To those of us Vietnam Veterans with lots of ammunition about Kerry’s activity in Vietnam and the anti-war movement, the convention was both a slap in the face (he has never apologized for his many slurs against us) and a gift, because it means we may be able to help beat the SOB. Rich Lowry says to leave Vietnam alone. I doubt if he knows all the negative info out there, nor the fact that Kerry refuses to release the critical records (the military documents on his site are a selected subset).
TMJUtah did a pretty good job of summarizing Vietnam. A few extra points: the real energy behind the anti-war movement came from the draft. The idea that people would be snatched out of their comfy life when they graduated, handed an M-16 and dropped in a rice patty generated, needless to say, a lot of incentive to stop the whole adventure. It also resulted in lots of people staying in graduate school, and is probably one of the main reason that virulent anti-Americanism is so common in the humanities and churces (seminaries were good for draft deferments).
When the leftists forced the draft to move from its “channeling” approach to a fair lottery, thereby making sure it hit all economic classes equally, it became even more scary. My brother got #13, which was a guaranteed in – so he joined the Army Guard (without political influence or waiting).
My hacker friends (a group of us that has been together since hacker days at KU) went to work at Hughes Aircraft for the defense deferment.
According to Giap, after Tet ’68, the Communists planned to sue for peace, because Tet was such an incredible disaster for them. But when they saw how it was reported in the US (a big defeat for the US), they changed their tactics to breaking the US will to win ( See Arbaud de Borchgrave’s devastating article on Tet press coverge. Hence I think the press corps has the blood of about 20,000 American servicemen on it’s dirty hands. I have long disliked the MSM, and learning this one (recently) is one more reason.
Kerry cooperated with the enemy (literally, apparently – he visited them once and we think twice) in that strategy to the point that his picture is in a place of honor for foreigners who helped the Communists win [on the link, middle column, down aways, but don't miss the Donations button upper left 
]. After two more failed offensives in ’68, the Viet Cong were eliminated and were never again a fighting force (they had never been indigenous – they were Viet Minh ordered to stay behind in the population exchange of the mid ’50s). Note that in the offensives, Giap expected the “liberated” people to rise up and join the VC, which is an example of believing your own BS – but the people didn’t rise up. If you read Giap’s biographies closely, it is clear that this “brilliant” General Giap was demoted after those offensives.
The loss in Vietnam was a direct result of Democratic Party betrayal. Frank Church (the same guy who wrecked the CIA a few years later) sponsored a bill forbidding any US combat support for Vietnam and cutting aid to the nub. The result is that when the North invaded (with twice as many divisions as our current army has), the South was demoralized and short on ammunition. The Nixon plan had been to maintain a standby capability of strategic bombing (as had worked to get the first treaty), but the Democrat congress cut the legs out from under the strategy.
So Kerry has hitched his fortune to his “heroic” acts in a war he so disapproved of that he led extremely dishonest protests giving the communist propaganda line, and viciously smearing his comrades in arms. Strangely, the “heroism” of his acts is strongly questioned by his fellow officers. One told me that every award was questionable. It is widely known in the veteran community that the first purple heart is bogus, having been turned down by the doctor and his CO. It was three purple hearts that allowed him to bail out early, the only swift boat sailor to leave short of a full tour except those who were carried out.
By the way, based on FBI and VVAW reports, there is reason to believe that Kerry protested the war purely for opportunistic reasons, and may not have had much of an ideology. However, his visit to the Sandinistas within 2 weeks of entering the Senate may indicate some fondness for communist dictatorships.
Somebody commented that South Vietnam was hardly a democracy. Unfortunately, the left’s insistence on perfect democracies caused many troubles. Korea wasn’t a democracy either. I was there in 1982 and it still wasn’t. But it is now. Vietnam could have made the same transition.
The important point is that the worst right wing dictatorship has more freedom than the best communist dictatorship. This idea may still escape the left, I’m not sure.
The Vietnamese People in 1972 had security, which is a big deal after decades of war and French colonialism. The US ambassador used to tour the country in a single car, no escort. It was that secure. To the people of Vietnam, things were damned good. When the communists took over, this was replaced by execution squads, reeducation camps (where many, many died and some are still there), and millions of boat people (an estimated 500,000 died just escaping the communists).
