ALLIANCE FOR
CITIZENS RIGHTS 
ALLIANCE FOR
CITIZENS RIGHTS
AN OPEN WOUND
by Ken Freeman
I hadn’t meant to go there. I had avoided the place for years. On those many occasions when I visited Washington D.C., I went to see the Smithsonian or the Capital or the White House but I didn’t go to “The Wall.” I had tried to put all that behind me. I’d thought time would heal the wound. I was wrong.
Then one day, I stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking down over the reflecting pool and there, off to the left was the green grass of that little hill and the dark green marble of the wall; the wall inscribed with dead men’s names. The names most of the world has forgotten; had wanted to forget.
A few people, relatives or children, were making tracings of some loved-one’s name; something for a son to take away to better try and remember his father, or for a wife to fold away with the memories of heartache.
There weren’t many people there. So finally I went to look for my friends and leave a goodbye letter at their feet. But they weren’t there.
"Why can’t the Viet Nam veterans just forget about that war? Why is the wound still open and why won’t it heal?"I think it is because America acted shamefully toward her sons and we, as a nation, can’t forget. It’s been thirty-five years now and our nation still bleeds. If you don’t believe it, look at America and the candidates in this Presidential race. This issue will not go away until this debt of honor is paid or until all of us who lived that war are dead. Neither we the veterans, nor our nation, can lay this indebtedness aside.
It is a debt owed not just the relatives of the 58,000 names on that wall or the other 37,000 men who died in support of the war, but whose names do not appear there. No it is much more. It is a blood bond owed to all of us, the two and one half million soldiers, sailors and airmen who fought for freedom in South East Asia and then came home to be dishonored, to be treated like paroled criminals, and not as the patriots we were.
The Viet Nam veterans are bitter. This campaign has re-opened the wounds. Veterans see this nightmare developing in the media again and we will not stand idly by and watch our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq be slandered and rejected as we were.
What we are witnessing is a replay of the beginnings of the anti-war, anti-American movements of the sixties. The signs are all over the newspapers and the TV for anyone who pays attention: the anti-war marches in New York; the slanted reporting in the media where American victories in Iraq are almost never reported but where our set-backs are headline news; the media hysteria over a hand full of renegade prison guards in an attempt to smear all our soldiers with the same broad brush of dishonor; all these things are designed to demoralize America.
The end game is once again to turn our nation against its own soldiers; to destroy their morale and our nation’s will to support them. Many of the groups sponsoring these marches and attacking our military efforts, groups such as ANSWER, are the same Communist groups who marched against us thirty-five years ago. These people’s actions are intended to weaken our national resolve and encourage our enemies. This will lengthen the conflict, costing many more American and Iraqi lives.
Ironically, as in Viet Nam, this propaganda war has started to turn the tide against America just at the height of our greatest victories. During the “Tet” Offensive in 1968, the North Vietnamese leadership sent 70,000 troops to South Viet Nam to attack soft targets around the cities. American forces killed 50,000 of them and the remainder were scattered and on the run. But the American news media, bunkered safely in their hotel suits in Saigon, had turned against the war. The media only reported the NVA’s small successes and claimed that the American body counts and victories were false. The media was dead wrong.
Many experts believe that America was on the verge of winning the war until political pressure from war protestors turned the tide of war against us.
How do we know this? Well, would you believe our Communist enemies if they told you this were true? General Bui Tin, the North Vietnamese general who actually received the unconditional surrender of South Viet Nam on April 30th, 1975 says it was so. Following are quotes from an interview he gave recently to Marine Magazine. Opening the remarks he said, “We were nearly destroyed between 1968 and 1970 and seriously considered suing for peace. Then we started watching American newscast against the war”.
Following are some of the questions and answers from that interview:
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.Q: Why?
A: These people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize to win.Q: What were the results of the Tet Offensive?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise: Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.”Because of this propaganda victory, America quit. But our soldiers never did. Because of this betrayal by the media, and this lack of courage on the part of the American people, 95,000 American soldiers and millions of South Vietnamese citizens gave their lives in vain. South Viet Nam fell and the flame of democracy in South East Asia was snuffed out.
This brings us to John Kerry and the Viet Nam veterans reaction to him.
Military units survive on trust and honor. It is the warrior’s code. No officer could maintain the respect of his men if they knew that he had written his own citation for a medal. Medals are symbols of duty and sacrifice. Medals are not political props and the dead body of a valiant enemy is not a photo-op for future political candidates. Real soldiers don’t act that way. Such actions cheapen the genuine sacrifices made by true heroes, many of whom earned their medals at the loss of their lives. These 264 “Swift Boat Veterans” would never accuse a fellow veteran of such shameful conduct without very compelling reasons. (See: http://www.swiftvets.com for full details)
But Kerry’s medals are not what really angers the veterans. It is the injustice of the lies Kerry told about them and their dead comrades when he came home and entered the antiwar movement. In his testimony before the US Senate in 1971, Kerry called us all warmongers and branded us all as being guilty of atrocities. The fact that Kerry made these vile, destructive statements while his brothers were in harm’s way is indisputable.
I didn’t know about his testimony until later. In 1971, I was too busy flying airplanes and ducking rockets in Danang to notice. But the Communist Party of North Viet Nam noticed. You see, Kerry has his own Viet Nam Memorial. His name and picture are prominently placed in the “American Protestors section” of the War Crimes Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, (Saigon) South Viet Nam. The Vietnamese Communists clearly recognized John Kerry’s contributions to their victory. (See: http://www.wintersoldier.com for full details.)
It is the opinion of many veterans that John Kerry was a traitor to his fellow soldiers; that he rode the wave of antiwar sentiment in the sixties and seventies to advance his political career. But since the First Gulf War, camo has become popular again, so now he portrays himself as a patriot, and shamefully, as a war hero.
If this antiwar effort takes root, I believe that he will turn again. He was for the Viet Nam War as long as it benefited Kerry, and then he was against the war when it benefited Kerry. Now he is for the defense of America and our soldiers because it benefits Kerry. The Nam vets don’t trust him and never will, and with good reason; he gave aid and comfort to the enemy. As the “Swift Boat Veterans” slogan says, “While Kerry lied, good men died.”
Our military never lost a battle in Viet Nam but America lost the war. We lost the propaganda war, and we lost the moral war. And America turned on our own soldiers and sailors. We devoured our own young. We lost the propaganda war because of people like John Kerry and Jane Fonda who slandered us at home and materially assisted the communists in their war effort. As a result, for twenty-five years, America lost its courage. We were turned into a paper tiger and became the laughingstock of the world. In today’s terrorist environment, we cannot afford to let this happen again.
As I write this article, my son is in advanced training with the US Marine Reserves. It was my duty as a father to warn him about the dangers. I told him that we don’t know who our next Commander-in-chief will be. I questioned whether America has the courage to back him up when the going gets tough. “Be careful who you bleed for,” I told him.
He didn’t listen to me. I didn’t think he would. He talked me into letting him sign up. My son loves his country and he is an honorable young man. He instinctively knows that we are destined to fight this battle, and he knows that we are far better off to take the war to the enemy. He believes that when we protect the women and children of Iraq we are also protecting the women and children of America.
I’m very proud of my son, and if he has to go fight for us over there, then I am going to fight for him back here.
Kenneth Freeman
Viet Nam Veteran
Chairman: Alliance for Citizens Rights
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