Oliver North

Posted on August 21, 2003 in Scoundrels War

In 1973, we won the Vietnam War in a way that was unprecedented. We had the sense to get out of a land whose people did not want us there. It was our greatest victory — aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis — in the Cold War.

Then Oliver North marched into the committee chambers of the United States Senate and told them that the Vietnam War had been lost. Not over there, he said, but here. Here in America.

His testimony is declared to be among the greatest American speeches of the 20th century. I do not hold this to be true, because in greatness a man must be aware of what he was saying. And Oliver North, who took drugs and who siphoned government money off for his own use, did not know the nature of the truth he spoke on July 8, 1987, the day the Vietnam War was lost. Here. In America.

Oliver North lost the Vietnam War for us by making us forget our victory. Our victory over cruelty and the drive for imperialism. Our victory over that dark sense in ourselves which held that with our bombs, our bullets, and our napalm we could make a better Vietnam than the one the people themselves could make without these things.

Yes, Oliver North, the war in Vietnam was lost here. Here, at the moment you strode up in your uniform to the witness stand, when you spoke those words and declared that the whole Iran-Contra arms affair was “the right thing to do”. At that proud purr of your voice, the war in Vietnam was lost — by you.

And because of you, we are fighting it again, in Iraq. Using bombs, bullets, and napalm. Driving our boys to atrocity in the alien heat. You, Oliver North, stabbed at the confidence we had about our smart decision to withdraw and you left us bleeding. We could not stay out of Iraq and we’re losing this war, Oliver North, because you snatched away our peace with honor.

Provoked by Deborama.