[armymarinemom]

PTSD? Why then did he speak against the War before he left to serve?
A lot of his classmates spoke of his intense political ambitions during his time at Yale.
Kerry '66: 'He was going to be president'

A sense of duty
In March 1965, as the war in Vietnam continued to escalate, Kerry won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that criticized U.S foreign policy as arrogant and unrealistic.
"It is the specter of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating," Kerry said in his speech. "We have grossly overextended ourselves in areas where we have no vital primary interest."
The next year, Kerry discarded his original Class Day oration -- which had already been published in the Yale Banner -- for a new address echoing many of the sentiments of his prize-winning speech. In a speech that was unusually political for a Class Oration, he criticized the United States for intervening in Asian affairs and isolating itself from the world community.
"I think he was ahead of his time," Smith said about Kerry's attitude towards Vietnam. "I think he felt that the war was much more controversial at an earlier stage than anybody else."
But even before delivering his oration, Kerry had enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Despite his public misgivings about Vietnam, Kerry was preparing to enter the military soon after commencement.
While Kerry criticized the war and its goals, he was committed in his decision to serve. In contrast to Yale students two or three years later who more frequently tried to avoid the service at all costs, many members of the Class of '66 volunteered, Smith said.
"I was very proud of my decision to go into the Navy and I still am," Kerry said. "But keep in mind, when I joined the Navy, the first draft card hadn't been burned. Vietnam was nebulous. It wasn't yet the war it would become."
By volunteering, students could avoid the draft and enter the officer corps. But for the Class of '66, graduate school deferments were still available. If Kerry had not wanted to serve, he could have entered law school immediately after graduation.

It would appear that his time in the service was calculated in order to use it just as he is doing now.

[My Dog Likes Me]

Hey! I voted for Gov. Weld over Kerry when Weld ran for Kerry's senate seat years ago. I'm just trying to be objective.

For a young Kerry to disagree with the U.S. policy in Vietnam, but STILL join the Navy right out of Yale says something important about his character. Please remember the phrase "My country, right or wrong.." He didn't go to grad school or otherwise run.

As for the Purple Hearts, I recall a line in Lt Col David Hackworth's book "About Face." I don't have it in front of me, but Hack wrote that after he received his third PH, the Army wanted to reassign him. This was apparently DoD policy at the time. Hack managed to avoid reassignment somehow, but it wasn't easy. And he was a field grade officer at the time. A junior officer like Kerry wouldn't really have a choice but to leave, as per policy.

I, like many of you, find it hard to put Kerry in a comfortable HE HATE ME category, like I could Clinton (with his "I loath the military" letter to a ROTC officer).

I simply cannot figure out John Forbes Kerry-Kohn. I do know that he is a war hero. And you can't take that away from him.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It would appear that his time in the service was calculated in order to use it just as he is doing now.

I think you stopped reading that article a little too soon:

Yet for a class that grew up in the wake of World War II and the Korean War, military service seemed a patriotic duty that few of Kerry's classmates questioned despite growing ambivalence concerning the war itself, said his classmate Peter Day '66.

"There was a much larger sense of obligation, that it was your turn just as the generations before had done it," Day said.

So when William Bundy -- assistant secretary of state and uncle of Harvey Bundy -- visited Kerry and his suitemates and said the country needed them to enlist in the officer corps, Kerry listened. "I think that -- it would have been almost five times harder for him not to have gone than to go," Smith said. "The predilection of our class was much more old-school."

We have to treat history with respect. Kerry's problem then was that he was a Kennedy Democrat, and Kennedy and Johnson had transformed Vietnam from a sideshow into a full-blown American commitment of half a million men--an indefinite commitment not to victory but to a draw. Kerry's failure of vision was not in seeing that Vietnam was FUBAR--he was correct in that assessment--but in his elitism.

Kerry's failure of vision was that he could more easily reject the things you and I love about Ronald Reagan than he could entertain the idea that "great" Democrats like Kennedy and Johnson were actually incompetent.

Kerry's failure was Kennedy's failure--they are one and the same. And we always knew that eventually we would have to face down the Kennedy myth once and for all. The tragedy is that George H. Bush was not up for that game; had he been a full-blown Reaganite he would have been a two-term president and would have let the air out of the Kennedy mystique once and for all.