Why are many local veterans angry with Ellen Beraud and oppose her bid to be elected as the supervisor for the 5th District, encompassing Atascadero, and rural areas east and south of the Cuesta Grade? If you listen to her commercials, she describes herself as an “independent,” a businesswoman, and someone with vision and leadership ability, as opposed to the incumbent, Debbie Arnold.
I’ve observed both candidates for many years, and the Ellen Beraud running for supervisor is not the person she describes in her political ads. She’s a leftist with a past record of hostility to business and especially veterans. Her vote on the Atascadero City Council on March 27, 2007, was the sole vote against building the veterans memorial in Atascadero, which honors those who gave all they could give for their country.
To understand the anger of veterans, you have to understand what many of them have experienced. The Korean War veteran experienced not hostility but indifference upon their return; that’s partially why that war is often called “the forgotten war.” Patriotism was very much alive, but many who fought in Korea experienced intense combat and severe deprivation due to the nation’s lack of preparedness at the war’s outbreak. Many of those who served in Korea were reservists recalled to active duty. Having served in WWII, they were drafted again.
The Vietnam veteran was abused by a divided nation and a two-tiered system of national service. Those with money and privilege were deferred from service. Less than 3 percent of draft-age eligible males served in Vietnam. By 1968, casualties in Vietnam were around 500 Americans killed per week with the norm being intense combat comparable to that of WWII. By 1968, anti-war sentiment had exploded across the nation and political leaders had a spine similar to that of jellyfish. They instituted policies guaranteed not to win but to send “signals” to North Vietnam to aid negotiations in our surrender.
The troops, however, gave their last full measure during enemy offensives such as the Tet Offensive in 1968 and at “Hamburger Hill” in May 1969. In the latter, the 101st Airborne made 10 assaults, sustaining heavy casualties to take that jungle-covered hill in rain and mud against heavily fortified enemy positions. Three days after they took the Hill, it was deemed not strategically important and it was ordered abandoned. North Vietnamese troops immediately reoccupied their positions.
American troops in Vietnam demonstrated extraordinary heroism, such as Capt. Ripley, a Marine advisor to a South Vietnamese Ranger unit during the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive in 1972. Ripley, while under heavy enemy small arms and mortar fire for three hours, emplaced heavy demolition charges to blow the Dong Ha Bridge, keeping a column of enemy tanks from breaking through into the main southern corridor into South Vietnam. The North had launched a multi-divisional conventional attack. Ripley’s courage gave South Vietnam time to reconsolidate.
You probably never heard of him or the Easter Offensive.
More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam while survivors came home to a disinterested and hostile nation. When soldiers came home, they weren’t met with indifference but hostility as the left had re-directed political opposition to the war against the troops. After WWII, a grateful nation sought out its veterans. After Vietnam, the nation discarded them. The bitterness of Vietnam veterans has never been completely erased.
When my son and I deployed to Iraq in 2004, my son’s unit lost half its men in firefights and ambushes in Ramadi. I watched his unit and others decimated by policies driven by domestic politics, not military strategy. We were short 17 companies of infantry in Baghdad for security missions; our troops were never given adequate support as casualties mounted. The “surge” in 2007 partially remedied this, but even the stability it provided was tossed aside by preemptive withdrawal in 2011, guaranteeing the rise of radical Islamists and a bloodbath between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
The Vietnam War cost America 58,000 of its sons; the Iraq War added another 4,500 sons and daughters along with 30,000 wounded, and again the children of privilege stayed home. Returning home, the left was out in force. They’d successfully derided returning Vietnam veterans and tried a replay on returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans.
Most combat veterans lost friends; officers lost men and women for whom they felt personally responsible; they had to explain to grieving parents why their child died. Leftists told me to be “ashamed of my service.”
In Atascadero, we built a memorial, over much opposition from the left, some even calling us Nazis. We still managed to honor the dead and comfort their families over the opposition of some local political leaders.
One leftist now seeks the office of supervisor in the 5th District, Ellen Beraud. She feigns past support, now attending our ceremonies. She didn’t attend the memorial’s dedication nor any ceremony honoring the fallen for 10 years, nor did she apologize for our treatment. Yet, now, she presumes our support while some ask, “Why are veterans angry?” Δ
Al Fonzi had a 35-year military career, serving in both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Respond in a letter to the editor emailed to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 9, 2020.
