Posted on 08/27/2004 12:17:03 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Aug. 27, 2004 -- The first time I heard the words "John Kerry" and "president" at the same time was the spring of 1971. John Forbes Kerry, 27 years old, a Yalie, a Navy vet wearing battle ribbons on a rumpled Army fatigue shirt, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he could not support the war in which he and other veterans had risked their lives and killed Vietnamese.
"Thirty years from now," he told a rapt audience, "when our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say 'Vietnam' and not mean a desert, not a filthy, obscene memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."
"I wish John Kerry was running for president," said my mother as we watched. She was a staunch Chicago Democrat. "He's got a JFK accent. JFK hair."
"He's got JFK's initials," said my Aunt Chris, an equally stalwart Illinois Republican.
(The speech has audible Kennedy accents. Adam Walinsky, who had been Robert Kennedy's most acclaimed speechwriter, lent John Kerry advice. But he did not write the speech, as Richard Nixon's White House operatives suggested.)
Thirty-three years later, John Forbes Kerry is running for president. The testimony you can hear here ignited his political career.
But just as obviously, it still infuriates some Vietnam veterans who believe that young John Kerry veered from protest into slander when he told senators he had heard other vets confess that "they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, (and) taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power..." Some veterans still blame John Kerry's testimony for lending credibility to a caricature of Vietnam veterans as lunatic baby-killers.
Before he became the presidential nominee, many Democrats enthusiastically compared John Kerry's honored military service with President Bush's spotty record with the Texas Air National Guard. The scene of John Kerry and his old shipmates sailing into the wind across the Charles River toward the Democratic convention in Boston was a photo-op to make Karl Rove grind his teeth.
But the young man who once testified, "(W)e are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia... We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service," made his war record the metaphorical heart of his acceptance speech. Is John Kerry a mature man who is finally reconciled to his memories? Or is he a striving politician who now has the chance to make use of his past?
Interestingly, a number of John Kerry's supporters now say they wish he would denounce this administration's war in Iraq as powerfully as he once condemned the war in Vietnam. "(H)ow do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" he so hauntingly asked senators in 1971. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Does Senator Kerry think the Iraq war was immoral -- or merely mishandled?
Many Americans believe the American public turned against the war in Vietnam in the wake of John Kerry's testimony and scores of protest marches. Millions certainly did. All of the music, films, and popular icons of the time that we know, from John Lennon (in his rumpled fatigues), to the doctors on M*A*S*H (in their rumpled olive drabs) certainly shore up the impression that America had turned, in John Kerry's phrase.
But American voters elected Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972 -- the second time overwhelmingly, over a peace candidate, George McGovern, who had been a decorated WWII combat bomber pilot. Whatever their qualms and anguish, the majority of American voters supported the war in Vietnam until U.S. troops departed in 1975.
I doubt that John Kerry, who has scrapped his way to three senate terms in Massachusetts's rambunctious politics, has forgotten that fact. To hear his testimony from 1971 might help us see both the young vet who knew how to motivate men, and the aspiring politician who knows how to speak the language of his time.
NPR's Scott Simon is host of Weekend Edition Saturday.
That challenge was shouted at anti-war demonstrations.
In Chicago they shouted, "The whole world is watching!"
Well, the whole world is watching again and this time it's Iraq.
We can't win the debate on Iraq until we recognize Vietnam for what it was.
The Swift Boat fracas is the surface manifestation of a large, open, deep divide in American political thought. .....
The Facts about Bush and the National Guard - The Democratic charges fall apart.***Lost amid all the charges are the facts about Bush's time in the Guard. When did he serve? What did he do? Did he fulfill his responsibilities? Was he in Alabama? In the March 8, 2004, issue of National Review, Byron York investigated and found the answers.***
On May 6, 2001 Tim Russert interviewed Senator John Kerry on Meet the Press. In the course of the interview, Mr. Russert asked the senator about his views on Vietnam.
