SCN: Lesson for anti-war

[TuanMD]

Anti-War Demonstrators Should Think Twice
                                  Wednesday, October 03, 2001
By David Horowitz from FOX News

                           I am a former anti-war activist who helped
to organize the first campus demonstration against the war in Vietnam
at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. I appeal to all
those young people who participated in "anti-war" demonstrations on
150 college campuses this week, to think again and not to join an
"anti-war" effort against America's coming battle with international
terrorism.

                           The hindsight of history has shown that our
efforts in the 1960s to end the war in Vietnam had two practical
effects. The first was to prolong the war itself. Every testimony by
North Vietnamese generals in the postwar years has affirmed that they
knew they could not defeat the United States on the battlefield, and
that they counted on the division of our people at home to win the war
for them. The Vietcong forces we were fighting in South Vietnam were
destroyed in 1968. In other words, most of the war and most of the
casualties in the war occurred because the dictatorship of North
Vietnam counted on the fact Americans would give up the battle rather
than pay the price necessary to win it. This is what happened. The
blood of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and tens of thousands of
Americans, is on the hands of the anti-war activists who prolonged the
struggle and gave victory to the Communists.

                           The second effect of the war was to
surrender South Vietnam to the forces of Communism. This resulted in
the imposition of a monstrous police state, the murder of hundreds of
thousands of innocent South Vietnamese, the incarceration in
"re-education camps" of hundreds of thousands more, and a quarter of a
century of abject poverty imposed by crackpot Marxist economic plans,
which continue to this day. This, too, is the responsibility of the
so-called anti-war movement of the 1960s.

                           I say "so-called anti-war movement,"
because while many Americans were sincerely troubled by America's war
effort, the organizers of this movement were Marxists and radicals who
supported a Communist victory and an American defeat. Today the same
people and their youthful followers are organizing the campus
demonstrations against America's effort to defend its citizens against
the forces of international terrorism and anti-American hatred,
responsible for the September attacks.

                           I know, better than most, the importance of
protecting freedom of speech and the right of citizens to dissent. But
I also know better than most, that there is a difference between
honest dissent and malevolent hate, between criticism of national
policy, and sabotage of the nation's defenses. In the 1960s and 1970s,
the tolerance of anti-American hatreds was so high, that the line
between dissent and treason was eventually erased. Along with
thousands of other New Leftists, I was one who crossed the line
between dissent and actual treason. (I have written an account of
these matters in my autobiography, Radical Son). I did so for what I
thought were the noblest of reasons: to advance the cause of "social
justice" and "peace." I have lived to see how wrong I was and how much
damage we did - especially to those whose cause we claimed to embrace,
the peasants of Indo-China who suffered grievously from our support
for the Communist enemy. I came to see how precious are the freedoms
and opportunities afforded by America to the poorest and most humble
of its citizens, and how rare its virtues are in the world at large.

                           If I have one regret from my radical years,
it is that this country was too tolerant towards the treason of its
enemies within. If patriotic Americans had been more vigilant in the
defense of their country, if they had called things by their right
names, if they had confronted us with the seriousness of our attacks,
they might have caught the attention of those of us who were
well-meaning but utterly misguided.  And they might have stopped us in
our tracks.
                           This appeal is for those of you who are out
there today attacking your country, full of your own
self-righteousness, but who one day might also live to regret what you
have done.
                           David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of
FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of
Popular Culture. He also appears frequently on the Fox News Channel.
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