as a military brat, whenever I go to military events with my dad, I tend to wear my Stars and Stripes tie and if I had a pin, I'd wear it, but I wouldn't wear it every damn day.

I lived through that era and will place some of the blame squarely on the anti-war students.  I opposed the war and am have been a strong Obama supporter in this election.  The class divide between the working class kids who went over there and came home basket cases, and the smug students, was huge, and the contempt for the veterans when they came home was huge as well.  The lesson of that was well learned for this war where we have learned to hate the war but love the soldiers.  That was not the case during VN and those guys suffered horribly because of it.  

What a ridiculous formulation. If that's his way of getting to the political center, pandering like that, how he can he call this anything but "politics as usual"?

I believe Barack Obama is firmly committed to one thing.....Barack Obama!

Some anti-war protestors crossed the line.  I know they like to flatter themselves and pretend that all of them were absolutely pure but it simply wasn't the case.

Well, he's right. 100% dead right. I know. I was among those who blamed the soldiers in Viet Nam, holding them complicit for the crimes of that awful war. John Kerry and VVAW set me straight. After hearing John Kerry speak on the Boston Common I realized that the soldiers fighting in Viet Nam were themselves victims of Johnson and Nixon's bloody policies, that they were not themselves perpetrators.

That is the mistake that should never be repeated and, from my involvement in the opposition to this war, is not being repeated.

This is only the beginning.

really an outrageous diary.

i was against the war in the early 70's, but you are dead wrong if you claim the anti-war people didn't mistreat the troops. there were instances of protesters throwing feces on returning troops!

you need to know something about history before you spout off hateful shit like this.

Obama is right! and he's going to lead us to a landslide!

...respond to public sentiment. Obama is right, the American public were either hostile to the veterans or just wanted to ignore every thing about the war   (veterans included). There was no public pressure on the politicians to do more then the minimum.

Americans are ultimately responsible for what happens in Washington. Nobody gets a pass.
 

I think it's both a true sentiment and pandering at the same time.  I don't care for Obama, but I think one has to expect there's a certain amount of saying what people want to hear if someone is running for president in a country with such diverse perspectives.

I grew up in a working class family, and my older brother served three tours in Vietnam.  I was a teenage revolutionary-in-my-own-mind, like so many others, so I lived through that divide too.

I can see both sides including the diarist's point, but I also think we have made progress, at least, in not reducing the service men and women to cartoons in a stateside political debate.

Kate Stone, I used to think as you do - that anti-war protesters abusing homecoming vets was a story peddled to discredit the anti-war movement.  While that's certainly true in the political sense, it DID happen. I've talked to too many Vietnam vets with too much credibility to believe otherwise anymore.

On a related note, you know that famous incidence of constructions workers attacking "students" marching against the war?  That's actually not what happened.  My father was there.  It was a march sponsored by AFSCME local 37 - the first (thought not the last) union to come out officially against the war.  The demonstration was largely made up of union members and their families and friends.

The carpenters union got wind of it, and showed up to attack them, at which point it turned into an all out brawl between two unions.  Just a right-wing union attacking a left-wing one.  "Students" weren't really part of the melee.

it is really nice to see there is so much understanding of the mistakes WE, the anti-war left, made in the past. it's sad the diarest was so ill-informed, but great and i admit a little surprising to see this level of understanding, sophistication, and especially, THE ABILTY TO SEE WHEN OUR SIDE MAKES MISTAKES! that is crucial.

and of course, it is a great omen for our chances in Novemeber that our candidate is smart and kind enough to make this apology.

I think that, in your haste to write a diary on the subject of this quote, you may have forgotten to actually dispute the substance of the quote itself, which revolves around the demonstrable fact that "some" people mistreated returning veterans and that he believes that this was a bad thing. You shouldn't feel bad, though, as this is a common mistake.

As a 60 year old and vehement Vietnam protester I can attest to the fact that I and many other crossed a line. Not my proudest moment.

You want the bald truth? Those who oppose the war in Iraq are doing it NOW. So are those who supported it. They are screwing over the veterans in every single way without ever having to open their mouths and spit. They don't have to throw objects. They don't have to sneer or shout obscenities.

Instead, they keep silent.

This is how we are destroying our new veterans. We are silent in the face of Walter Reed. We are silent in the face of the veteran who shot himself in front of the VA office because they would not pay the disability he needed. We are silent in the face of soldiers who were kept in barracks that overflowed with sewage on a regular basis from bad plumbing. We are silent in the face of those soldiers who are turned away from help with their PTSD from a backlogged system.

There are people who are doing their part, and there's the majority who turn their eyes away and sigh.

though there were problems in the anti-war movement, the government's neglect was the real problem for Vets and the fact that they were drafted and sent to VN in the first place.  So yes, his statement was pandering as if the flag pin.
but what you do not see is that when he was refusing to wear the pin and pretending to be the anti-war candidate he was also pandering, ... to you.
Putting on the pin is one of the first smart things he has done in months.  A battle over a flag pin is a silly battle to have.  Saying that wearing one is "false patriotism" is an insult to people who do wear them.

Get used to it. There is no new politics with Obama.

your fellow Obama supporters have just started attacking you and changed their position on being part of the anti-war movement.  This isn't any different to me than the constantly changing rationale that republicans put forth to support the war in Iraq and Bush.

I must VEHMENTLY disagree with the premise of your post!  Indeed, regular folks, IGNORANT folks, against that war, did in fact SPIT on vets as they made their way home.  It is one of our hall of shame moments as a country and Barack is NOT pandering by acknowledging the pain those vets are STILL in.  

Damn, your post really pisses me off!

Obama is doing everything he can to split this party - I've never seen anything like it. He's an ugly man who is running an ugly campaign.

Everytime I think he can't sink to a new low, he does.

Even though I was a child I remember it well. Vets returning from Vietnam were not treated well. There were no parades and grand welcomes to thank them for their service. It was nothing like we see today. They were a visible sign of a war that half the country hated with all their being.

They came home to a country torn apart and one side, our side, sometimes confused the soldiers with the war. Incidents like Kent State didn't help. I was just explaining that to my teenage daughter this weekend as we listened to "Four Dead in Ohio" on the radio. Kids of the same age, in an untenable situation, and people died at the hands of the National Guard.

I've talked to many Vietnam vets about this since, often while standing outside the polls on election day holding signs for the same (or different)