{"id":794,"date":"2005-11-29T18:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-29T18:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq\/"},"modified":"2005-11-29T18:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-29T18:05:00","slug":"life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html","title":{"rendered":"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><s>Mr. Kerry, 1971<\/s> All of us, Today:<\/p>\n<p>Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of <s>Vietnam<\/s> Iraq someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn\u2019t have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can\u2019t say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to dies so that President <s>Nixon<\/s> Bush won\u2019t be, and these are his words, \u201cthe first President to lose a war.\u201d [make that \u2018second\u2019]<\/p>\n<p>We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to dies in <s>Vietnam<\/s> Iraq? How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President\u2019s last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says, and says clearly:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is <s>communism<\/s> terrorism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the <s>communists<\/s> terrorists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But the point is they are not a free people now under us. They are not a free people, and we cannot fight <s>communism<\/s> terrorism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now.<\/p>\n<p>[Original text directly from John Kerry\u2019s statement to the Fulbright Committee in 1971]<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-113328799681508843?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today: Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn\u2019t have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can\u2019t say that we have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today:Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today:Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Buddhist Perspectives\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-11-29T18:05:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-113328799681508843?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html\",\"name\":\"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2005-11-29T18:05:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2005-11-29T18:05:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9\"},\"description\":\"Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today:Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/\",\"name\":\"American Buddhist Perspectives\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9\",\"name\":\"Justin Whitaker\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Justin Whitaker\"},\"description\":\"I am an almost-life-long Montanan; a baptized Catholic; an ardent Atheist; a practicing Buddhist; a lover of Wisdom. I have a BA and almost an MA in (Western) Philosophy from the University of Montana-Missoula, an MA in Buddhist Studies from Bristol University, UK, and I am currently working on a Ph.D. in Buddhist Ethics at the U of London. My main academic foci are early Buddhist ethics and Kant (odd combination, I know). I also study Western ethics, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada, Comparative philosophy, and Environmental ethics. I also like photography, running, drinking wine, and eating peanut butter (often in that order).\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/author\/justinwhitaker\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq","description":"Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today:Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq","og_description":"Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today:Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html","og_site_name":"American Buddhist Perspectives","article_published_time":"2005-11-29T18:05:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-113328799681508843?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com"}],"author":"Justin Whitaker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Justin Whitaker","Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html","name":"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-11-29T18:05:00+00:00","dateModified":"2005-11-29T18:05:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9"},"description":"Mr. Kerry, 1971 All of us, Today:Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam Iraq someone has to give up his","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2005\/11\/life-as-in-vietnam-so-too-in-iraq.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Life: as in Vietnam, so too in Iraq"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/","name":"American Buddhist Perspectives","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9","name":"Justin Whitaker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/817b6fba8ae056aaff4f9bdc84347d72?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Justin Whitaker"},"description":"I am an almost-life-long Montanan; a baptized Catholic; an ardent Atheist; a practicing Buddhist; a lover of Wisdom. I have a BA and almost an MA in (Western) Philosophy from the University of Montana-Missoula, an MA in Buddhist Studies from Bristol University, UK, and I am currently working on a Ph.D. in Buddhist Ethics at the U of London. My main academic foci are early Buddhist ethics and Kant (odd combination, I know). I also study Western ethics, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada, Comparative philosophy, and Environmental ethics. I also like photography, running, drinking wine, and eating peanut butter (often in that order).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/author\/justinwhitaker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}