Posted on 02/06/2004 9:17:03 PM PST by RWR8189
A look at the senator's 1971 antiwar opus, "The New Soldier."
HOW CONVENIENT that Douglas Brinkley's hagiographic "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" should be hitting bookstores just as Kerry's star ascends in the Democratic primaries. Less convenient, perhaps, is the fact that another Kerry book is getting hot right now: "The New Soldier," published in 1971, for which Kerry shares authorial credit with the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Hot not in sales--only a tiny number of copies seem to be around--but in price.
A signed first edition in mint condition is being offered on Alibris for $850. Other copies in varying condition have been on the auction block at eBay, none fetching less than $100. The book's rarity has led to speculation that Kerry systematically rounded up existing copies. When Newsmax did a story on the book last summer, they had to get their copy from a bookstore in Britain. But it may simply be the case that the book is rare because it was a dud that no one hung onto.
Hoping to learn why this vintage paperback photo book might be worth so much, I turned to the Library of Congress. The LOC catalogue lists two copies. It also lists a copy of Kerry's much-less-rare 1997 book, "The New War," whose title suggests that Kerry, at least, had fond memories of his first book. (Attempting to master the literary output of a presidential candidate who's no Daniel Patrick Moynihan is my kind of journalism.)
Alas, the library could only produce Kerry's 1997 book. Returning my original call slip, the librarian said simply that no copy of the book could be located. Possibly, both copies were in the process of being reshelved, which can apparently take days. It could be missing, he shrugged, for "any number of reasons."
But, the librarian said, I could initiate a formal search for the book in alcove number seven. There I found a gentle, older man who invited me to sit down and fill out the paperwork at his desk. When I handed him the completed form, he said, "Someone else was just looking for the same book--yesterday." (I smelled a fellow journalist, or perhaps one of the other campaigns.) "They didn't fill out a form, though." (Lazy bum.) He looked up the title on his computer. "But there are two copies, so you can both read it."
How convenient both copies would be missing in action. As we go to press, the LOC catalog has one copy listed as "not charged" and the other as charged on "internal loan." (Kerry's Senate office, by the way, denies any knowledge of the book's whereabouts.) So I decided to resort to eBay, and for a mere $132.50 became the owner of an unsigned paperback edition. Its condition is "certainly not perfect," the seller said, but this book is "selling like hot cakes. . . . Get John Kerry to autograph it for you. It will immediately go up in value."
"The New Soldier" commemorates the April 1971 Vietnam Veterans Against the War march on Washington. Kerry, not a longtime member of the organization, had become its impresario earlier that year. The theatrical protests included a staged "search-and-destroy" mission on the steps of the Capitol and, infamously, soldiers, Kerry included, throwing their medals at the Capitol. Kerry got to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The protest played as a major event in the media and went down as an important moment in the history of the antiwar movement. Kerry's testimony was broadcast on National Public Radio. He made appearances on "Meet the Press" and the "Dick Cavett Show" and was mocked for his self-promotional vanity by Garry Trudeau in his nascent "Doonesbury" comic strip. Depending on who you talk to, Kerry represented the moderate, respectable side of veteran protests (after all, he and VVAW were nonviolent and working within the system) or he was the slanderer responsible for the image of Vietnam veterans as either reluctant soldiers, ashamed of their service and angry at the United States, or vicious, misfit war criminals.
"The New Soldier" is a definite period piece. A dark photo of six soldiers planting an American flag, which is flying upside down, adorns the cover. The protesters camped out on the Mall that week (despite a cat-and-mouse permit dispute with Nixon's Interior Department), and it shows. One can almost smell body odor coming off the page. The VVAW guys are hairy men, many with "Easy Rider" mustaches. They appear ironic in their uniforms, toting toy machine guns. As they sit on the grass and eat in the open air, their faces grow dirty for lack of facilities.
Anti-Kerry oppo researchers will be disappointed to learn that Kerry wrote very little of the book. It reprints his Senate testimony and includes a brief afterword from him. But the bulk of its pictures and first-person narratives come from VVAW members. The idea for the march, according to Brinkley, was Kerry's, though it grew out of the VVAW's Winter Soldier project, in which Kerry played only a minor role. Along with radical chic royalty like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, and supported by Sen. Eugene McCarthy and Fr. Daniel Berrigan, VVAW members met in Detroit and testified to atrocities they had committed or been witness to in Vietnam. Allegations included torture, intentional dismemberment, and gang rape (some excerpts are included in "The New Soldier"). The project operated under the thesis that American atrocities like the one at My Lai weren't highly unusual but reflected the routinely criminal exploits of American military leadership and soldiers.
After Senator Mark O. Hatfield read the Winter Soldier testimony into the Congressional Record, he asked for an official investigation. When the Naval Investigate Service did just that, many of the veterans refused to cooperate (despite protections against self-incrimination). One soldier admitted that his testimony had been coached by members of the Nation of Islam; exact details of the atrocity he'd seen now escaped his memory. Several veterans hunted down by Naval investigators swore they had never been to Detroit and couldn't imagine who would have used their identities. (Somehow this episode was left out of the "Winter Soldier" chapter of Brinkley's book, but the details can be found in Guenter Lewy's "America in Vietnam" and in Mackubin Thomas Owens's account in the latest National Review.)
John Kerry seems to have had a way of eluding the bad odor that clings to his old associates. On "Meet the Press" in 1971, he appeared with VVAW member Al Hubbard, a veteran who was exposed around this time for lying about his rank and combat experience (he had seen no combat). While this confirmed suspicions about the dubious identities of many of the winter soldiers, it didn't keep Kerry from becoming famous. The young politician was able to have his cake and eat it, too, becoming the establishment, patriotic face of a radical, anti-patriotic movement. Quite a trick, really.
Now, if only I can get him to sign this book.
David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard and editor of Doublethink.
Not a problem!
We're not going to form a line -- we're going to surround the grave and all relieve ourselves at the same time...
If you can't make the trip, use a jar and give it to a friend to bring...
Semper Fi
The pictures are the biggest thing with the book. There's one of Ramsey Clark in there, as well as the medals pic. The most damning thing against him is the cover.
John Kerry himself wrote the introduction and the epilogue. The intro has been posted here since it was his congressional statement. The Epilogue has a lot of political speech, but I really couldn't find much really damning stuff offhand besides this.
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