We have officially entered the "Viet Nam" zone...
But not in the way that the left has envisioned it...There is no military quagmire, only a protesting quagmire...
I have been reading and watching the coverage of last week-ends Anti-American (and Pro-American) protests in Washington DC. While watching (and reading) the coverage, I had a flashback to Chicago 1968 and the Democratic National Party Convention that year. For context, I grew up in Chicago and in 1968 we were innundated with live coverage of the anti-American protests there. The protests themselves (and the City's horrible reaction to it) are indelibly etched into my memory. I would sit, alternately transfixed and horrified, as I watched my beloved city collapse into lawlessness. The fact that the City reacted with such overwhelming brutality was even more frightening to me than the riots were.
Fast forward 37 years to 2005. Watching the protesters and seeing their signs, I could not help but think that I was having a deja vu moment because the people that I saw were the same people I watched back in 1968. The only difference was that the protesters were a lot grayer (aren't we all) than they were then. They only thing missing (thankfully) were the riots and the chants of "THE WHOLE WORLD'S WATCHING". The rest was the same...the same tired chants, the same socialist speakers and the same tired ideas that died when the Cold War ended.
More importantly, I remembered something my father said to me one night (while we were watching the chaos unfold). He said, never forget that people died in Europe, people died in Korea and people are dying today in Viet Nam in order for these people to have the right to protest today! Never forget the sacrifices of our soldiers. Now my father was not a "military" man. The closest we got to having a family member in the service was one uncle in the Navy and a great uncle in the Air Force (both during Korea), but even then he knew what was right. It's amazing how smart my parents got as I got older. I hope I am that "smart" when my son gets older too.....
UPDATE: From my lips to God's ear. According to this story from the Washington Post, Cindy Sheehan was arrested today in front of the White House. She was arrested for blocking a public sidewalk. As police led her away, her follow protesters were heard chanting "the whole world's watching". I can't help but marvel at the narcissism and total lack of a sense of history that these people (protesters and reporters) have. When the 1968 protesters were chanting that, they were being trampled by police horses and beaten bloody by baton weilding police officers and gassed with tear gas while being dragged to waiting police vehicles. Not one tear gas canister, not one baton, not one horse and not one dragging was in sight in the pictures I saw of the arrest.
posted by The Lady Logician at 3:26 PM permalink
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