BY JAMES TARANTO
Friday, February 20, 2004 4:07 p.m.
Kerry Runs From Vietnam Record
John Kerry's obsession with Vietnam long ago became a national joke, but let's take it seriously for a moment. Why does Kerry seem to think his service in Vietnam in the late '60s is the most important question facing the country in the mid-'00s?
The Democratic line is that Kerry's distinguished service in the Navy proves his character, and also insulates him from what Dems imagine to be Republicans' propensity to "question the patriotism" of Democrats. But another reason Kerry talks about Vietnam so much may be that he's on the defensive over his own Vietnam record. After all, Kerry isn't just a veteran; he was a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, an outfit that, for better or worse, was instrumental in undermining the American war effort.
These days Kerry talks a lot more about his "band of brothers" than about his antiwar activities, but yesterday CNN's Judy Woodruff asked him about the latter:
Woodruff: it's been reported that, well you're aware of this, Vietnam veterans [are] upset with the fact that when you came back from the war, you went to Capitol Hill, and you testified in so many words against the kinds of things that U.S. soldiers were doing over there--
Kerry: Yes, I did.
Woodruff: To the Vietnamese.
Kerry: Yes, I did.
Woodruff: They are saying, in effect, you were accusing American troops of war crimes.
Kerry: No, I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. And if you read what I said, it is very clearly an indictment of leadership. I said to the Senate, where is the leadership of our country? And it's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. I never said that. I've always fought for the soldiers.
Here's what Kerry said in his April 22, 1971, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (link in PDF format; the excerpt begins on page 180, the second page of the file):
Several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. . . . They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories [that] at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
It's true that elsewhere in his testimony Kerry accuses America's political leadership of giving short shrift to veterans. But this passage indisputably accuses soldiers of war crimes, and far from being an "indictment of leadership" for "abandoning the troops," it is an attack on the military leadership "at all levels of command" for complicity in the purported war crimes.
Kerry has made clear that the "lessons of Vietnam" inform his views on today's war. Here he is in Sunday's Wisconsin debate:
I would say that this president regrettably has perhaps not learned some of the lessons of that period of time during which we had a very difficult war, the longest in American history and one of the most contentious. And one of those key lessons is in how you take a nation to war. I think this president rushed to war. I don't believe he had a plan for winning the peace. I don't think he kept his promises to America.
As the Washington Post points out in a recent editorial, Kerry has been all over the map on the question of how to deal with America's enemies today:
In 1991 he voted against the first Persian Gulf War, saying more support was needed from Americans for a war that he believed would prove costly. In 1998, when President Clinton was considering military steps against Iraq, he strenuously argued for action, with or without allies. Four years later he voted for a resolution authorizing invasion but criticized Mr. Bush for not recruiting allies. Last fall he voted against funding for Iraqi reconstruction, but argued that the United States must support the establishment of a democratic government.
Mr. Kerry's attempts to weave a thread connecting and justifying all these positions are unconvincing.
Kerry's attitude toward Vietnam also has a way of shifting with the wind. In 1992 he attacked Bob Kerrey for making an issue of fellow Democratic candidate Bill Clinton's lack of military service. Now he presents his own heroics in that war as a qualification for the presidency, while trying to whitewash his antiwar activities.
At a time when America is at war with an enemy that has already killed thousands of civilians on our own soil, refighting Vietnam seems an exercise in vanity. But it seems a debate over Vietnam is inevitable if Kerry is the Democratic nominee. If so, the question that should be central is about the future, not the past: Just what "lessons" did Kerry take away from Vietnam, and how would they inform President Kerry's conduct of today's war? |
