August 1, 2004 -- WATCHING last week's Democratic infomercial in Boston, one could be forgiven for thinking that John Kerry went straight from the Mekong Delta to the podium at the Fleet Center, with barely a stop in between.
That he had almost nothing to say about his 20 years in the U.S. Senate was surprising. But that almost nary a word was heard about the events that rocketed John Kerry to nationwide fame is shameful.
For America didn't learn of Kerry because of his exploits in Vietnam. He became a recognized figure after his return — when he publicly accused those same American soldiers whom he now claims to champion as "war criminals."
Kerry has never disavowed his anti-war activities and accusations. Last spring, on "Meet the Press," he declared that he was "proud" of what he'd done, claiming he and his fellow activists, like Jane Fonda, "saved lives."
So why no campaign ads featuring his Senate testimony? If Kerry showed moral leadership and patriotism by exposing the "atrocities" committed by U.S. troops, why not remind us of it?
Here's why:
U.S. troops in Vietnam, Kerry told Congress in 1971, "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 . . ."
Indeed, he said, any Vietcong atrocities paled next to the criminality of U.S. troops: "[Americans] are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners — all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam."
Nor, said Kerry, were these "isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." Those who committed and planned them, he said, were true "war criminals" who should face the bar of justice.
These claims all came from the so-called "Winter Soldier Investigation" hatched by conspiracy crackpot Mark Lane. Kerry just repeated the charges, leveled by 150 supposed Vietnam vets, word for word. But two journalists with strong anti-war credentials, Neil Sheehan and James Reston, later exposed "Winter Soldier" as a mass of fabrications by people who hadn't even been in Vietnam.
As recently as three months ago, however, Kerry refused to admit that he'd parroted a bunch of lies. Though admitting that "some of them have been discredited," he insisted to Tim Russert that "a lot of those stories have been documented."
He was willing to say only that some of the language he used was "a little bit over the top," but understandable, given his youth and emotion. No hint of an apology for having (as military historian and Vietnam vet Mackubin Thomas Owens put it) "slandered an entire generation of American soldiers."
But if what a youthful Kerry did in Vietnam demonstrates why he should be president, don't his disgraceful actions a bit later suggest the opposite?
Kerry could have used his acceptance speech to apologize — or at least express some regret — for his slanders. Instead, he tried to rewrite history, depicting his Vietnam service as the proudest experience of his life.
That's not what he was saying in 1971. Back then he told Congress: "We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service."
Which still leaves this important and unresolved question: If John Kerry is convinced that he did something moral and commendable in publicly branding America's troops in Vietnam as war criminals, why didn't he shout it to the rafters in Boston?
And if he now believes, as he likely suspects most Americans probably do, that his conduct was shameful, why won't he admit it — and apologize to those he so publicly defamed?
Eric Fettman in the New York Post |
