Marshall: Moral Cowardice Has Guided W All Along

[Nbadan]

Why W skirting his Texas Guard Reserve duty was a big deal in 1972 and why it still is today...


The new revelations about President Bush’s shirked Air National Guard service will continue the campaign debate about physical bravery. But with Bush, the real issue isn’t physical bravery but moral cowardice.

We have a more immediate sense of what physical bravery and cowardice are. In fact, when we speak of bravery and cowardice, the physical variety is almost always what we’re talking about. It’s whether or not you can charge an enemy position while you’re being fired at. It’s whether you’re immobilized by the fear of death.

Moral cowardice is more complex. A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what’s right when it’s not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

On the balance sheet of moral bravery — as opposed to physical bravery — John Kerry and George W. Bush were about as far apart as you could be on Vietnam. On the one hand, you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went but put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have Bush, who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go, just not him.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice. And it’s a trait he continues to display as he smears other people’s meritorious service (John McCain, Kerry, et al.) without taking responsibility for what he’s doing. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him.

What’s gone unsaid through most of the campaign is that the president’s moral cowardice is a big part of why we’re now bogged down in Iraq. It’s a key reason why 1,000 Americans have died there. Bush has set the tone for this administration, and his moral cowardice permeates it.

Consider only the most obvious examples.

The president didn’t think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he and his key advisers lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. He couldn’t get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

He and his advisers knew that if they leveled with the public about the costs of war — in dollars, years, soldiers — he’d have a very hard time convincing them. So he didn’t level with them. He took the easy way out.

The sort of forward planning that would have made a big difference in postwar Iraq was scuttled or derided because it made the job of selling the war harder. Those who sounded the alarm had their careers cut short.

Once we were in Iraq and it was clear that we had been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction — a judgment that’s been clear for more than a year — the president refused to admit it. And he still hasn’t. A year and a half after we invaded Iraq and he still can’t level with the American people about this simple and now obvious reality. He still relies on his vice president to try to fool people into thinking Saddam Hussein was tied to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.

More important, once it became clear that the president’s plans for postwar Iraq were producing poor results, he refused to shift policy or to reshuffle his team. He refused to demand accountability from his own team because of how it would have reflected on him. He has preferred to continue on with demonstrably failed policies because to do otherwise would be to admit he’d made a mistake and open himself up to all the political fallout that would entail. That was something he wasn’t willing to do.

The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which the president tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice.

For the same reasons, he runs from soldiers’ funerals as if they were burying victims of the plague — because it’s the easy way out. If there’s a problem, he denies it or finds someone else to take the fall for him.

Everyone has these tendencies in their measure. No one is perfect. But they define Bush.

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam War but decide it wasn’t for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asked him to say it to their face — those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, to fail to prepare for the aftermath and then to refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

The Hill (http://www.hillnews.com/marshall/090904.aspx)

[Yonivore]

The problem Mr. Marshall has with trying to portray something the President did in 1972 as a "big deal" is that the President's opponent engaged in a couple of things that are probably much bigger.

1) Shooting a wounded, fleeing VC teenager in the back and accepting a Silver Star for something for which he should have been ashamed.

2) Returning from Vietnam, when the bandaid box was empty, and proceeding to act in traitorous ways that gave aid and comfort to the enemy and heaped harm and misery on our soldiers, particularly those that were in P.O.W. camps.

The questionable period of President Bush's Air National Guard service was at a time the military was scaling back and winding down the Vietnam War. As has been said by the head of the National Guard (at the time) as well as others, they were looking for places to put the leftover pilots and many ended up in desk jobs...early discharges did the Guard a favor.

This is why all but the rabid left could care less about President Bush's Guard service. But, don't worry, the Swiftees are going to rake Kerry over the coals for his traitorous behavior during the same period.

Have fun with it guys!

[Tommy Duncan]

On the balance sheet of moral bravery — as opposed to physical bravery — John Kerry and George W. Bush were about as far apart as you could be on Vietnam. On the one hand, you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went but put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have Bush, who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go, just not him.


Oh please. Kerry joined the friggin' Navy Reserves. If he was really gung ho about fighting in a land battle in SE Asia would have have done that? Of course not. How exactly is John Forbes Kerry not the son of privilege who also tried to find his own way out of being drafted into the Army and seeing combat?

I'm not going to get into questioning what he did while he was in combat because I think that's dishonorable. But to paint Kerry as something other than a 'fortunate son' who originally sought to avoid being drafted into combat is absurd.

