At a loss...

I'm really at a loss here. Having not been alive during the Vietnam war, it's hard for me to know and understand the depth of passion that many veterans feel when they think and talk about that war. On the other hand, the events in Iraq over the last year and-a-half do give me a sense of what it may have been like in the 1960s and 1970s when the country was so deeply divided.

The level of emotion in our political discourse today is higher than I ever remember it being in my short life. I gather from my readings about current events that it's basically not been this high since Vietnam. So now we've got a lot of really emotional people out there, doing and saying political things, and frankly, some of it doesn't make any sense to me.

I recently saw a "Veterans Against John Kerry" booth. I've done a lot of thinking since I saw it over the weekend. Now, here's what I know (and when I say "know" it means I've investigated the truthfulness of this for myself and have found it to be accurate). Kerry volunteered for combat duty. He didn't have to go. He fought bravely, was recognized by the US Navy and his comrades, and is now running for President partly on his war record.

He also protested against the war when he came back from Vietnam in 1971. He testified to Congress about atrocities being carried out by the US against the people of Vietnam. He earned the undying enmity of some veterans who feel he betrayed his fellow soldiers. Some of them are now actively campaigning against him using this history as justification.

These are very old wounds, and they go to the bone. But there is more to it than this. The fact is that several of those leading the charge against Kerry have been in fact staunch supporters of George W. Bush for quite some time. I'll put it another way, they've been for Bush since before Kerry was a candidate for President.

So let's be honest about that and not put the cart before the horse. Guys like John O'Neill (he's written a book attempting to refute Kerry's war record) didn't just get involved in this because they have a bone to pick with Kerry. They've been working on behalf of GWB the whole time, and they've been for W from the start. They are working for Bush, not against Kerry.

So now I come to what for me is so incomprehensible. How can some veterans of Vietnam work work on behalf of a guy who used the family name to avoid having to serve? If John Kerry's opposition was dishonorable, wouldn't George Bush's avoidance of combat service (despite supposedly supporting the war) be even less honorable? I could see the logic if Bush had served in combat. But he avoided serving in combat and now passes himself off as some kind of man's man. The fraud is as appalling as it is blatant.

The ring leaders of the Veterans of (fill in the blank) Against (whoever is running against Bush), it seems to me, are nothing more than tools. John O'neill worked for Richard Nixon. The money financing SBVT appears to be coming from a very wealthy Texan whose donated a lot of cash to the Bush campaign. Sure, they may hate Kerry for opposing Vietnam, but some of these nuts think John McCain gave away state secrets when he was a POW.

So perhaps there isn't a real paradox regarding the morality of supporting someone who didn't sacrifice over someone who did. Perhaps it has nothing to do with morality at all.