Posted on 03/16/2004 5:40:05 PM PST by VadeRetro
Probable Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry will likely face a challenge on the left from Ralph Nader soon, but 32 years ago, Kerry showered his possible electoral spoiler with praise in a speech at the College. Kerry implored Dartmouth students "to be their own Ralph Nader" in opposing the Vietnam War, urging the audience to "break the cycle of non-involvement."
Kerry, who had recently served as president of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, spoke on Jan. 10, 1972 at the Top of the Hop, where he urged students and Americans who opposed the Vietnam War to involve themselves in politics with greater zeal. Regarding Ralph Nader, Kerry said that opponents of the war "must be public citizens in every aspect of our lives," as Kerry apparently thought Nader did.
Kerry also took then-controversial positions relating to those who fled the draft. He favored "amnesty and repatriation" for deserters and draft dodgers, although he doubted that Americans would accept his stance. In order to convince the country to give amnesty to deserters, Kerry proposed repatriation contingent on some sort of national service.
Although Kerry's remarks were controversial at the time, Russell Caplan '72, former executive editor of The Dartmouth, said time has healed many of the scars of Vietnam.
Indeed, President Jimmy Carter followed through on a campaign promise just a day after his inauguration by granting a pardon to those who avoided the draft by either not registering or avoiding the war.
Kerry has shrewdly avoided publicly criticizing President Bush's National Guard service, which some critics of the president have dismissed as akin to draft dodging. But, Kerry has no doubt benefited from the sharp contrast between their Vietnam experiences.
"I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard," Kerry told Fox News recently. "Those are choices people make."
Caplan said that Dartmouth as a whole was largely divided on the issue of the Vietnam War during his time. On the one hand, Larry Adelman '73, the author of the article, was a "rabid peace activist who would wear anti-war armbands to class." On the pro-war side, the group Students Behind Dartmouth was formed in 1968 to counterbalance liberal activists.
Although the College was split roughly 50-50 on the issue of the war, Caplan said that the campus never approached experiencing riots on the scale of those that paralyzed Columbia University in 1968.
"Dartmouth didn't do that because it had more of a conservative student body and alumni, and it was in an isolated location and easier to contain," Caplan said.
In his 1972 speech, Kerry lashed at then-President Richard Nixon, claiming that he was personally responsible for over 130,000 Vietnam casualties a month, although Kerry also predicted reelection. He also criticized Nixon for trying to request the return of prisoners of war before the war ended. Ironically, Kerry has worked with Arizona Sen. John McCain on lingering Vietnam POW/MIA issues during their time in the Senate.
Kerry had vaulted into the national spotlight after testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations committee in 1971, where he famously asked, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" This quote was featured in the upper right corner of The Dartmouth, where editors would normally place humorous one-liners, according to Caplan.
The Kerry campaign declined to comment Thursday.
Your post literally made me sick to my stomach.
I've said before and I'll say again, could it be some good will come of these revelations and some of the record set straight once and for all?
Thank you for your service.
Senator Covered Up Evidence of P.O.W.'s Left Behind: When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A., by Sydney H. Schanberg, published in the (seriously left wing) Village Voice. Here's an excerpt:
Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.
The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs. ...
What did Kerry do in furtherance of the cover-up? An overview would include the following: He allied himself with those carrying it out by treating the Pentagon and other prisoner debunkers as partners in the investigation instead of the targets they were supposed to be. In short, he did their bidding. When Defense Department officials were coming to testify, Kerry would have his staff director, Frances Zwenig, meet with them to "script" the hearings—as detailed in an internal Zwenig memo leaked by others. Zwenig also advised North Vietnamese officials on how to state their case. Further, Kerry never pushed or put up a fight to get key government documents unclassified; he just rolled over, no matter how obvious it was that the documents contained confirming data about prisoners. Moreover, after promising to turn over all committee records to the National Archives when the panel concluded its work, the senator destroyed crucial intelligence information the staff had gathered—to to keep the documents from becoming public. He refused to subpoena past presidents and other key witnesses. ...
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