Carroll: Kerry agonistes
Rocky Mountain News
If you were a politician who'd said something 33 years ago that was outrageously out of line - something false, offensive and inflammatory - wouldn't the simplest way to deal with it be to admit your mistake and trust that people of goodwill would understand, forgive and move on?
If contrition wasn't easy for you, you could always soften your apology by blaming your misstatement on the passion and anger of youth - even if you were a mature man of 27 when you said it.
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John Kerry was given a chance to take this course last Sunday by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, but the presidential candidate refused to seize it. Instead, Kerry tried to have matters both ways: He distanced himself from his 1971 statements regarding atrocities in the Vietnam War while insisting that his charges were essentially accurate. It so happens, however, that they were not accurate or even remotely close to accurate, and the fact that Kerry still won't repudiate what he said means it remains a serious issue.
American voters want to understand how a presidential candidate views the role and behavior of the United States in the world, not just at the present moment but in the recent past - their past, for example. It is one thing to consider the Vietnam War a mistake. Bill Clinton protested against the war when he was a young man and was elected president twice. But Kerry once viewed the war as something far more sinister than a mistake; he saw it as a Nazi-like assault on a helpless nation conducted by soldiers whose routine behavior rivaled that of the Einsatzgruppen.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, representing Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry promoted the thesis that war crimes by American soldiers were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." He then laid out some of the alleged atrocities, as recounted by what he described as "highly decorated veterans" at the Winter Soldiers Investigation earlier that year in Detroit.
"At times," Kerry said, "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 in addition to the normal ravage of war . . ." Kerry spoke at length before the committee, and his testimony is full of such lurid claims.
Russert played a tape in which Kerry made similar statements on Meet the Press that year. "There are all kinds of atrocities," Kerry said on the tape, "and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these . . . by the letter of the law - the same letter of the law that tried Lt. Calley - are war criminals."
This is the point on Russert's show when Kerry should have run away from his 33-year-old statements. Instead he merely sidled away - and then sidled back.
Russert: "You committed atrocities."
Kerry: "Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me. You know, I thought a lot, for a long time, about that period of time, the things we said, and I think the word is a bad word. I think it's an inappropriate word. I mean, if you wanted to ask me have you ever made mistakes in your life, sure. I think some of the language that I used was a language that reflected an anger. It was honest, but it was in anger, it was a little bit excessive."
Russert: "You used the word 'war criminals.' "
Kerry: "Well, let me just finish. Let me just finish. It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in and I don't like it when I hear it today. I don't like it, but I want you to notice that at the end, I wasn't talking about the soldiers and the soldiers' blame, and my great regret is, I hope no soldier - I mean, I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top. And I think that there were breaches of the Geneva Conventions. There were policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare, and everybody knows that. I mean, books have chronicled that, so I'm not going to walk away from that. But I wish I had found a way to say it in a less abrasive way."
Russert: "But, senator, when you testified before the Senate, you talked about some of the hearings you had observed at the Winter Soldiers meeting and you said that people had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on. A lot of those stories have been discredited, and in hindsight was your testimony . . ."
Kerry: "Actually, a lot of them have been documented."
Russert: "So you stand by that?"
Kerry: "A lot of those stories have been documented. Have some been discredited? Sure they have, Tim. The problem is that's not where the focus should have been. And, you know, when you're angry about something and you're young, you know, you're perfectly capable of not - I mean, if I had the kind of experience and time behind me that I have today, I'd have framed some of that differently. Needless to say, I'm proud that I stood up. I don't want anybody to think twice about it. I'm proud that I took the position that I took to oppose it. I think we saved lives, and I'm proud that I stood up at a time when it was important to stand up, but I'm not going to quibble, you know, 35 years later that I might not have phrased things more artfully at times."
In other words, Kerry believes his language in 1971 was "a little bit excessive," "a little bit over the top," and might have been phrased "more artfully." But on the other hand his statements were "honest," he's "proud" of his position at that time and he's "not going to walk away" from his fundamental thesis regarding the grotesque nature of U.S. conduct. Indeed, "a lot of those stories have been documented."
Actually, many of the atrocity stories that Kerry and many others peddled in the early '70s were discredited even at the time by such journalists as Neil Sheehan, James Reston and William Overend. Others were eventually debunked in such books as America in Vietnam, by well-known historian Guenter Lewy (1978) and Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and History, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley (1998).
As Lewy points out, for example, when the Naval Investigative Service tried to probe allegations made at the Winter Soldier Investigation, "many of the veterans, though assured that they would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities."
"One of the stories told and retold was that of prisoners pushed out of helicopters in order to scare others into talking," Lewy writes. "It is, of course, possible that some American interrogators engaged in this criminal practice, though not a single instance has been confirmed . . . But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name."
Lewy does not deny that "incidents similar to some of those described at the VVAW hearing" occurred. They do in every war, and Lewy carefully discusses a number of them. "We know that hamlets were destroyed, prisoners tortured, and corpses mutilated," he writes, "Yet these incidents either (as in the destruction of hamlets) did not violate the law of war or took place in breach of existing regulations. In either case, they were not, as alleged, part of a 'criminal policy.' The VVAW's use of fake witnesses and the failure to cooperate with military authorities and to provide crucial details of the incidents further cast serious doubt on the professed desire to serve the causes of justice and humanity."
And he adds: "Most soldiers in Vietnam did not kill prisoners or intentionally shoot unarmed villagers. Violations of the law of war in this regard were committed by individuals in violation of existing policy. With the exception of rare cases, no orders were issued to commit atrocities . . ."
There are two mysteries in Kerry's stubborn loyalty to his extremist everyone-did-it rhetoric. The first is why he would want to maintain a thesis that slanders tens of thousands of potential voters who served in Vietnam. Contrary to what Kerry told Congress in 1971, most of those veterans are not ashamed of their service. As Professor Mackubin Thomas Owens of the Naval War College (himself a Marine veteran of Vietnam) noted in a column that appeared January in NationalReviewOnline, "a comprehensive 1980 survey commissioned by the Veterans' Administration reported that 91 percent of those who had seen combat in Vietnam were 'glad they had served their country;' 80 percent disagreed with the statement that 'the U.S. took advantage of me;' and nearly two out of three would go to Vietnam again, even knowing how the war would end."
The second mystery is why Kerry would want voters to believe he spent his time in Vietnam committing awful acts against innocent people. That Kerry was brave and heroic there is no doubt. But why should voters honor bravery and heroism if they merely aided a despicable cause?
Kerry flubbed his chance on Meet the Press to get this monkey of Vietnam rhetoric off his back, but he will be given other opportunities. Once and for all he needs to sever himself from the left-wing propaganda mill that began with the so-called International War Crimes Tribunal in Stockholm in 1967 and has sought ever since to portray U.S. conduct in Vietnam as criminal from top to bottom.
Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com
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