[Yonivore]

From the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml):

"'I didn't really want to get involved in the war,' Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. 'When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing.'"
Ooops!

Plan B: Rack up some PH's and get the hell out as fast as you can.

[Tommy Duncan]

Such moral bravery.

[Spurminator]

It's a big deal because it's Election season, and Bush is a Republican who talks like a cowboy.

[Yonivore]

Revealed: how 'war hero' Kerry tried to put off Vietnam military duty (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/07/wkerr07.xml)

"The Harvard Crimson newspaper followed a youthful Mr Kerry in Boston as he campaigned for Congress for the first time in 1970. In the course of a lengthy article, 'John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs for Congress', published on February 18, the paper reported: 'When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy.'"
Another hole in his "voluntarily" going to Vietnam story.

The facts are the both President Bush and Senator Kerry volunteered for military service. President Bush went to the Air National Guard -- I don't know of any deferrment attempts -- and Senator Kerry to the Navy, after being denied a deferrment.

President Bush, by all accounts, was heavily involved in his training and racked up many times more than the necessary points, required by the Guard, for his first 4 years (while the war was raging)...and, had he been called to combat, he says he would have gone willingly. The last two years of his service, when the war was winding down and they were putting pilots at desks, he priorities changed and he became politically active.

Senator Kerry, by his own accounts, sought Swiftboat duty because he, mistakenly, believed it offered the best opportunity for staying out of combat. Once, it became apparent he'd fucked up, he began getting wreckless and hurting himself.

And, on top of that, the one experience he points to as being an example of the dangers he faced (where he "earned" a Silver Star), the AAR (which he wrote) is at odds with his contemporaneous accounts.

Instead of coming face to face with a bazooka weilding VC soldier -- in a "kill or be killed" moment, he chased a frightened, injured, VC teenager behind a hootch and executed him. Wow! What bravery. Oh, and if you read the AAR, he did this while everyone else on the Swiftboat was saturating the area with cover fire.

Well, after getting his 3rd PH and heading home, he decides to start lying about all the stuff going on in Vietnam before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Testimony that was used to torture confessions out of P.O.W.'s back in Hanoi.

The guy is scum.

[Hook Dem]

"It's a big deal because it's Election season, and Bush is a Republican who talks like a cowboy." ........As opposed to Kerry who talks like a freakin Baaaastonian !:lol

[Nbadan]

1) Shooting a wounded, fleeing VC teenager in the back and accepting a Silver Star for something for which he should have been ashamed.

That's not the way his crewmates who were there said it happened. All of them have said that Kerry chased a Viet-Cong that was carrying a loaded rocket-launcher and could have turned around and fired on Kerry's Swift boat at any time. At least, Kerry had a courage to chase the V.C.. The only thing W. chased was a Margarita with a beer.

[Nbadan]

Returning from Vietnam, when the bandaid box was empty, and proceeding to act in traitorous ways that gave aid and comfort to the enemy and heaped harm and misery on our soldiers, particularly those that were in P.O.W. camps.

Nice, never mind that after the war the Nixon and then the Ford administration left a bunch of those POWs in Vietnam to rot in hell, but hey, because we can use them politically against Kerry, we care about them now.

[Yonivore]

First of all, Nixon and Ford aren't running this year and yeah, I've got a bone with all politicians that dragged their heels over the P.O.W./M.I.A. issue.

Second, The VC teenager was already wounded by a 60 cal round to the leg. I seriously doubt he was interested in turning and firing anything.

Read Kerry's After Action Report...He tells the true story there. It bears no resemblance to the yarn he spun in his book or that he's spewing on the campaign trail. No wonder he didn't release "that" particular piece of his memorabilia.

[Nbadan]

Second, The VC teenager was already wounded by a 60 cal round to the leg. I seriously doubt he was interested in turning and firing anything.

How do you know? Were you there? Oh, that's right we are in Neocon World where Ideology and speculation is more important than reality and fact.

[Tommy Duncan]

Oh man, I can't wait until some "fake but accurate" memos appear in this little dispute...

[Yonivore]

Well, because the After Action Report says he was wounded with a 60 cal and the After Action Report says he ran away towards a hootch and the After Action Report doesn't say he ever attempted to turn and fire and the After Action Report says the rest of the crew saturated the shore with cover fire while John Way...I'm sorry, John Kerry chased the kid behind the hootch and shot him.

Oh, yeah, the AAR was written by John Kerry.

[exstatic]

I seriously doubt he was interested in turning and firing anything.

