Originally posted by: Crimson
Well, at least he didn't throw them in the dirt and give our enemy reason to fight on.
I don't think the VC needed encouragement. They've been fighting for hundreds, if not thousands of years and are unbelievably tenacious. Just ask the French. They wanted to unify their country, cold war powers decided to complicate the process.
The war was wrong, ill planned, not supported in full by the men who instisted on it, and we didn't even have an ethical higher ground to fight for. We threw thousands of soldiers into the grinder to support a war that was known to be pointless at the time and remains pointless to this day. Anyone who fought in Vietnam derserves commendation and our apprecation as a nation, but that does not make what they fought any more correct.
Last thing, there is nothing in human nature that would contradict what Kerry claimed some of our troops did over there. There were proven instances of what he claimed, and he was right in denouncing them. Soldiers are required to abide to LoAC, the UCMJ, and the Geneva Convention, and violations of any or all of those shouldn't be glossed over; violations should be held accountable. It goes back to being a model for the free world, we have and will continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard than primitive notions of loyalty through criminal neglect.