Probably a good idea to stop using veterans and or all things military as an excuse to support this or that position. The glorification and deification of all things military has gotten way out of hand, to the detriment of all involved. At which point along the continuum does a person become responsible for their actions in facilitating and or being complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity in wars based on lies? Following orders does not take away the blame. It was thus for me in 71′, and it remains so today…
I agree with commenter Chris Knudson and I’ll go one step further: Being an “order follower” who sacrifices human and animal lives, wreaking havoc on Mother Nature and generally causing terror and destruction around the world, is not only dishonorable, in my analysis, it is morally wrong.
I urge Mr. Fonzi and readers of this post to research “moral relativism,” which happens to be one of the four basic tenets of Satanism. Whose god are you worshipping when you enlist in armed services or support the troops and erect monuments to these men and women?
Sadly, the people giving orders are LESS responsible than the order followers. From nearly every parent everywhere: “If someone tells you to jump off a bridge, do you do it? If so, then whose fault is it, the psychopath urging you to do it, or you, for actually DOING IT and killing yourself?” Replace “jump off a bridge” with “kill these people” and replace “killing yourself” with “killing another human” — and there is the awful truth.
I think Ellen had it right when protesting the monument; but now, like most politicians, she appears to be practicing moral relativism in order to curry votes.
To be clear on this issue, Ellen Beraud did NOT protest the Faces of Freedom veterans’ monument. She objected to its proponents trying to bypass the approval process and going around an arts committee who should have had some say-so as part of the procedure. The FoF proponents were originally advocating for placing it in the Sunken Gardens which would’ve ruined that space for its regular variety of public gatherings. While there is much to appreciate about the FoF monument in its Lake Park location, the oversized and compositionally confused sculpture detracts from the solemnity of the space and its purpose.
The Vietnam war was an obscene orgy of brutality,horror and destruction based on lies and in the end, it was all for nothing.
Hey Al Fonzi, if you think military service is so sacred, why do you so passionately support a so-called President who evaded the draft back in the day with a bogus bone spurs diagnosis? It’s a matter of open record that the rich playboy Donny avoided military service thanks to his father who paid a podiatrist renting office space in one of Fred Trump’s buildings to sign off on a fake medical letter excusing the boy from being drafted. Not only that but your glorious dear leader openly called American POW’s losers & said he prefers soldiers who weren’t captured. What can you say about that, Al? I know you are a Nazi sympathizer who hates antifa & all that ,but maybe you can let us know what’s up with your devotion to a criminal wannabe dictator whose only patriotism is to Vladimir Putin. Your orange messiah is a scumbag who insults veterans & does grave damage to institutions dedicated to helping troubled or disabled vets.bring it on, Al, you need to respond to these questions.
How can one not feel a little sorry for Mr. Al Fonzi, who spends an evening in one of the most beautiful places on earth wrathfully weaving what can only be defined as a political hatchet job, one based on a complete fabrication, and then signing his name to it? It’s a sad state of affairs, for sure.
When I first read this nonsense, my response was going to be full of “How DARE you!” language, but now that a day has passed, and I remember that Al is not really a guy susceptible to shame, I’ll just make a couple of points: First, no way in the world do you speak for the veterans of this or any other community. Speak for yourself, Al, and leave it at that. There are plenty of veterans who support Ellen Beraud. Second, it’s a helluva reach to blame Ellen Beraud for ignoring vets from the Korean conflict or abusing Viet vets. That’s just diversionary language, that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. And third, your facts are all wrong (see Gordon Fuglie’s post, above.) You have a political point of view, and that’s fine, but if it’s an honest one, it can be exhibited in its own light, on its own merits, without clouding it, dressing it in false clothing, and constantly shouting “look over THERE!” when people see the weaknesses. I mean, remember, you support a guy who laughs at Traumatic Brain Injuries (“headaches”), insults Gold Star parents, insults the grieving wife of a KIA, and pardons war criminals who were tried within the military justice system. Who’s disrespecting veterans now?