Posted on 08/15/2004 12:41:37 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
--Samuel Johnson
Whoever could have imagined that four months spent as officer-in-charge of a Navy Swift boat in Vietnam would figure so largely, 36 years later, in Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign for president of the United States? The Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways.
Kerry chose to make his Vietnam service, for which he was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, an issue in the campaign. On the night he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination at its convention in Boston, he welcomed to the podium 13 former shipmates and Vietnam veterans supporting his candidacy. They were offered as testimonial to his courage under fire and fitness to serve as commander in chief.
Vietnam veterans with starkly different views of Kerry's fitness have mounted a campaign to discredit him. In a television ad and in a book titled tellingly "Unfit for Command," a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth contend among other things that his medals, particularly the three Purple Hearts, which gave him an early ticket out of Vietnam, were not deserved.
Kerry's supporters struck back, calling his critics "liars" and worse. Television stations were warned that airing the anti-Kerry ad could lead to lawsuits and potential loss of their licenses to operate. Republican Sen. John McCain weighed in, branding those who challenged Kerry's wartime service "dishonest and dishonorable."
With all due respect to Sen. McCain, a genuine hero, he knows nothing firsthand about John Kerry's service in the war or how that war was fought on the rivers and inshore waters of Vietnam. His denunciation of veterans who do have knowledge of these things almost certainly has been colored by the fact that one of the group's financial backers also paid for ads attacking McCain when he ran against George W. Bush in the 1999-2000 Republican primary campaign.
I know a little bit about Swift boats, too. Fresh out of graduate school in 1969, I volunteered for duty in Vietnam and received orders to head a Military Sea Transportation Office in Cam Rahn Bay. Short-stopped in Saigon by Vice Adm. Zumwalt, then Commander Naval Forces, Vietnam (COMNAVFORV), I was given new orders and assigned as the admiral's assistant for a "special history project."
I rode the rivers and sailed the off-shore waters in virtually every class of vessel deployed by COMNAVFORV and the fledgling Vietnamese Navy. I visited bases from the northern demilitarized zone to the southern Ca Mau Peninsula. I interviewed scores of American and Vietnamese officers. I read hundreds of end-of-tour reports written by naval officers completing their Vietnam assignments. I read their oral histories recorded by NAVFORV's historian and, later, by the Naval History Division in Washington. I took part in "waterborne guardposts" (night ambushes), and flew on Navy helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. I was shot at and shot back. I wrote several articles published in the Naval Institute Proceedings and The Naval Review, put together a large "Compendium of Lessons Learned," and produced a 500-page history vetted by Adm. Zumwalt. He and I disagreed profoundly on the progress of "Vietnamization" and the likely outcome of the war once American forces were withdrawn. (My take on that proved to be the correct one.)
My research and personal experiences led to a book I authored for the Naval Institute Press in 1992, "From the Rivers to the Sea -- The U.S. Navy in Vietnam." I've since contributed articles about Swift boats and the naval war to "The Oxford Companion to American Military History." At the risk of sounding immodest, I believe I am uniquely qualified to comment upon the controversy that surrounds Sen. Kerry's Vietnam service.
First, a disclaimer: I have no firsthand knowledge of the actions for which Kerry was given his medals. So far as I know, only two of his critics do. I do know how medals were awarded during this period, however. I didn't serve on COMNAVFORV's awards board, but I did occasionally receive memos asking me for "words to float a silver or a bronze star."
My point is not that Kerry did not deserve his medals (I can only assume he did), but that in Vietnam medal inflation was a phenomenon hardly unknown.
The counter-attack launched by Kerry Democrats thus far on Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, when not impugning the character of officers and men belonging to that group, hammers the point that of those who actually served under Kerry's command, only one fails to support him now. That's what one might expect of a "band of brothers" who served together in a difficult and tragic war.
A full Swift boat crew consisted of one officer and five enlisted men. That 12 of the 13 veterans brought to the podium in Boston were embraced as "shipmates" raised a few eyebrows, mine included. Apparently, Kerry spent much of his tour in Vietnam being shuffled from one post to another, and served briefly as officer in charge on not one but two boats. This was unusual. Unusual too was his knowledge of a little known regulation (I had never heard of it) that allowed three-time recipients of the Purple Heart to request transfer to a non-combat assignment.
None of the wounds for which Kerry received his Purple Hearts were serious enough to require much in the way of medical treatment. A chapter in "Unfit for Command" titled "The Purple Heart Hunter" describes them as superficial cuts and abrasions, and suggests they were not inflicted by the enemy but by shrapnel from Kerry's own grenade launcher.
However interesting, it's not so much Kerry's actions in Vietnam that most annoy many veterans today, but what he did later as a member of "Vietnam Veterans Against the War." He very publicly threw away medals (though not his own, as it turns out) and campaign ribbons. He declared before congressional committees that the Navy in Vietnam routinely engaged in war crimes and atrocities. I have never seen evidence to support such an accusation, and I believe that to be a lie and a slander on the many brave men who served their country honorably and well on the rivers of Vietnam.