MR. RUSSERT: You mentioned you're a military guy. There's been a lot of discussion about Bob Kerrey, your former Democratic colleague in the Senate, about his talking about his anguish about what happened in Vietnam . You were on this program 30 years ago as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. And we went back and have an audiotape of that and some still photos. And your comments are particularly timely in this overall discussion of Bob Kerrey. And I'd like for you to listen to those with our audience and then try to put that war into some context:
(Audiotape, April 18, 1971):
MR. CROSBY NOYES (Washington Evening Star): Mr. Kerry, you said at one time or another that you think our policies in Vietnam are tantamount to genocide and that the responsibility lies at all chains of command over there. Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?
SEN. KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.
(End audiotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Thirty years later, you stand by that?
SEN. KERRY: I don't stand by the genocide. I think those were the words of an angry young man. We did not try to do that. But I do stand by the description--I don't even believe there is a purpose served in the word "war criminal." I really don't. But I stand by the rest of what happened over there, Tim.
Well, isn't that nice.
When you listen to Kerry's testimony in 71 in the light of todays war on terror it is a form of retroactive suicide.
The man is a chicken$&%! Coward who questioned everything, not a soldier, not a defender of freedom. He would rather offer up his whine than to work or risk anything.
He testified that he believed the North Vietnamese would live up to what they promised in their "peace" negotiations.
Someone needs to ask him today if the south vietnamese people are better off today under communism that they would have been had we stayed, prevailed and left them with a functioning republic under which they would have now enjoyed over 30 years.
And on Russert this spring, May 6, they played the videotape and Kerry's first words after watching with Tim were, "Gosh Tim, what happened to all that thick, brown hair." He then went on to stand by his decades-old testimony.
I almost fell over. The line wasn't included in "Unfit for Command" but it should have been, as it reveals the self-centered personality who can watch themself TRASH fellow vets and not blink an eye while standing by his slanderous, hurtful testimony (as on P. 154 of O'Neill's book)
Lies that have been brought, once again, to the forefront by one of the principle originators of those lies, John F. Kerry.
And because these veterans dare to speak out against these lies, they are forcing the inevitable cleansing that is truth.
NPR published this?!?!?
August 2002 - Kerry stand upsets some Vietnamese ***The bill would also establish an intergovernmental monitoring commission similar to one in China to report human rights violations and release political and religious prisoners. For expatriates such as Ngo, a 55-year-old real estate agent in Bethesda, Md., the bill represents recognition that the government controls religious and political freedoms in Vietam. ''As I sat in the House [during the vote], I cried with joy. Every vote was `Yes, yes','' Ngo said. ''But Kerry refuses to let it pass to vote.''***
_______________________________________
August 2004 This bill has passed the House 410-1 again and Kerry is again doing what the communist government of Vietnam wants, he's blocking it in the Senate.
Yes. They have a LINK to his testimony (with extras). It's unlike their usual policy, where you have to sign up to get their b.s., this they're proud of and want everyone to have easy access.
In a sense, John F. Kerry was one of the founding fathers of the anti-war Left.
If they had their Mount Rushmore, Kerry's face would be upon it. Along with Hanoi Jane, Tom Hayden, Huey Newton and Mario Savio.
Consider, then, the impact of his going down in flames. And taking their Viet Nam Syndrome with him...
This column explains more of the why we all were silent. Kerry's Lost Opportunity
If we'd spoken up louder sooner, the Left wouldn't have intimidated us into going along with their politically correct nonsense and generations of Americans wouldn't be wondering about the "why" of going into Iraq.
This is the time for that.
bump TO SUPPORT THE NEW SWIFT VETS AD AND GEORGE BUSH... http://swift2.he.net/~swift2/gardner2.mpg
BUMP!
I must tell you that I search out your posts. Though I don't always make comment, they are simply "must reads" for me. Please continue your good work, as we here are all the better for it.
Regards
‘… John Kerry, who has scrapped his way to three senate terms in Massachusetts's rambunctious politics…’
hehehe...How 'scrappy' does a liberal Democrat have to be to get elected in Massachusetts?
Thank you G. Mason.
Ridiculous, right!?
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