Oh, I see. Somehow It's OK to shoot a bunch of yahoos waving a flag around a burning empty Humvee in Iraq, but an armed VC, fleeing or not, is not a target. Your hypocrisy is monumental, Yoni.

[Yonivore]

We're talking about Kerry's lying...not my alleged "hypocricy." (which I'm not going to be baited into discussing at the expense of this point about Kerry -- start another thread if you want to discuss a comparison between the two incidents).

[Nbadan]

Me thinks that Yoni's hypocrisy and his false accusation about Kerry lying are to inter-twined to be separated.

[Yonivore]

Okay, so that's what you think. Care to continue the discussion or are you so muddled that you can't?

[Tommy Duncan]

danny boy, relax. Maybe Yoni is just being "fake but accurate".

[Yonivore]

What Nbadanallah failed to notice earlier is that I understood why Kerry shot the kid...that shit happens in a war.

I was merely criticizing that he came back, accepted a medal for it, and then embellished the story to some "kill or be killed" macho war story.

[Nbadan]

fake but accurate


:lol

Or maybe "real and inaccurate".

[Yonivore]

God, that was original.

So, how 'bout a response to my criticism of Kerry, Nbadanallah.

Do you believe it was disingenous for him to write in his biographical "Tour of Duty," "of staring down a suspected guerilla who was about to fire upon Kerry's swift boat. It was kill or be killed," when he wrote the following in the After Action Report -- regarding the same incident:

"PCF 94 beached in center of ambush in front of small path when Viet Cong sprung up from bunker 10 feet from unit. Man ran with weapon towards hootch. Forward M-60 machine gunner wounded man in leg. Officer-in-charge, LTjg Kerry, jumped ashore and gave pursuit while other units saturated area with fire and beached placing assault parties ashore. Kerry chased VC inland behind hootch and shot him while he fled -- capturing one B-40 rocket launcher with round in chamber."
I'd say the stories are vastly different, how 'bout you?

[Yonivore]

In fact, it all of a sudden occurs to me that, hell, maybe the kid was killed by the saturation fire before Kerry even reached him and that all he had to do was pick up the ordinance without hurting himself or rupturing a disc...hmmmmm...

That's a nice rumor. Someone call Michael Mooron.

[DeSPURado]

Instead of coming face to face with a bazooka weilding VC soldier -- in a "kill or be killed" moment, he chased a frightened, injured, VC teenager behind a hootch and executed him. Wow! What bravery. Oh, and if you read the AAR, he did this while everyone else on the Swiftboat was saturating the area with cover fire.

You are an idiot to not think that was brave. Doing that lead to many many American soldiers dying when they were ambushed.

[ClintSquint]

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/bush%20nra%20uzi2.jpg

[Yonivore]

"You are an idiot to not think that was brave. Doing that lead to many many American soldiers dying when they were ambushed."
1) No American solder was killed during that incident, so do we really know how "dangerous" or how "brave" he was? No.
2) It's not hard to walk tall when you've got your buddies laying down a curtain of lead all around you. It's also hard to execute an ambush against someone
3) I personally doubt that Kerry would have done it if he thought there were any risk whatsoever.
4) Why does he tell a different version that the After Action Report he wrote?
5) Heroes don't talk about being heroes.

[DeSPURado]

You think he knew there was no one around the corner waiting for him? Thats a pretty dumbass assumption to ever make in combat.

[Yonivore]

I'm betting his crew had put so much lead through that hootch by the time he got there, there were dead dragonflies laying around.

C'mon, if the fleeing kid didn't get hit by saturation fire it's only because of his proximity to a pursuing Kerry.

[DeSPURado]

And you're basing this idea on what? If they were hitting the forest while Kerry was there they would have hit him too (the cover fire disapears when you go in.) Vietnam was known for having snipers around every corner, not to mention fox holes, which can't be hit with cover fire. In addition it is almost a universal tactic to use snipers to cover a retreat. Are you this interested in smearing Kerry that you think he could just assume he could take a merry jaunt into the foliage?

[Yonivore]

"And you're basing this idea on what?"

From the AAR:

"Officer-in-charge, LTjg Kerry, jumped ashore and gave pursuit while other units saturated area with fire and beached placing assault parties ashore.
The word while.

[DeSPURado]

Wow you really addressed all of those points I brought up. Use your head. This is Bullshit.

[Yonivore]

"Are you this interested in smearing Kerry that you think he could just assume he could take a merry jaunt into the foliage?"
I'm just curious as to why his "war story" varies from his Official After Action Report...that's all.

