as a source of rational thought. I would think that I would find folks who think that the curse of Ham came from God and not a drunken Noah. They would also be waiting for the results of Trump and Arpaio's independent Obama birth certificate investigations. RedState denizens probably also think black people have too many rights,  Sharia law is imminent and Hispanics have taken control now that Sotomayor is on the Supreme Court.

OMG Obama said "denigrated".  Theologian James Cone used the following phrase in "A Black Theology of Liberation" talking about how MLK Jr interacted with his white jailers:

".....self- respect and self-love do not  mean denigrating or hating other people.

OMG one of my religious heroes said "denigrated". What will RedState say?

The sky is falling Obama and Cone said "denigrated. It's obviously a code word. Thanks for telling me the meaning of the word.

Ok,I gotta say something, I usually stay out of these argument for argument's sake you get into with your favorite opponents, but your argument  here is just getting real loony. You're really carrying it to a ridiculous level here in this comment, mho, taking the code reading to a level where it wasn't meant for you, seeing bogeymen under the bed that aren't there. Trying to squeeze this speech into one of your favorite narratives about Obama instead of seeing what it actually was.

This speech was very audience-specific and subject-specific, not a "Sister Souljah" moment for the centrist masses, nor even a Memorial Day speech to the country at large, but a speech given to an audience of Vietnam Vets on the occasion of the commencement of a massive and lengthy program to honor them, one authorized by Congress. From Peter Baker's report at the New York Times:

....Offering a measure of closure a half-century later, the president asked the Vietnam veterans present to stand. “Welcome home,” he said. “Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Thank you. We appreciate you. Welcome home.”

The unusually ambitious project that started on Monday was authorized by Congress and will be carried out by the Defense Department through 2025, tracking the progress of a war that began with a relative handful of advisers before escalating to more than 500,000 American troops. By the time the last troops left in a negotiated withdrawal followed by the famous helicopter evacuation from the roof of the embassy in Saigon in 1975, more than 58,000 were dead.

The first phase of the commemoration, through 2014, will be devoted to recruiting partners and support. Organizers envision tens of thousands of commemoration events across the country from 2014 to 2017. Then until 2025, they plan to work to sustain the effort through oral histories, forums, seminars and the like.

That Mr. Obama would be the president to kick it off says much about how the country has moved on since Vietnam....

If you want to bitch about this speech for the left, the sensible argument to make is to bitch that he accepted making it. Once promising to make it, what is he supposed to do, say to those Vietnam Vets assembled for the occasion "Quit yer whining about not being recognized for your service, we're sick of it! The smart guys evaded serving in and protested against that dumb war! You were suckers!"? That would've made it pandering, pandering to ghosts of the left.

Speaking of ghosts, I suggest you think about that last sentence of my quote of Mr Baker's report. There really isn't a whole lot of political benefit these days to bringing up Vietnam or supporting commemoration of it.  Even with the intended audience, I'm betting most of  the Vietnam Vets have their minds made up on whether they like him or not. The speech was merely the ceremonially-appropriate "support the troops" pandering any president does.

If you don't get what Obama was aiming for by including that paragraph, written in that way, in that speech, then I'm sorry - it seemed flamaingly obvious to me.

Which paragraph are you talking about? The one PeraclesPlease included in the main blog, one of the paragraphs that AnotherTrope included, or some other paragraph? (I did PP's Google search, and others seem to have inserted the "spit" bit. Maybe I missed it, though. I ask for more clarification, and I'm greeted with a "thank you, no". I am sincerely trying to understand, but the more I get stonewalled, the less I think PP wants to be understood.)

Of course we have choices as to what to include in a speech. Maybe if I knew what paragraph you and PP were talking about, I'd get what you're saying. So, just tell me, what paragraph is it that you're getting this from? You might think I'm being obtuse or blind, but until it goes beyond "that paragraph", I'm inclined to believe we're not talking about the same information.

A good number of the Vietnam Vets I have met and discussed this issue with, how they were received upon their return was a big deal to them.  And Obama expressed the sentiments of a good number of them.  Sorry if that offends your sensibilities.  From my conversations with them, they would have been none too pleased had Obama not mentioned this.  Obama was talking to Vietnam Vets that day, not former speech writers, thank you very much. 

We have also banned the word "renege". I bet Limbaugh uses that word all the time

When did Rush or anyone in his crowd come to have any validity in interpreting what Obama says?

Yes, they were able to take what Obama said, exaggerate it, twist it, and make it serve their own purposes.

To suggest that Obama wanted them to do that, well, that's seeing what you want to see.

What's new?

Just like your assumption that all hippies are like one sees in the movie/play Hair.

Well, the fact that it you called the experience of many returning Vietnam Vets pseudo-grievances just pretty much makes the point that the Right is trying to make about the Left disrespecting the troops.  My understanding is for a number of Vietnam Vets it was a true grievance, one that made the transition back from the war zone all the more difficult, a transition that many could not successfully do.  But you want to deny that anything happened (evidence - no real proof anyone was actually spat on therefore all is well). 

I can't speak for the validity of the statements. I was just a toddler when the Vietnam vets came back, and my dad was in the Army. We were stationed in Germany, but as an army family living near other army families (of army officers who also didn't serve in Vietnam itself), it's not surprising that I didn't hear criticisms of the soldiers. Trope claims that he's met vets whose personal stories suggest they were denigrated.

I agree that it's easy to characterize as propagandistic, jingoistic, rah rah BS. However, that doesn't make it the same as punching hippies, even symbolically.

The right takes everything that way.

SO WHAT if the right takes it that way?

I thought the theory was that this was directed at independents.

I have to say that if I applied Quinn's standard--you could've posted about 1001 things but you chose this--this post comes out pretty weak.

