Old, Shell-Shocked Vet (?) Takes a Stand For Chimp_junta

February 1, 2005

I'm a combat veteran of World War II, amphibious forces naval officer, Mediterranean. I'm so enraged over the traitorous words of Sen. Ted Kennedy until my hands are shaking as I sit at my computer typing this. The senator called the war worthless and said that the troops fighting over there could not win. As I see it, he urged that we cut and run, bring all the troops home and let the killers and thugs reign in Iraq.

I feel betrayed as must all of us who've fought for our country. His words came just three days before the election in Iraq and could have emboldened the killer thugs in Iraq to kill even more people, including our own Americans in uniform who are fighting this war.

How must the young men feel who are over there, fighting and dying daily? Such things will undermine their morale and subject them to even more efforts by the Iraqis to kill them and undermine our national policy. Of course, Kennedy's words are governed by free speech principles, but where is the sanity that supposedly he has? His words smack of the same thoughts aroused by his father, Joe Kennedy, who admired and sided with Hitler prior to World War II. Sen. Kennedy is grasping at the legacy his father left him.

Back in the days of World War II, such acts as Kennedy's would have led to efforts to kill or indict him, since almost to a person, Americans were united behind the war effort. No, I'm not advocating such conduct, just asking for an outcry from Americans against what Kennedy has done. I ask: Where is our sanity, our patriotism, our sense of fairness that will be impugned if we tolerate such words and activities as Kennedy's?

The senator is an old, tired liberal whose Democratic Party lost the last election. Now he apparently, judging from his latest shameful actions, has lost his mind. The people of Massachusetts seem likely never to vote him out of office. And to think, the first shots of the American war for independence were fired at the Concord Bridge. Minuteman statues are strewn liberally throughout the state. I was so impressed years ago when I first saw them. I stood at the bridge and asked God to bless those courageous men who started our war for freedom.

We World War II veterans are dying off rapidly, but hopefully citizens will not forget that many of us were age 19 and 20 when we came under enemy fire of Hitler's Nazis. Life was dear and precious to us, but love of country and patriotism were woven in the warp and woof of our minds, bodies and souls. Many of my friends died fighting in that great war, and many of their bodies lie buried on foreign soil.

Kennedy's message is an act of demeaning cruelty toward our troops who are fighting today. Where is the anger and outrage that should pour forth over this treasonous act?

Lloyd Lenard is a former Caddo Parish Commissioner and a local author. He lives in Shreveport.

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