[DeSPURado]

You're changing the subject is what you are doing

[Yonivore]

Yonivore's maiden post in this thread:

"Do you believe it was disingenous for him to write in his biographical "Tour of Duty," "of staring down a suspected guerilla who was about to fire upon Kerry's swift boat. It was kill or be killed,..."

Yonivore's last post in this thread:

"I'm just curious as to why his "war story" varies from his Official After Action Report...that's all."
Seems fairly consistent to me. I'm curious about the discrepancy in his own two version of events. I think you're changing the subject, DeSPURate.

[DeSPURado]

"of staring down a suspected guerilla who was about to fire upon Kerry's swift boat. It was kill or be killed,..."

Perhaps becuase you are talking about the story in two different moments in time, the vietcong soldier was exchanging fire with those on the swiftboat. The swiftboat crew gains the upperhand. Kerry persues the enemy.

[Yonivore]

Actually, all the small arms fire was over and there's no suggestion in the report the VC that sprang up fired on PCF94 -- he wasn't carrying small arms. Sorry, that doesn't wash.

[DeSPURado]

First let me ask, are we talking about the bronze star or the silver one?

[Yonivore]

I think this is where he got the silver star

[DeSPURado]

Heres the transcript of it:


JOHN FORBES KERRY

LIEUTENANT JUNIOR GRADE

UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE

for service as set forth in the following:

CITATION

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as Officer in Charge of United States Navy Patrol Craft Fast 94 and officer in Tactical Command of an operation in the Republic of Vietnam. On 28 February 1969, Patrol Craft Fast 23, 43 and 94, in conjunction with Underwater Demolition Team 13 and Vietnamese Regional and Popular Forces personnel, conducted an operation on the Ca Mau Peninsula as part of Operation SEA LORDS. While transiting the Bay Hap River en route to an insertion point along the Dong Cung River, these craft with thirty Regional/Popular Force personnel embarked in each unit came under heavy enemy small arms fire from the river banks. The Officer in Tactical Command, Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY directed his units to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions. Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY expertly directed the fire of his craft at the fleeing enemy while simultaneously coordinating the insertion of the embarked troops. While the Regional and Popular Forces conducted an area sweep, Patrol Craft Fast 43 remained on station to provide fire support and Patrol Craft Fast 23 and 94 moved upstream to investigate an area from which gunshots were coming. Arriving at the area, Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY's craft received a B-40 rocket close aboard. Once again Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY ordered his units to charge the enemy positions and summoned Patrol Craft Fast 43 to the area to provide additional firepower. Patrol Craft Fast 94 then beached in the center of the enemy positions and an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from Patrol Craft Fast 94 and fled. Without hesitation Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber. Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY then led an assault party and conducted a sweep of the area while the Patrol Craft Fast continued to provide fire support. After the enemy had been completely routed, all personnel returned to the Patrol Craft Fast to withdraw from the area. While backing off the beach, these units again came under a hail of fire, this time from the opposite river bank. Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY immediately coordinated the firepower of his units and supressed the enemy fire. Later, after disembarking personnel, and while exiting from the Bay Hap River, the Patrol Craft Fast were again under fire. Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY immediately maneuvered his craft through several strafing runs which completely silenced the enemy. As a result of this operation, ten Viet Cong were killed and one wounded with no friendly casualties. In addition, numerous sampans, structures and bunkers were destroyed as well as confiscation of substantial quantities of combat essential supplies. Lieutenant (junior grade) KERRY's devotion to duty, courage under fire, outstanding leadership, and exemplary professionalism directly contributed to the success of this operation and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Unites States Naval Service."


Link (http://wikisource.org/wiki/Silver_Star_Citation_-_John_Kerry)

PDF copy of it. (http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Silver_Star.pdf)

[Yonivore]

Which one of the three versions is that?

[Yonivore]

Oh yeah, the high irregulary John Lehman version. You know, the one Lehman says he didn't sign or authorize or even knows why it would have been on his desk.

[Tommy Duncan]

She also said the docs were fake, dan. That's the issue that matters here. Who tried to influence a presidential election with fake docs and why won't CBS simply admit that they are fake?

[DeSPURado]

I also see the name John Holland on the document.

[Yonivore]

Signed by John Lehman...when, exactly, was he Secretary of the Navy?

[DeSPURado]

Check again in the PDF file John Holland is one signator on the first document. Lehman on what appears to be on an identical second copy of it.

[Yonivore]

Why are there two?

[Tommy Duncan]

bump

[Yonivore]

I know that John Lehman wants to know why there are two.