Op-Ed: A War Veteran's Tale - An Ugly American?

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As the remnants and incorrigible hippies and their off-spring of the Vietnam War Era make a mockery of themselves and the United States Armed Forces in Berkeley, CA in these recent days unfolds, I am reminded of the ludicrous fallacy of the 'Ugly American'.

Of the many things I have been called by unhinged, hysterical leftwingers, few names cause me to chuckle more than "The Ugly American". The title (like everything else liberals believe) has no basis in any historical reality.

The name was gleaned from a 1958 novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The book was intended to show that America was losing the war against communism because of our loud, boorish arrogance and inability to understand other cultures. Like all the other dogmas of liberalism, it is based purely in fantasy- fantasy that history would expose.

That The Ugly American was a novel should end the discussion. An argument is exposed as inadequate if it must rely on fictitious events to support it. Much speculation has been made about who the characters in the book (and later, in the movie) represented, but it is so much nonsensical blather.

Let's look at the facts.

First, War is as old as civilization itself. Since Cain first slew Abel, mankind's barbarity has been a matter of sad fact. In fact, as time has gone by, the ability of man to torture, maim, brutalize and slay his fellow man has only been brought to more grotesque perfection while the world continues to fall into an ever more cold and callous slumber.

Second, America was not losing the war against communism. In fact, we won the war against communism. That is an objective historical fact, leftist revisionism notwithstanding.

Third, America was certainly not losing the war in Southeast Asia. At least, not by any standard by which war has ever been measured before. That America was losing the war in Vietnam is a work of pure liberal fiction.

America lost the Vietnam war, not to the communists, but to the American Government. That is a fact and it is indisputable. In an article published in Front Page Magazine, Bui Tin, a former North Vietnamese Col. admitted that the North Vietnamese were not achieving military victories, only political ones.

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

The American protester was essential to the enemy efforts.

It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. 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.

The Vietnamese army knew they could not defeat the Americans. Only the Americans could do that.

If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.

The enemies of America resurrect the ghost of Vietnam to protest American intervention at any time, in any place. The lesson of Vietnam, they insist, is that an occupier cannot win against a well entrenched insurgency. That lesson, also, is a work of fantasy. When liberals make idiotic claims like this, they only betray their own blind ignorance of history.

The fact is that insurgencies rarely succeed. A student of history would know this, a student of fantasy would not. America did not lose the Vietnam war because of the Ugly Americans over there, it lost because of the [sic] beautiful people here. Namby Pamby sissy types took the streets of America by storm and it was the American citizen, not the American soldier, that could not counter it.

Myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents are a direct result of America's collective misunderstanding of its defeat in South Vietnam. This loss is generally credited to the brilliance and military virtues of the pajama-clad Vietcong. The Vietnamese may have been tough and persistent, but they were not brilliant. Rather, they were lucky - they faced an opponent with leaders unwilling to learn from their failures: the United States. When the Vietcong went toe-to-toe with U.S. forces in the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were decimated. When South Vietnam finally fell in 1975, it did so not to the Vietcong, but to regular units of the invading North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong insurgency contributed greatly to the erosion of the American public's will to fight, but so did the way that President Lyndon Johnson and the American military waged the war. It was North Vietnam's will and American failure, not skillful use of an insurgency, that were the keys to Hanoi's victory.

America lost the Vietnam war because-and only because- she lost the will to fight it. Due to the efforts of traitors and liars like John Kerry and Jane Fonda, public opinion was turned against that effort. It was a death by a thousand cuts. Make no mistake, America surrendered in a war it was winning over there because it could not put down an insurgency back here.

Leftists have attempted to capitalize on America's humiliation in Vietnam by co-opting a Novel's fantasy of The Ugly American into a pseudo reality. Remember, The Ugly American was a Novel that takes place in a fictional place called Sarkhan. The foreign policy of the America haters works great in imaginary places. It is in the realm of reality on earth that it is somewhat wanting.

The fantasy of The Ugly American provides a convenient model for moral cowards that are jealous of America and willing to scapegoat her for their empty, meaningless lives. These hysterical cowards envision an America that has been a friend of despots and tyrants but history has been quite unkind to their pathological delusions. For, from Poland to Nicaragua, from Grenada to Iraq, more of the world's people are free and safe, fed, clothed, educated and receiving medical care, as a result of the American Soldier, than because of the combined efforts of all the other nations in the history of the world.

Now, it is no secret that I have had a great deal of fun over the years, poking my enemies with the proverbial stick. I have derived what is probably an unhealthy level of enjoyment by driving unhinged leftist baboons into volcanic fits of rage, by using their own rabid bigotry against them.

