"When you got home, you co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and wrote "The New Soldier," which denounced those of us who served -- and were still serving -- on the battlefields of a thankless war. Worst of all, John, you then accused me -- and all of us who served in Vietnam -- of committing terrible crimes and atrocities."
"Even Jane Fonda apologized. Will you, John?"
Oliver North/Creators 27.Aug.04
There's a conspiracy here. To get me to vote for Kerry, who seems sane and human by contrast with most of the aliens he's up against. It makes me forget how flawed and dangerous his actual positions are, how "in the pocket" his vibe is. Compared to people like North, Kerry seems almost heroic.
Just on the text, what North does in this column, and he does it very well, is make serious-sounding charges, that Kerry has accused the noble warriors of the American military of crimes and atrocities, which Kerry did, at one point, long ago, and some of us are still doing.
But that's all North says. He accuses Kerry of accusing him, and the entire US military, but then he doesn't deny or refute, he doesn't answer the accusations.
There's something I know personally all too well, that strange logical place the mind inhabits when it's masking intolerable guilt - you can't admit to what's real, it's overwhelming, you'll break down, you won't be able to function, and you're in crisis - you have to function.
So you sort through what's available and construct a reality that fits what you need, and you live there. Within the borders of that personal reality you can be very logical indeed.
North lives in a world in which he's a hero, but it's a world he built out of pieces of this one, and it's the pieces he leaves out that make him dangerous, a source of contagion.
It's irrefutable that there were crimes and atrocities committed by the US military in Viet Nam, and the safer and far more criminal covering-up that took place, and has taken place since, is irrefutable as well.
The inhuman actions of American-sponsored "soldiers" in Central America during the 1980's, for which North is personally accountable, isn't as well-known in the US, by its citizenry, but only because the heartless power North has served all these years is still in control of the historical record.
It's a larger version of the mental illness North himself displays, an illness whose symptoms are rigid self-control, paranoid vigilance, and the silent disappearance of evidence.
These are viruses he spews, cells of denial breaking open and spilling into thousands of weaker, susceptible minds.
Kerry's flawed, but North is dangerously insane.
