{"id":124,"date":"2004-02-17T20:14:18","date_gmt":"2004-02-17T20:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/?p=124"},"modified":"2004-02-17T20:14:18","modified_gmt":"2004-02-17T20:14:18","slug":"john-kerry-and-honorable-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/?p=124","title":{"rendered":"John Kerry and &#8220;Honorable&#8221; service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Kerry is a deeply confused man when it comes to military service. In the current campaign, he can&#8217;t say more than two sentences without referencing his Vietnam service. <\/p>\n<p>Many pundits are calling his service &#8220;honorable&#8221;. He did, after all, receive three Purple Hearts and other medals for his actions in combat. I don&#8217;t know if his service was honorable. For me to call it honorable, I have to believe was doing what he thought was honorable. Yet in 1971 he made a speech before Congress that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/la-na-vietnam17feb17,1,926866.story?coll=la-headlines-politics\">LA Times credits<\/a> with convincing many Americans that the war was immoral. During the testimony he accused all levels of the military of committing the most horrible atrocities.  <\/p>\n<p>He now tries to claim is proud of both his service and his anti-war protests. Kerry believes the war was immoral. So how can he be proud of participating in a military action responsible for so many atrocities? He can&#8217;t have his cake and eat it too. He cannot have served honorably in a war he believed to be immoral. <\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s call his service &#8220;brave&#8221; but not honorable. John Kerry is responsible for casting a poor light on his service by his protests following his combat experience. <\/p>\n<p>Kerry emphasized his moral bankruptcy by equating service in the National Guard (and by extension all military reserves) to draft dodging. &#8220;I&#8217;ve said since the day I came back from Vietnam that it was not an issue to me if somebody chose to go to Canada or to go to jail or to be a conscientious objector or to serve in the National Guard or elsewhere.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Thanks, Mr. Kerry. My time in the USMC reserves (after active duty) was just as honorable as deserting the military. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Kerry is a deeply confused man when it comes to military service. In the current campaign, he can&#8217;t say more than two sentences without referencing his Vietnam service. Many pundits are calling his service &#8220;honorable&#8221;. He did, after all, receive three Purple Hearts and other medals for his actions in combat. I don&#8217;t know &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/?p=124\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;John Kerry and &#8220;Honorable&#8221; service&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/semperjase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}