The Vietnam War ended a long time ago. What one junior naval officer did or did not do in that war, though perhaps indicative of that officer's character, has very little real bearing on how he would carry out the awesome responsibilities of president of the United States. What should be of infinitely more consequence to the American people is John Kerry's performance in a nearly 20-year career as a U.S. senator. That is where the spotlight should be focused today, and for whatever reason, the Kerry campaign has not been eager to shine it there.
R.L. Schreadley is a former Post and Courier executive editor and a retired Navy commander.
We owe a great debt to the Swift Boat Vets.
Yes we do.
I just finished the book, Unfit for Command.
The truth is out there.
He's been softened up now for the knockout blow to focus on his traitorous behavior with the Viet Vets against the war.
The spotlight needs to be on BOTH his 20 yrs in Senate and his actions/comments/behavior/unearned medals of Vietnam.
For every soldier/flier killed, wounded, captured in that conflict, every word out of Kerry's mouth is another of a thousand cuts. He should be ashamed.
In The West, we would refer to Kerry as : ALL HAT, NO CATTLE.
Is this the man you trust to talk to hostile leaders of other nations? NOT!! THINK!!
There's so much film, videotape, congressional testimony in Kerry's own words for 36 years. They're out there -- why won't the media give that the proper coverage? Who would they accuse of lying when it's on film.
THE MEDIA LIES BY OMISSION
In the Cold War, Kerry Froze
http://www.aei.org/news/filter.,newsID.21035/news_detail.asp
EXCERPT:
The more telling point is that nothing he has done since then (Vietnam) sustains the claim that he would be an effective leader in the war we face today — any more than George McGovern's 35 combat missions in World War II, which won him the Distinguished Flying Cross, qualified him to lead us in the Cold War.
The Cold War also provides our best measuring stick for estimating how Kerry might perform as commander in chief, and in that conflict Kerry's instincts were always awry. Had the country heeded his counsel, we might not yet have won it.
Many leaders had a hand in Washington's Cold War triumph, but Ronald Reagan's contributions were pivotal, and Kerry opposed every one of them.
All in all, in his 20 years in the Senate, Kerry ranks as one of the five most dovish or liberal members on foreign policy if you tally up the key votes selected by the liberal advocacy group, Americans for Democratic Action.
"Not only in the Cold War but also in other events that foreshadowed today's challenges, Kerry consistently got it wrong. In 1986, Reagan bombed Moammar Kadafi's residence when intelligence intercepts showed that the Libyan dictator was behind the terrorist bombing of a nightclub full of American soldiers in Germany. Kerry denounced the U.S. retaliatory strike as "not proportional."
And when Saddam Hussein swallowed Kuwait in 1990, Kerry opposed using force to drive him out, calling instead for reliance on economic sanctions."
To read the entire article, which I highly recommend:
I meant: go to the link to read the entire article.
It's very good and to the point, focusing on Kerry's positions in the Senate.
In the Cold War, Kerry Froze
http://www.aei.org/news/filter.,newsID.21035/news_detail.asp
Not unless he's talking to communists. He's still working for them. He's blocking the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R. 1950). It had passed 410 - 1 in the House. This is line with what the Vietnamese Communists hae actively fought for everytime it has been introduced. John Kerry is still their man in D.C.
Foreign Relations: Sub-Committee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs Ranking Member
They're following John Kerry's lead.
I can't believe anyone would really vote in a traitor as the President - but I guess the leftists' hatred of Bush knows no bounds. And their hatred of America and capitalism - how did this country get 40% commie?
Kerry, by his own account, violated the UCMJ, the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Code while serving as a Navy officer, and he further stands in violation of Article three, Section three of the U.S. Constitution.
Upon entering the Navy in 1966, John Kerry signed a six-year contract (plus a six-month extension during wartime) and an Officer Candidate contract for five years of active duty and active Naval Reserve. This indicates that Kerry was clearly a commissioned officer at the time of his 1970 meeting with NVA Communists in Paris -- in direct violation of the UCMJ's Article 104 part 904, and U.S. Code 18 U.S.C. 953. That meeting, and Kerry's subsequent coddling of Communists while leading mass protests against our military in the year that followed, also place him in direct violation of our Constitution's Article three, Section three, which defines treason as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of warfare. (As General Vo Nguyen Giap is his witness....)
Thus, we refer our readers to the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, which states, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President ... having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
It is for this reason -- for his record of giving aid and comfort to the enemy while a member of the U.S. Armed Forces in violation of his oath -- that we insist John Kerry resign his seat in the U.S. Senate. He has dishonored his family, dishonored his state and dishonored our nation. He is not fit for public office at any level of government, much less, the highest office in the land. John Kerry should resign NOW !
Stay safe !
I have read it. It's excellent.
Public schools are staffed with teachers trained in schools of education, staffed with professors who started their adulthood as anti-war protestors.
He enlisted as an OCSA (E-2), USNR (inactive) 18 Feb 1966
He was Honorably Discharged from the United States Naval Reserve as a Lieutenant (0-3) 16 Feb 1978
He acted against the U.S. and for the communists during this time and is still doing it today. See Post #10.
I believe you are right. The communist manifesto has made great inroads in this country.
It certainly has, here and around the world.
Agreed. I've thought more than once that focusing on exactly what the New JFK did or didn't do in 1968 is a campaign dead end.
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