Whatever Happened To Common Decency?
By Charles Cole (01/26/05)
Having spent the late 1960’s in a U.S. Army uniform, perhaps I’m just oversensitive to “antiwar protesters”. I will readily confess to a firm belief that the disruptive, obnoxious, shortsighted and puerile behavior of the left wing radicals of my generation demoralized our military, cowered academia, and handcuffed spineless politicians. Despite the urban legend of the 1968 North Vietnamese “victory” in the Tet Offensive, our military did a marvelous job of fighting a determined enemy, especially considering that the gutless politicians (the forerunners of today’s politically correct nonsense) had tied one hand behind the back of our field commanders.
In passing, I would note for the record how thoroughly history debunked the loony theories of the far left antiwar “activists”. Their fellow travelers, the “peace-loving” North Vietnamese, really did establish a gulag style communist hell in South Vietnam and the domino theory really did pan out as Pol Pot and his murdering thugs slaughtered millions in neighboring Cambodia. Strange how the infallible dupes on the far left never acknowledged these things.
Hardly surprising, then, given my background, that I would react strongly to today’s anti-war “protesters” concerning our effort in Iraq. But, beyond the emotion, I also feel intellectual disgust when I see Americans again making the same mistake so many made vis-à-vis the war in Vietnam so many decades ago. The left seems totally incapable of understanding that overt opposition to American combat operations cannot but exert a negative effect on the combat effectiveness and morale of our soldiers in harm’s way.
Amid the current replay of the antiwar antics of the 60’s, I should not have been surprised when I caught sight of a sticker on a car reading: “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam”. Aside from the counterintuitive lunacy and hubris of the premise behind such a ludicrous statement at the intellectual level, and aside from my emotional reaction to it, there is a larger problem here which should bother decent people of all political stripes.
Imagine the effect of such an inane, jingoistic bumper sticker on a person who has lost a relative or close friend in the war in Iraq. It would doubtless be analogous to the gut wrenching pain felt by a widow watching a demonstrator spit on or burn an American flag – the twin of the flag which had draped her husband’s casket before being folded and handed to her by a military officer with the words “on behalf of a grateful nation”.
Such callous disregard for the feelings of family members of fallen soldiers is as cruel and disgusting today as it was 35 years ago. It demonstrates an attitude of “anything goes” in the exercise of one’s right of “free speech”. It brings to mind American neo Nazis wearing swastikas in a predominantly Jewish area of Skokie, Illinois 30 years ago. While protected by the First Amendment, such behavior is nonetheless obnoxious and demonstrates a total lack of empathy and sensitivity to the feelings of people who have suffered the loss of people dear to them.
All this brings to mind a phrase I first heard in my ninth grade civics class over 40 years ago: “Just because you have a right do to something doesn’t make it the right thing to do”. Wouldn’t it be nice if the mindless, heartless ideologues of the “protest movement” would someday come to understand the sentiment behind that phrase? Then they might take a moment to stop and consider the harm their facile slogans and childish chants can and likely do bring to innocent people and find a better, kinder, more humane way to express their opinions.
If, God willing, the Iraqi people with our help and support do manage to form a genuine democracy in the Middle East, it will be interesting to see whether people displaying tripe such as “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam” will have the decency to apologize to the families of our soldiers who gave their lives to extend freedom and democracy to a part of the world where it is indeed a rare commodity. Based on the example of intellectual cowardice and duplicity set by their predecessors from the Vietnam era, I doubt that the “demonstrators” of today will find the courage or the intellectual honesty to make such an apology either.
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