The Romney who’s a true hero, patriot

In 1965, an aspiring presidential candidate named Romney took a fact-finding trip to our utterly senseless and failed war zone in Vietnam. On Sept. 4, 1967, the now-leading GOP presidential candidate for the 1968 nomination said the generals who led him around by the nose through the Vietnam jungles “brainwashed” him into supporting that war.

The media, the Johnson administration and his own Republican colleagues howled in scorn that a serious presidential contender could admit to being “brainwashed.” His real sin to them, however, was his break with the military-industrial complex which needs endless war to maintain its power and wealth, regardless of how many innocents on both sides suffer and die.

Using the “B” word may have doomed Romney’s presidential aspirations, but they were transferred to the son who spent most of the past six years grasping for the Holy Grail of American politics. Though the younger Romney failed twice, he carefully avoided the truth-telling that doomed his father. Rather than utter a word of scorn or protest about our failed, murderous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he hired many of advisers to America’s foremost warmonger, Sen. John McCain, in 2008.

With the president’s convincing win, we’ve been saved from possibly more needless war as we wind down the second of Bush era pre-emptive wars. We will be much safer without Mitt Romney directing foreign policy. Had his father been hailed as a patriot for calling out our criminal Vietnam War, and elected president in 1968, many of the 30,000 GI’s killed under President Nixon’s needless prolonging of that war would still be alive. Regardless of what Mitt Romney does with the rest of his life, it’s doubtful he could ever measure up to his father, the true patriot and hero, George Romney.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn