They told Glenn Reynolds that if he voted for Mitt Romney, Vietnam vets whose age has to be in their mid-60s would be arrested in 21st century America — and they were right! “Video: Veterans arrested at Vietnam War memorial in NYC,” as spotted by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
Thankfully, the Atlantic covered this story, because no one else seems interested despite it taking place in America’s most populous city. In part, that’s because the same thing happened last year, and for the same reason — a curfew violation in, er, “the city that never sleeps.” It’s unrelated to the shutdown, but it’s still strange that the Times, Post, and Daily News didn’t bother to note it in some fashion today:
Veterans of the Vietnam War were arrested earlier tonight at the New York City memorial after staying on the premises past the curfew time of 10 p.m. Police gave multiple warnings as veterans continued to read from a list of names. Video from the event shows that not only veterans were loaded into the paddy wagon, but also younger participants in the vigil as well.
The gathering took place in part to protest the twelfth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. A similar protest and set of arrests occurred last year at the memorial. In the video embedded below, a veteran tells police that they are there to bring awareness to the “immense atrocities” committed in Vietnam, and that “some of you are so much younger, and history has been denied you, so you just need to know why we are here.”
The video shows the standoff with police shortly before the arrests were made at the anti-war protest:
Ed posits that “It’s unrelated to the shutdown,” and I debated using Bloomberg or Obama in my headline, but I went with the latter, after reading Moe Lane’s interesting take on the protests:
As you can see, this has nothing to do with Barack Obama or the government shutdown at all. Or, really, our veterans – given that this group thinks that those who served in Vietnam are unindicted war criminals.
Still, this incident does tell us something important: the administration’s calculated insult towards veterans last week is resonating with the American people. If it hadn’t then the hardcore progressives, Marxists, transnationals, and blackshirt anarchists that currently infest the antiwar movement wouldn’t have tried to hijack it for their own purposes. Because that is their nature.
Meanwhile, Twitchy suggests repurposing a shopworn slogan from the other side of the aisle to protest the National Park Service serving as the shocktroops of the DNC: “New motto for Barrycade-breaching #OccupyAmerica?”
Occupy Wall Street was yet another attempt by the left to create a Tea Party of their own; and since it ostensibly doesn’t care all that much about private property rights, I’m sure it wouldn’t mind if others borrowed their slogan, at least temporarily, no?
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