nytimes.com
In '71 Antiwar Words, a Complex View of Kerry
By TODD S. PURDUM
ASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — On April 22, 1971, John Kerry, a decorated 27-year-old Navy veteran of two tours in Vietnam, electrified the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with his passionate testimony against the war, and with tales from fellow veterans about "the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do" in Southeast Asia.
Summarizing the accounts of American soldiers he had heard at an antiwar conference in Detroit weeks earlier, Mr. Kerry said the men told how "they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
As both a veteran and anguished opponent of the Vietnam War, Mr. Kerry has spent years working to square the circle of a conflict that divided his generation, and the nation. Now, his old words have come back to haunt his presidential campaign, as conservative backers of President Bush question whether Mr. Kerry is "a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester," as National Review Online recently asked.
The full picture is complex. In 1970 and 1971, Mr. Kerry was among the most prominent spokesmen for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, whose major patrons included the actress Jane Fonda, and which later staged takeovers of public buildings and walkouts from Veterans Administration hospitals. But when Mr. Kerry was involved, contemporaries recount, he often took steps to moderate the group's actions, believing it was better — for it, and him — to work within the political system that he ultimately sought to join. When he organized the mass march on Washington that resulted in his Senate testimony, Ms. Fonda was nowhere to be seen.
"I think Kerry made a big effort not to have me invited to participate in that," Ms. Fonda said in a telephone interview this week. "Because I think he wanted the organization to distance itself from me, that I was too radical or something." She added: "I went to North Vietnam in July of 1972, so it was not even `Hanoi Jane' yet, but I was still considered a lightning rod and radical. He knew that they had to get the attention of Congress, and he didn't want any unnecessary baggage to come with them."
Asked for comment, Mr. Kerry replied through his campaign spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, that he had made an effort to limit the protest to veterans.
For many Democrats, part of Mr. Kerry's appeal lies in the very fact that he both served in, then opposed the war, giving him the cachet of gallant warrior and principled dissident.
But many critics see Mr. Kerry's words as impugning the honor of all who served in Vietnam, and in recent weeks, they have circulated a picture of him seated a few rows behind Ms. Fonda at an antiwar rally in Valley Forge, Pa., and taken pains to note that she helped sponsor the "Winter Soldier Investigation" in Detroit, to which Mr. Kerry referred in his Senate testimony.
But Gary Solis, a former Marine lieutenant colonel, Vietnam veteran and expert on war crimes who is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center here, said Mr. Kerry had made a grave error.
"Sure it's true," Mr. Solis said. "Sure there were people raped, ears cut off and so on. Each one of the things that he mentioned happened, in some cases I know, and in others I'm confident. But when you put them all together in one sentence and say this was well known at every level of command, it impugns, it seems to me, everyone who fought over there and it gives the impression that everyone who fought over there was a war criminal and that's just not true."
Mr. Kerry concluded his 1971 testimony by demanding, "Where are the leaders of our country?" and his spokeswoman, Ms. Cutter, said: "Clearly, in his testimony, he defended these soldiers and their actions as the fault of the war, not the warriors."
Some of the testimony at the Winter Soldier Investigation was later discredited, and Mr. Kerry has since said he did not witness atrocities.
A recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey found that Mr. Kerry's antiwar activity was mostly a concern to people who had already made up their minds against him, just as Mr. Bush's wartime service in the Texas Air National Guard was mostly a concern of those who already opposed him. |
