The Swift Boat Controversy Is Being Under Reported
By Randall Nunn (09/03/04)
There are a number of pundits and politicians who are saying that the media is over reporting the Swift Boat controversy and that the real issues in this campaign are being given too little attention. The true fact is that few in the media are asking the questions designed to get at the truth. Where are Kerry’s records, both military and medical? Who wrote up the citations for his various medals?
How did Kerry initiate his military service? Why won’t Kerry allow his previously published book, “The New Soldier,” to be republished? Was Kerry’s Silver Star citation revised many years after the fact, and if so, by whom and why? In short, there are a great many questions that one would think journalists hungry for the facts would be pursuing. But we don’t see anyone in the mainstream media aggressively pursuing these or similar questions.
Rather than pursuing this story, too many are tut-tutting about negative campaign ads, about who “put them up to it” and about many other red herrings designed to divert our attention from the real question—what are the facts? And the fact that Senator Kerry refuses to discuss the facts but tries instead to intimidate his fellow veterans and enlist the President’s aid in stopping these ads says it all.
Does this controversy about events that occurred over thirty years ago have anything to do with the issues in this election? You bet it does! This election will be a watershed event. It will determine whether the country will adopt the views of the left-wing minority in this country or will effectively repudiate such views and return to the principles of limited government and individual freedom that prevailed before the media and leftist opinion leaders misled us into thinking that such principles were out-moded and no longer relevant. Beginning in the Sixties, our culture has been shaped by the media, the schools, Hollywood and the entertainment industry and fashioned into a politically correct image of a society based on the liberals’ model of a benign socialist nanny state. Many bought into this revisionist history about the Vietnam War, crime, drugs and American culture. But many of us have not and the clash in this election will be between the two warring views—a majority view that is essentially conservative but whose adherents have been made to believe that theirs is an out-dated minority view and a liberal view that is elitist, coercive and that has been remarkably unsuccessful when tried by other societies around the world.
What the Swift Boat veterans have done is to put the spotlight on Senator Kerry and revealed some of the traits and flaws in the man that should be fair game for discussion and cause for major concern since they clearly show Senator Kerry as the quintessential anti-war liberal of the Sixties—an arrogant elitist and far-left ideologue who is desperately trying to look like “just plain folks” to the voters in the heartlands and who was about to pull it off until the Swift Boat veterans came along.
Most of the country knows what President Bush represents and has a sense of his core beliefs and philosophies. But until the Swift Boat veterans gained national attention with their book and ads, most of the country did not know Senator Kerry in the same way. The arguments back and forth by the politicians and pundits about his positions on the “usual” issues are confusing and uninteresting to many people who simply “tune out” this chatter until closer to election day unless they happen to have a pet issue that is of vital interest to them. But the issues raised by the Swift Boat veterans are clear, basic and starkly illuminate the essence of the man. Almost everyone can grasp the significance of the charges and, what is even more telling, the significance of the lack of any serious factual defense by Senator Kerry of the most serious of the charges. Thanks to the Swift Boat veterans, we now know what Senator Kerry is and what he isn’t. A man who allowed himself to be portrayed as a military leader and war hero now looks more like the epitome of the irresponsible, undependable, inconstant “flower child” of the Sixties whose guiding star is political expediency. The silence from Senator Kerry on the facts raised by the Swift Boat veterans is becoming deafening.
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