greybeta | Rough draft of my next article

First, go Red Sox.

As a little intro for my new friends, I write in my college newspaper. But I'm such a terrible writer than I need plenty of second opinions before my article is printed (they say the key to improving your writing is having other people read it).

This is one is quite a bit more rougher than usual...haven't had much time to self-edit. I'm behind an eight ball due to some projects, so don't hold back on the brutality.

I know the title sucks but my Muse is barely whispering in my ear. Suggestions, por favor?

Kerry and Vietnam
Daniel Tu

Over the past four years, the Bush regime has furthered an American hegemony by fighting wars without the explicit permission of the United Nations. Our informal empire claims self defense in order to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. In order to save America from the greedy acts of a Republican emperor, the Democratic Party pleads with America to vote for change. Democrats laud Senator Kerry as the chief proponent of the movement to take the war against terrorism in a different direction.

Yet, if America thought things were as bad as the Democrats made them out to be, then the senator from Massachusetts would be killing the former governor of Texas in the nationwide polls. I’ve heard plenty of smart people give their support against Bush, which meant they spoke well of Kerry’s administration. They hoped Kerry would represent a more rational and effective government. I wanted to hear that confidence straight from the horse’s mouth during the debates, but Kerry failed to deliver. Instead, I heard too much on how he isn’t Bush and how Kerry served proudly in Vietnam.

So, we will have another close election on our hands because of the way Kerry runs his campaign. In order to gain the upper hand on military affairs, Kerry never fails to mention about his service in Vietnam. But when a liberal news anchor calls into question the President’s National Guard duty on the basis of falsified documents, Kerry should have expected that his own service record in Vietnam would have been attacked. The swift boat veterans shattered Kerry’s illusion of being a good soldier.

Why did Kerry protest so loudly against the Vietnam War? He claims injustices abounded there, anywhere from men raping villagers to killing civilians indiscriminately. Kerry believes that we wasted American lives by insisting on helping a young democracy grow into fruition, but my history research shows America left South Vietnam high and dry. Kerry couldn’t understand the situation in a country that the U.S. had been heavily involved in since the end of World War II.

Was the American strategy in Vietnam working at the time? It was not because the American administration neglected to realize that Vietnamese peasants fought for their nation’s independence rather than against America itself. Rectifying the Vietnam situation required out-of-the-box thinking, much like the Iraq situation we face today. The Bush administration doesn’t seem to understand exactly who fights against us in Iraq, but I don’t think the Kerry regime will either. Kerry wants to bring in other allies who warned us not to go it alone. Our future negotiations depends heavily upon how well we deal with Iraq; otherwise, not a single nation will be willing to cut a deal with us when we need a favor.

Ignorant of the lessons of Vietnam, Kerry misunderstands our current situation in Iraq. Kerry voted for war on Iraq, but he claims he only did so because the President deceived him about Saddam Hussein’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of the reason that we invaded Iraq, we have committed ourselves to helping Iraq build a democracy. It will cost us money and lives, but we owe it to the Iraqi people to give them a chance for true freedom.