Destroying villages in order to save them, senator Kerry

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.vvaw.org/commentary/?id=449


I've personally heard the same kind of stories about burned villages, mistreated civilians, and summarily executed prisoners dozens of times over from Vietnam veterans who have no political sympathy for the left-wing politics of the VVAW. Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn't really surprise anyone. I know many good men who stayed true to their moral compass in Vietnam and served with distinction and honor. I also know many good men who have spent their lives regretting the things they did under the pressure of combat back when they were nineteen- and twenty-year-old grunts in Vietnam.

And why the desire at this website to whitewash the counterproductive brutality of General Westmoreland's search-and-destroy strategy? As has been noted by many disgusted infantry officers, Westmoreland's search-and-destroy strategy resulted in thousands of destroyed villages, tens of thousands of civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and drove the rural population of Vietnam into the arms of the Viet Cong. Kerry was only speaking the truth when he said that "We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them."

Good men are allowed to disagree on something as tragic as the Vietnam War without one side condemning those on the other side of the political line as being liars and frauds. Too bad that VVAW members like Barry Romo, James Duffy, Mark Lenix, Nathan Hale, Charles Stephens, Gary Keyes, Michael Hunter, Mike McCusker, Scott Moore, Donald Duncan, Steve Pitkin, and Kenneth Ruth aren't here to defend themselves against the charge that they never served in combat and invented their stories about Vietnam.