Truths and Untruths or is there honor in Cambridge

[Peter_Puget]

"Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war."

 

-letter from Senator John Kerry to Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, dated January 22 [1991]

 

"Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."

 

-Senator Kerry to Wallace Carter, January 31 [1991]

 

Source: TNR

 

 

"Criticising the conduct of US and British policy towards Iraq is legitimate, as is disquiet about the effectiveness of the two countries' intelligence operations. But impugning the honourable motives of those who sought to defend their countries, by dealing with a threat they believed they could not ignore, is not." - The Financial Times, yesterday

 

Sorry its subsrciber only link

 

PP

[Off_White]

My mother in law, a strident peacenik leftist who lives in Massachusetts, doesn't like Kerry at all, says he's wishy-washy. I haven't looked at him closely enough to have much of an opinion.

[Stonehead]

We can only speculate for the discrepancy in Kerry's public statements. Perhaps Kerry's position was strongly influenced by our collective experience of Vietnam, so when his staff issued his preceeding statement, it was consistent with his feelings regarding the commitment of US troops to yield their lives in a conflict that did not directly involve the United States.

 

The following is an excerpt from a speech given by Kerry in April 23, 1971:

 

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

 

 

 

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

 

 

 

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

 

 

 

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

 

 

 

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

 

 

 

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

 

 

 

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

 

 

 

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

 

 

 

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

 

 

 

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

Source

 

Ok, Vietnam is a hot button issue but you can't discount its influence on how we, our leaders and the people, regard the entanglements of war. I only mention it to perhaps lend some perspective to the overall issue.

 

Perhaps (and there's a lot of weasel words here) there was the understanding that Gulf War I was not meant to be a ground war but was primarily a bombing campaign. No occupation resulted from this operation, so the likelihood of losing troops was low. With that understanding, then perhaps Kerry modified his stance regarding the action.

 

I believe it's all right to change your mind regarding an issue especially in light of new facts. An automatic acceptance of the issue consistent with the President without critical analysis is an injustice to the people who elected the congressmen into office.

 

So I'd have to say that we could do a jujitsu move right back at the Financial Times regarding attacks on honorable motives.

[mattp]

My brother, a strident environmentalist in North Dakota, has delt with him on some rangeland and wilderness issues, and says he's "genuine." I haven't looked at him closely enough to have much of an opinion.