The Romney who is true patriot, hero

In 1965, an aspiring presidential candidate with the last name of Romney took a fact finding trip to our utterly senseless and failed war zone in Vietnam. He came back a true believer and promoted the war till he came to his senses, becoming decidedly anti war. On September 4, 1967, that now leading GOP presidential candidate for the 1968 nomination, told Detroit TV interviewer Lou Gordon that the Generals who led him around by the nose through the Vietnam jungles "brainwashed" him into supporting that senseless and failed 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 their 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 last six years grasping for the Holy Grail of American politics. Though the younger Romney failed twice and has left the public stage of office seekers for good, 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 most of the neocon advisors tossed out of work when the electorate denied the Presidency to America's foremost war monger, Senator John McCain, in 2008. Romney the son even hired Dan Senor, the most visible Bush neocon adviser, who let slip during the campaign that Romney was pretty comfortable with and would support Israel launching pre-emptive war against our current mutual bête noir, Iran.

With the President's convincing win by 126 electoral and 3.5 millions popular votes, we've been saved from possibly more needless war as we wind down the second of Bush era preemptive wars. We will be much safer without Mitt Romney directing foreign policy for the next four years. Had his father been hailed as a patriot for calling out our criminal Vietnam War in 1967, 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, its doubtful he could ever measure up to his father; the true patriot and hero, George Romney.

Originally published in the Daily Herald, December 7, 2012