If you want meaty hypocrisy and something really to complain about, stick to the drone program.

Personally, I'm really not simpatico with your basic volunteered-for-it gungo vet type person, and I don't get why they should get so much of my empathy. (I'd rather tease them when they automatically tag me as a liberal New Yorker-it can be fun for both parties!)  They volunteered, they support each other and I help pay their salary and benefits. I've seen polls that show a lot of the public thinks the same way after so many years of all volunteer, hence that is part of Michelle's program, to get the public sympathetic again.

I was raised that way; my father hated every second of his experience as a draftee in WWII, and taught us from a young age that the Army sucks (even tho he likes a good war movie and gave my brothers all the toy guns they desired.) Not to mention same went for cops, he taught us to be afraid of cops, that they can ruin your life. Oh, another fatherly lesson: Merchant Marine, which he also did is ok, just ok, some parts of it suck like the military, but you get to see things, but geez never be a fool and join any government military like the Navy with all those lifer nuts in it.

BUT when you ask for the job in Commander-in-chief, goes with it that you will not dis the rank and file unless they are doing something against the rules. I do prefer a draft-dodging sorta president who is more skeptical about all of them rather than rah rah supportive. At the same time, I really don't see this speech as rah rah as it could have been and I certainly don't think it is all about the left, it's totally directed to the specific audience.

I often feel the self-centeredness of left blogs sometimes gets all out of whack on Obama, making up slights that aren't there and then fixating on them. It's not a good way to accomplish anything, to fixate on stuff that's not really there. (Even the Rahm "retards" story in mho was totally misrepresented and became sorta like a major blog urban myth from a simple temper outburst about dumb marketing by one group.)

Obama doesn't appear to like a lot of left activists, but he is far less focused on that than some of them seem to think. Mostly he takes a "no harm, no foul" approach to the left.  I think it's pretty rare when he does an intentional attack on the same, and when he does it is very carefully measured, like the "Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party" post he did at DKos before he started running for president.

 However you or anyone else characterizes the nature of the drone strikes, now or in the future, whether a person now believes or comes to believe that they are proper and legal and smart or whether they are stupid and criminal, no one with two good brain cells will argue that the operators of the drones were not participating in the strikes.

You are like a low level toothache. Or multi-toned tinnitus that jumps from ear to ear and gets in the way of meaningful communication and is as irritating as a fly in the nose.

You can't go around and say "it was murder, oh, but wait, i'm not saying the guy who actually pulled the triggered or pushed the button that dropped the napalm are murderers, they were just idiot dupes, not murderers. but in the end it was all a bunch of acts of murder.  please just don't take that personally."

 Is there any guilt attached to participating. I say that there often is but the level varies greatly. You are all about nuance usually, I would expect you to see some here. I'll concoct an an example:
 In Vietnam some officer might declare an entire area a "free fire zone". You know that happened, right? Maybe you trust that there was justifiable reason, maybe not. Some other officer might learn that casualties were taken near a particular village in that zone. He may then decide to fire artillery on that village. He has standing permission so he can choose to do that based on whatever he considers to be sufficient reason. Or just for the hell of it. He then instructs someone to send the  coordinates of that village to an artillery unit and fire X amount of HE in a dispersed pattern 50 meters in all directions from those coordinates. At the artillery unit a fire direction controller works up the target data consisting of charge, direction, and elevation, etc, so that a round of HE will land at the places intended by the orders he received. He then sends the data to the gunners. They enter the data and fire their guns at targets they cannot see. Do you recognize different levels of moral responsibility of the different participants? Do you think that any of the people I described that were doing what I outlined were not participating?
 Can you understand why the gunner who did not know what he was shooting at, could not even see that target, usually did not find out the results, might still someday come to feel that he participated in something that was very wrong?
 
 So you want to talk about drone operators now. Fair enough, I said that the speech had acceptance of current wars as part of its purpose.  
 Yes, the drone operators are volunteers, but that is only one of many significant ways that their situation is very different. They go home from their air conditioned desk job to a place where they have full access to any and all news that you and I have. They can relax in their easy chair and pay as much or as little attention to the underlying motives of the war, the morality and ethics and legality of the war fighting methods, as they wish, and if they choose to do something different they could get their wish honored without going to jail. I expect that most people of our country would understand if they said their conscience would not let them go on. A large part of our population would not judge them to be a coward for their refusal to continue and their own culturalization would not make them wonder if that might be true.
 As they perform their daily duties they do not need to worry about being maimed or killed while doing so. They have not seen anybody sitting at the console next to them turned into 'pink mist', their euphemism for the victims of their targets. They have no reason to believe that if they do not fire on that group they see by camera, who are thousands of miles away, that their buddy next to them or their self is more likely to die. They have no reason to feel rage at, and fear of, the blurry figures they watch on their cameras based on seeing up close the death or dismemberment of friends numerous times already. I am not surprised that there are many willing to do that job but I cannot empathize with the type of mind that would never question whether what they were doing was right. I would say that to them face to face if the situation presented itself.
 So I will continue to put my money where I choose and you can continue to keep your head up that dark smelly place it seems to be so comfortable while it conjures up stupid arguments seemingly for the sake of arguing.
 But how about you putting your conscience where your mouth is. Would you, knowing what we know about drone usage today, sit at a console and follow people on camera and when someone walked up and said, "It has been decided that they should die", would you pull the trigger? Would you be comfortable with that job or would you rather someone else do it and then you can call them a hero rather than have to make a hard choice yourself. Would you ever examine your decision to do so? Can you imagine finding out that those people didn't deserve to die, that you had been lied to, and then concluding that you had participated in something that was horribly wrong and wish that you hadn't? Would you demand to be 'honored' anyway.

 Denigrate my achin' ass for bothering to respond to you.