In Memorial Day Tributes to Vietnam Vets, Obama Avoids Why They Fought: To Defeat Communism

Barack Obama paid tribute to veterans of the Vietnam War with a Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam War Memorial and in an op-ed published in military oriented publications. Missing in action from the president's words of praise for the veterans was why they fought for over ten years in Southeast Asia: to defeat communism.

A transcript of Obama's speech given at the Wall, as the memorial is commonly known, published at Fox News shows no mention of the words 'communism' or 'communist.' Nor is there mention that the veterans fought to keep South Vietnam, and by extension the whole of Southeast Asia, free from communist subjugation as part of America's global fight against communism. Likewise for Obama's op-ed posted by the White House and published Monday by Stars and Stripes, Military Times and Miltary.com.

Obama did not mention the gratitude of the South Vietnamese to America for fighting the good fight for as long as we did. He did not mention the million-plus human beings slaughtered by the communists in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam when Obama's Democrat party forced America to abandon the fight in Southeast Asia in 1975. Nor did he mention the eventual triumph of America over global communism within the following two decades.

In the op-ed, Obama notes that more than three million Americans served in the Vietnam war. In his speech at the Wall, Obama recited the precise numbers of those killed in action and those still missing in action: 58,282 and 1,666, respectively. Yet not one word of why such extraordinary efforts and sacrifices were made by so many.

This is the story of our Vietnam servicemembers -- the story that needs to be told. This is what this 50th anniversary is all about. It's another opportunity to say to our Vietnam veterans what we should have been saying from the beginning: You did your job. You served with honor. You made us proud. You came home and you helped build the America that we love and that we cherish.

Yet for all that flowery praise, Obama refuses to name what that job was. How can you say you are proud of Vietnam veterans if you cannot bring yourself to say why they fought and died? Obama mentioned in his speech that the majority of those who served in Vietnam volunteered to fight. Why did they volunteer? Obama doesn't say.

So this is how Obozo honors those who served....I just had this passed on from a friend who was at the wall this morning:

I normally try to avoid political statements, but this one is a bit different. This was received by Colonel Wayne Morris just a few moments ago, who was refused access to the Vietnam War Memorial, where he has visited his fallen comrades for the last 15 years.

Today is Memorial Day and I went to the Vietnam Memorial and something happened there that upset me greatly and I want to pass it on.

For over 15 years I had been going with my dear Marine buddy, Larry Cullen. Since he passed away last year and was interned at Arlington Cemetery, I went this year accompanied by my grandson, Cameron. I had my list of Recon Marines, school classmates, and Larry’s fallen buddies to visit but, as we got close to the area of the National Mall where the Wall is located, we saw huge white tents. We also saw barricades all along Constitution Ave and for a couple blocks in each direction from the Wall. They even closed down all of Constitution Av from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the WW-II Memorial and there was a virtual army of uniformed and plain-clothes security everywhere.

The biggest tent was right at the west end of the Wall entrance and there was a covered walkway leading right up to The Wall. It was so close, you couldn’t get to the Wall on that side so, my grandson and I went all the way around to the eastern entrance to the Wall and walked down along the Wall to the first of my names and I began telling my grandson about my buddies and how each one died. In short order, a guy in a dark suit and earpiece in his ear told us we had to leave as it was 0730 and they were closing Memorial until at least 1400 so the President could drop by. I asked if he was serious and he assured me he was. We and all the other veterans and families were forced to leave and it was locked down.

The Vietnam Memorial is the most visited site on the entire National Mall. Memorial Day has more visitors to the Vietnam Memorial than almost any other day. Even at the rather early hour Cameron and I were there, there were a lot of veterans and family members down there. In the midst of all that, Obama decides to close it for over seven hours just so he can roll by for 30 minutes in the afternoon for a campaign appearance with Democrats, supporters, and campaign donors? This is an incredulously arrogant, egotistical, and inconsiderate thing to do. What in hell was Obama thinking?

Hey President Obama: Since you ran me (and all the other veterans and family members) out of the Memorial before we finished our business there, how about doing me a favor. If you can take a short break from all the grippin’, grinnin’, posin’ and pontificatin’, how about taking a minute or two to stop by and say hello to my fellow Recon Marines and other classmates on the Wall. I suspect you’ll be too busy with photo ops, campaigning, and stroking donors to be troubled with a couple minutes doing what the Memorial was built for but, just in case, here’s a list so you can have your man find them and point them out to you. Hope you have a Meaningful Memorial Day.

Joseph J. JONES; 53-W-02
Sherwood David Kreis, 42-W-40
Dale Kagebein, 34-W-50
Jerry Bock, 25-W-95
Larry Daniels, 09-E- 66
Joe Mack Kemp, 09-E-69
Rhonda L. Raglan, 09-E-70
Robert L. Studards, 09-E-71
Jose D. Flores, 09-E-74
Arthur Willie Greene, 14-E-56
Eric Barnes, 17-E-41
Godfried Blankenship, 17-E-48
Michael Ray Smith, 19-E-113
Ervin Lovell, 19-E-120
William D. Martin, 25-E- 87
Michael L. Laporte, 26-E-1
Ronald Frederick Kitzke, 32-E-76
Charles Harris, 34-E-48
Robert Tracy, 34-E-72
Michael G. Murdock, 36-E-57

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"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
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From American Thinker, September 16, 2008
Article: Obama's Foul Weather Friends
By Scott Swett and Roger Canfield

"As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who [Bernardine] Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam. Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with Vietnamese communists in Toronto. He later recalled being so moved by the gesture that he 'left the room to cry.' "

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/obamas_foul_weather_friends.html
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"In July 1969, [Bernardine] Dohrn [Bill Ayers' co-terrorist wife and leader of the Weather Underground], Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton, all representing 'Weatherman', as Dohrn's faction was now called, traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn

July 27, 1970: The United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco is bombed on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. [NYTimes, 7/27/70]
Chronology of Weather Underground attacks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)#Chronology_of_events

Wikipedia's source for the Chronology of Events:
FBI files (on pdf)
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/weather.htm
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Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the Weather Underground's post-revolution governing plans for the United States:

Larry Grathwohl:

"I asked, 'well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?' and the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say 'eliminate,' I mean 'kill.' Twenty-five million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people. And they were dead serious."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ
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From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
"FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
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"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:

Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1>
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"Dig It. First they killed those pigs [ie, rich people], then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, referring to the Manson murders

Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09

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