The truth about supporting our troops

On September 11, there will be an "America Supports You Freedom Walk" in Washington, D.C. honoring the victims of 9/11, America's military, and to celebrate freedom. It will be preceded by a private ceremony for families of 9/11 victims. As Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said last week, it is "reminding participants of the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation that have so successfully defended our freedoms."

Assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Barber added that it is hoped every state will hold its own Freedom Walk next year.

The Washington Post and D.C. area's WTOP radio, WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8 are contributing public service announcements of the event, and other contributors to its success include Lockheed Martin and Subway sandwich shops. (Can leftist media and legion leader Media Matters be far behind, calling for a boycott of Subway hero sandwiches, and Subway heroes.)

Not fair, says the Usual Suspects, like Marxist front ANSWER. To the contrary, says the Washington Post spokesman: "Our interest in the event is consistent with our past support of causes related to victims of September 11 and the veterans of wars past and present." Congressman Pete King says, to the point, "We are at war. It's essential that we support our troops."

The Usual Suspects are organizing a mass march in D.C., with offshoots in L.A. and San Francisco, for September 24, their poster announcing: "End colonial occupation: Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...". (Also see here, "Peace Movement or War on the Jews?" about their April 12, 2003 protests.) The September 24 leadership includes such luminaries of the far-left as the Muslim American Society, National Lawyers Guild, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition, Haiti Support Network, and the Women's Anti-Imperialist League.

One can expect another current luminary there on September 24, but not September 11, Cindy Sheehan. As the New York Sun editorial writes of the "crowd" for which she "has become the new face", "during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, ...a New York Sun poll of 253 of the protestors found that fully 67% of those surveyed said they agreed with the statement 'Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.' In other words, Ms. Sheehan's 'coalition' includes a lot of the people who think the persons who killed her son were justified." Or, as another observer suggests, "she might want to peruse the blogs that constitute the fever swamps of the Left. There she will find...that some of her new pals feel nothing but contempt for her son," quoting a representative saying, "doesn't hoping that American forces are driven from Iraq necessarily mean hoping that Americans soldiers will be killed there? Yes it does. Your soldiers are just a bunch of poor, dumb suckers..."

In 1967, I worked with Charlie Wiley in his organization of the longest parade in New York City since World War II, the Support Our Men in Vietnam Parade held May 13. The New York Daily News' WPIX-TV live televised the whole day of contingents from all over the tri-state area marching down 5th Avenue. The parade caused quite a stir at the time, for example when everyone in America watched the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights and he announced his support. I checked online, and at the archives of the Daily News and the New York Times, finding only a visual clip reference and nothing else from that pre-Internet time. (There may be more, but I don't have Lexus-Nexis to search further into the cyberbowls of memory.) Yet, the various anti-Vietnam War marches of the era are immortalized in paeans from their participants and wannabes, as Cindy Sheehan's protest theater is being treated today. See, for example, here.

Coincidentally, 4-years after the May 13, 1967 Support Our Men in Vietnam Parade, on May 13, 1971, I had an op-ed in the New York Times (needs Lexus-Nexis to locate a copy) contradicting John Kerry and few friends' mass media spectacle of lies and slanders of my fellow Vietnam veterans. This launched the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, in which John O'Neill joined up to expose Kerry, a job we finished in 2004.

You have a choice of where you want to be on September 11, 2005, and what you want to be the history of this era. You can go to www.AmericaSupportsYou.mil and click on the Freedom Walk icon to participate, and you can see that this September 11 is remembered more than September 24.