Some of the best stuff I've read about the controversy involving John Kerry's service in Vietnam I read today. First, try out this piece by Michael Novak
The title of their book is to be taken seriously: Unfit for Command. Kerry's revisionism about his own past and the meaning of the war in Vietnam cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. History hasn't been kind to Kerry's view that the Vietnamese did not care about the difference between democracy and Communism. More than a million and a half boat people gave the lie to that, as does the comparative misery of Vietnam today.The Swift Boat Vets and hundreds of thousands of others came home from Vietnam and no one honored them; some insulted them, and even their children and families looked at them with questions in their eyes — questions induced by the public proclamations of John Kerry and others like him. Kerry's testimony before the Senate called them — and the whole structure of command, indeed the whole country — hypocritical, self-interested, even criminal.
As one vet said recently, John Kerry gave the enemy the words it was torturing soldiers to sign their names to — that they were war criminals.
To this day, John Kerry has not said publicly that his friends among the Swift Boat Vets were not war criminals. He has not apologized. In his debate with the young John O'Neill on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, Kerry could not cite a single case of a war crime committed by the Swift Boat veterans. Yet Kerry has never attempted to give his band of brothers their honor back.
Here are some of Christopher Hitchens' thoughts:
John Kerry actually claims to have shot a fleeing Viet Cong soldier from the riverbank, something that I personally would have kept very quiet about. He used to claim that he was a witness to, and almost a participant in, much worse than that. So what if he has been telling the absolute truth all along? In what sense, in other words, does his participation in a shameful war qualify him to be president of the United States? This was a combat of more than 30 years ago, fought with a largely drafted army using indiscriminate tactics and weaponry against a deep-rooted and long-running domestic insurgency. (Agent Orange, for example, was employed to destroy the vegetation in the Mekong Delta and make life easier for the Swift boats.) The experience of having fought in such a war is absolutely useless to any American today and has no bearing on any thinkable fight in which the United States could now become engaged. Thus, only the "character" issues involved are of any weight, and these are extremely difficult and subjective matters. If Kerry doesn't like people disputing his own version of his own gallantry, then it was highly incautious of him to have made it the centerpiece of his appeal.
Today, in a laudable attempt at balance, the Washington Post carried Joshua Muravchik's article, "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper". Among other things it demonstrates that Kerry's credibility problems have little to do with anything that George Bush or his campaign staff have done:
However seared he was, Kerry's spokesmen now say his memory was faulty. When the Swift boat veterans who oppose Kerry presented statements from his commanders and members of his unit denying that his boat entered Cambodia, none of Kerry's shipmates came forward, as they had on other issues, to corroborate his account. Two weeks ago Kerry's spokesmen began to backtrack. First, one campaign aide explained that Kerry had patrolled the Mekong Delta somewhere "between" Cambodia and Vietnam. But there is no between; there is a border. Then another spokesman told reporters that Kerry had been "near Cambodia." But the point of Kerry's 1986 speech was that he personally had taken part in a secret and illegal war in a neutral country. That was only true if he was "in Cambodia," as he had often said he was. If he was merely "near," then his deliberate misstatement falsified the entire speech.
And John O'Sullivan says that Sunday's Washington Post coverage of the story...
effectively routed the idea that the swift boat veterans were Republican stooges -- their campaign, said the Post, was inspired by their anger at what Kerry had said when he returned from Vietnam.That is the albatross around Kerry's neck: There are no disputes over what he then said -- namely, that U.S. armed forces were daily carrying out the most horrendous war crimes in Vietnam with the knowledge of their senior military commanders. He is captured on film saying it to the Congress. Excerpts from it are shown on the second veterans' TV ad, interspersed with comments from Vietnam POWs who complain that they were tortured by the North Vietnamese to get them to say what Kerry said for nothing.
Well, not for nothing exactly. Kerry's testimony, given at a time when the Democrats were fiercely anti-war, was a large stepping stone to his present eminence. But the contradictions of being a war hero and an anti-war hero have finally caught up with him. That is why the swift boat veterans will ignore pleas from Bush or anyone else to halt their campaign. And why that campaign will dominate the election for some time yet -- whatever the papers say. Or don't say.
Here's Newsweek's article from their new issue, and be sure to read Michael Barone in U.S. News and World Report.
Finally, James Taranto in BOTW:
Has anyone stopped to ponder just how pathetic this is? For years we've been hearing from the Democrats that President Bush is a dummy, an illegitimate president, a liar, a military deserter, a "moral coward" and another Hitler--but now Kerry is begging Bush to use his moral authority to get him out of a fix that he himself created by running a campaign based almost entirely on "war hero" braggadocio.Bush, of course, is wise not to do so. This isn't his battle; it's Kerry vs. Vietnam veterans--and Bush, as the Democrats never tire of reminding us, is not a Vietnam vet. The president has graciously given Kerry the benefit of the doubt, as the Times notes:
Asked if Mr. Kerry had lied about his war record, Mr. Bush said, "Mr. Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record."That's real class. But it can't be emphasized enough that the same is true of the men who make up the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Over the years Kerry has trashed them, first as war criminals and now as liars--but in terms of service to their country, every member of this group is at least Kerry's equal. It wouldn't hurt if President Bush, without endorsing their charges against Kerry, said a good word about their service in Vietnam.
Stay on top of the story by checking in regularly with the bloggers that are on the beat. At the head of the class are Captain's Quarters, Power Line, and of course Instapundit. And for what's being said by the national press and opinion journalists, stop every day at RealClearPolitics.
Posted by dan at August 24, 2004 10:57 AM