"RHF" wrote
U.S. Veterans ask Bush to Halt B.C.'s 'tribute to cowards'
Monument planned for city of Nelson, BC is an insult, they say
- by David Pugliese
- The Vancouver Sun
- Saturday, September 25, 2004
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vanc...tml?id=d2cfe29
4-6c41-4981-8d7b-4900b66bb511
OTTAWA -- The largest combat veteran's group in the United States
has asked President George W. Bush to tell the Canadian government
that a monument in British Columbia to Vietnam War Draft-Dodgers
should not be built.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars says the proposed monument, to be
erected in Nelson, is a tribute "to cowards" and a slap in the
face to the 42 million Americans who have served in the military
over the years.
The privately funded monument, by the group "Our Way Home" will
be located in Nelson, BC. The proposed monument will be a bronze
statue showing Canadians helping U.S. war resisters.
Many of the Vietnam-era war resisters have made their home in
British Columbia, including in the Nelson area. An estimated
125,000 Americans came to Canada during the Vietnam conflict
to avoid the draft with about half returning to the U.S. when
Jimmy Carter, when president, granted them amnesty in 1977.
~ RHF
Canada is as wide and diverse a country as the U.S. It surely has it's share
of the brilliant, the brave, the fools, and the utterly useless excuses for
men, just like we do. In 40 years of visiting Canada, I have only become
acquainted with one "kook" of the Nelson, BC ilk, and he was the son of a
German prisoner of war who was given permission to stay and become a citizen
after WWII. His pussy-warped view of history was that the U.S. only won the
cold war because we out-spent the soviets.
Jack