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.
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