Denis Hamill: Ex-protester in full support

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: August 29, 2004 6:01:06 AM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>, Open Source Intelligence 
Network <osint () yahoogroups com>, America_at_War 
<America_at_War () yahoogroups com>, Commonweal Mailing List 
<commonweal () yahoogroups com>, Inwood2001 <inwood2001 () yahoogroups com>, 
USA Talk List <USAtalk () yahoogroups com>
Subject: [johnmacsgroup] Denis Hamill: Ex-protester in full support
Reply-To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com

From the New York Daily News --
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/226744p-194762c.html

Ex-protester in full support
by Denis Hamill

I won't be protest-marching past Madison Square Garden today. But my 
heart
is with the majority of those peaceful protesters who oppose the Bush
administration's terrible handling of the war in Iraq.
When I was a young man in Brooklyn in the late 1960s and early '70s, 
draft
age, I was an anti-war protester.

Unlike Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft, who supported the war but took
multiple deferments, or George W. Bush, who supported the war but then
went AWOL from the National Guard when a mandatory physical might have
revealed that he also was part of the drug culture, I took my college
deferment because I was vehemently against the war.

As my 18th birthday approached, my 18-months-older brother, John, sent 
me
a letter from Vietnam, where he won a Bronze Star and Purple Heart 
serving
with the 173 Airborne during the Tet offensive. He told me the war was
wrong, that I should do what ever I could to avoid the draft.

I did.

Instead of becoming a soldier, I became a college student and an 
anti-war
protester. I was proud of it then. I am proud of it now. I opposed that
awful war in Vietnam that got 58,000 beautiful young Americans killed 
in a
war based on a lie.

With hundreds of thousands, I marched on Washington to let Richard Nixon
know that I thought he was a cowardly baby killer.

I had no delusions. John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, had his hand in the
origins of the war. Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, then escalated a minor
advisory role into a full-scale war based on a lie called the Gulf of
Tonkin incident.

Here in New York, I attended rallies to protest what was officially 
called
a "police riot" orchestrated by Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daly at
the 1968 Democratic convention. That same year, Nixon won election on a
slogan that he had a "secret plan" to end the war. When he took office, 
he
proceeded to spread the war into three more countries.

In 1970, I was an outraged college student who went on strike to mourn 
the
college kids gunned down by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent 
State
University.

I apologize for none of my protests.

I was but one skinny, long-haired hippie protester from Brooklyn amongst
millions of my generation who opposed that war. But I am proud of the
position I took. As proud as most military veterans. What the veterans 
did
took a hell of a lot more personal courage than what I did. But we both
did what we thought was right.

I never spit on a returning veteran. I never saw anyone spit on a vet. 
Not
in Brooklyn. Most of the vets who came home to my Brooklyn neighborhood
traded in their dog tags for love beads and hung out on Hippie Hill in
Prospect Park, smoking weed and listening to Dylan. Many joined the
anti-war protests.

I believe those protests helped bring the Vietnam War to an end, and 
until
this cabal of right-wing extremists took over the White House in 2000, I
think the lessons of our failed policy in Vietnam helped keep this 
country
from engaging in other prolonged foreign interventions.

So I am sick and tired of the rightwing's revisionist history of that 
time
and the derision of the anti-war movement. Most of the right-wingers who
knock the protesters never served in a military uniform either - 
Limbaugh,
Hannity, Coulter, Ingram. All are warmongers who urge other people's 
sons
and daughters to do the fighting and the dying while they take a pass.

I'm also sick of these chickenhawks asking decorated war heroes like 
John
Kerry and proud anti-war protesters of the 1960s to apologize for being 
on
the side of the angels when our government took us to Hell.

I think what Kerry did and said when he came home from Vietnam was his
finest hour. He didn't doubletalk. He laid the truth on the line, the 
way
he'd laid his life on the line on the Swift boat.

"What the hell are people trying to tell us?" my brother John asked me
last week. "That some American soldiers didn't cut off ears? Of course
they did. I know. I was there. We all know that. And as for this
ridiculous Swift boat issue? I have only this to say: Only one of the 
two
guys running for President this year was on a Swift boat. That was John
Kerry. End of story."

When my brother John came marching home from Vietnam, he then marched to
protest the war he'd experienced first hand.

I marched alongside him - two American brothers, college hippie and
decorated vet. I'm proud of it. There is nothing to apologize for.

And that's why my heart is with the peaceful protesters today.

All contents  2004 Daily News, L.P.
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    "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
    "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
    "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from 
magic"
     -- Arthur C. Clarke
     "You Gotta Believe" - Frank "Tug" McGraw (1944 - 2004 RIP)

                           John F. McMullen
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