It is true that I do not mind being hated by these wild-eyed, spoiled and petulant little cretins. In fact, I relish it. For, I have yet to find one who can articulate a doctrine of how the world is that goes any deeper than "It's America's fault". As shallow as that is, it is all they have...a feeling and ill-conceived belief.

You may call me an ugly American when I say that we can bomb whoever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want, then sit back gleefully and watch leftist cretins meltdown. Even though I say such things only to be incendiary, and entertain myself and, even though they certainly don't reflect my real views, you could make the case that it is an ugly thing to say. That's fair enough. I'll accept the charge.

Just don't expect an apology. I have my reasons. My brother was KIA in Quang Tri Province during the Tet Offensive of 1968. If there is one thing I have learned from the Police Action in Vietnam, it is this. I shall not sit idly by...as my parents and elders did...and let the unhinged do to our veterans now and our Armed Forces now, that which they did in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

For me, true ugliness is not manifested in words purely intended to incite wrath from those who are mentally unbalanced to begin with. To me, true ugliness is manifested in cold indifference to the suffering of innocent people.

You see, for me, people are real. Real pain, real suffering and real anguish are part of the human experience of oppressed people living under the iron fist of tyranny. People live under no more horrid tyranny and brutality than those burdened with the yoke of 7th century Islamic Sharia law.

For the christophobes and the America and Israel haters, all religions are equal and American and Israeli imperialism is the source of all the world's ills. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, reality tells a very different story, for Sharia oppression and Islamic barbarism are as old as the religion of peace, itself. Once again, a student of history can quickly attest to the truth of what I claim, while a student of fantasy will merely kick and scream in protest.

Unlike the coalition of the callous, we do not have the luxury of living in a world where other people simply don't matter. When they look upon an oppressed people, the narcissists merely rationalize that their plight is-in some way- the result of some past American sin. This, inexplicably, renders the victim unworthy of relief or rescue.

In the world in which we live, it is simply unconscionable to view human beings as no more than pawns in a giant blame the imperialist Americans game.That is what I call ugly.

When I hear the blame America crowd calling the Iraq war immoral and demanding we pull out, I feel ill. When they compare the so-called Immoral war in Iraq with the so-called immoral war in Vietnam, I laugh.

Immoral war in Vietnam? More immoral than victims abandoned in Saigon? More immoral than the killing fields?

It is too easy for the pseudo-intellectuals to stand on the sideline, in a perpetual state of craven condemnation of American foreign policy abroad. They have that luxury because they never have to accept the consequences of their vapid stupidity. Fools such as these empty headed cretins cannot understand the difference between education and intelligence, and are fully lacking in the ability to see the world as it really is.

The one thing liberal elitists are good at is being wrong. They were wrong about Chamberlain and Carter's pacifism just as surely as they were wrong about Reagan's peace through strength and their opposition to the Vietnam war.

Never, ever, have they been as provably wrong as they have been in Iraq.

They predicted the fall of Iraq would not be accomplished without tens of thousands of American dead. They were wrong. They pithily argued that the handover of power wouldn't happen, they were wrong. They claimed the elections would be stopped- wrong again.

More elections, a parliament, a prime minister, a Constitution....

wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Finally, when things were going poorly, came the surge. Yet again, the apostles of failure predicted sure defeat.

Humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat. Have they learned? Of course not. They drone on in ever more bitter, ever more caustic fits of neurotic rage and feigned condescension.

.....but we know the truth, don't we?

They, not us, are the ugly ones. Yes, we are arrogant and boorish to them. Yes, we do push them down and kick sand in their faces but we all know they deserve it, so few say anything about it.

After all, these cowards are willing to consign a person...a nation....an entire race to poverty, oppression and misery just to reinforce an arrogant, self-serving hatred towards a nation they are jealous of. Ugly Americans? There is no such thing. We overthrow ugliness and we suffer not the crap of the cowardly pigs who would stand in our way.

In conclusion, then, that which transpired in Vietnam over there and over here; that which transpired against the returning veterans, will not - I repeat - will not happen again...ever. Not on our watch.

This is all so evident because the Iraq War is not even a campaign issue any longer because the politicos were on the wrong side of the issue and they know it now as they knew it then. Why is it not an issue this year, if this were not so? All we hear now is "change".

"Change" to what and from what? They want to "change" from that which was wrought in 2006 and 2007? Didn't they run on that platform of "change". Did not that "change" fail? They want to "change" from last years' rhetoric? Does that mean they want to win, now? Or, do they merely use their all too familiar "change" ignorance to appeal to the emotionally unbalanced?

Speak up, Mr Reid, Madame Pelosi, Mr Murtha, Mr Kennedy. We cannot hear you.