Kerry vs. Vietnam vets

The campaign season is still young, yet we already have a strong contender for what might be the most dishonest paragraph of this election year. It was spoken by Sen. John Kerry, by way of explaining how a candidate wrapping himself in Vietnam veterans made his public reputation by accusing them of war crimes.

In his famed 1971 anti-war congressional testimony, Kerry cited the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation, which gathered falsified testimonials of atrocities committed by American soldiers. Kerry regurgitated stories of rapes, beheadings, torture and pillaging ("in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan") as part of his indictment against the Vietnam War. So it is odd that Kerry would celebrate the "band of brothers" he now says are fighting on behalf of his candidacy the way they once fought for their country. Does that mean they will behead Howard Dean and pillage the John Edwards campaign headquarters?

Asked about the testimony the other day by Knight Ridder, Kerry said he relied on the Winter Soldier Investigation "because some of it was highly documented and very disturbing. I did in my heart what I thought was correct to help people understand what was going on. I've always honored the service of people over there. I never insinuated that everybody fell into one pot. I was looking forward to telling the truth about some of the things that were happening."

This is a statement shot through with mendacity. Let's take it sentence by sentence: 1) The Winter Soldier testimony was not "highly documented," but -- as Mack Owens of the Naval War College has reported -- totally unsubstantiated. The fantastic stories of atrocities should have been unbelievable to any Vietnam vet. 2) Kerry didn't "help people understand what was going on," but rather helped publicize lies. 3) Kerry didn't "honor" the service of vets, but said, "We are ashamed of ... what we are called on to do in Southeast Asia," and maintained that in the vets, America "has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence." 4) Kerry did insinuate that the atrocities were widespread, noting that they were "not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." These crimes tainted the nation -- "the crimes threaten [the country], not Reds," as "America lose[s] her sense of morality." 5) If Kerry wanted to tell the truth, he shouldn't have traded in falsehoods.

Dishonesty must be official policy at the Kerry campaign when it comes to his anti-Vietnam record. A Kerry spokeswoman has said that, back then, "he praised the noble service of his fellow servicemen and -women." Yeah, right. Are we to believe that Kerry thought they were "noble" beheadings? "Noble" acts of torture? Kerry was indeed an advocate for better veteran health care. But this was partly because he considered vets shattered wrecks destroyed by the immorality of their actions. He explained high alleged suicide figures among vets by the fact that "they have to face what they did in Vietnam." (Vietnam vets actually have the same suicide rates as the general population.)

Kerry wasn't just wrong about the vets, he was wrong about the big picture, too. He called Vietnam a "mystical war against communism." Given the massive aid to the North Vietnamese from the Soviets and Chinese, it was clearly a very real war against communism. "We cannot fight communism all over the world," Kerry declared. But in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan fought communism in hot spots all over the globe and won the Cold War.

Kerry will never reverse his opposition to the Vietnam War, but he should at least disavow his smear of Vietnam vets. He owes his "band of brothers" an apology, unless he still thinks they are a criminal gang. In which case, he should start looking for moral support from less compromised quarters.

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Kerry versus Bush: Who Really Went AWOL?

In their race to find anyone electable enough to replace President Bush, Democrats have latched on to military service as a linchpin to challenge Bush in the current war-on-terror environment. Military service presents an appealing formula: How can a man with military service and combat medals be bad on national security? Hence the curiosity candidate General Clark, who stated as one of his qualifications to the anti-Iraq-war base of the Democrat party, "I won a war." And hence John Kerry, who used his Vietnam war record to show credibility in national security and become the Democratic nomination front-runner.

Yet behind Senator Kerry's stump-speech bragging lies an ugly reality: Kerry has often used his 4 months in Vietnam as a prop in his 35 years in politics to tear down our military and national security, not build it up.

First, consider Kerry's Vietnam service more closely: Kerry served four months in the Navy in Vietnam as a Swift boat Commanding Officer, seeing enough action in that short time to be wounded three times and receive several medals. Four days after receiving his third wound, Kerry initiated a request to leave Vietnam. The approval was granted because of an administrative rule that permitted thrice-wounded personnel to request reassignment. Yet, all three wounds were minor wounds that did not require him to leave his command. It was Kerry's choice to get out and he did as soon as he could. After further stateside service, Kerry was also given an early discharge to run for Congress.

And what did Kerry do with that military service?

In 1971, John Kerry became a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War protest group. Kerry testified to Congress that American soldiers in Vietnam had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam." Kerry testified, "We all did it." He said his claims were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

The awful allegations of fellow veterans being war criminals were based on trumped up stories. B.G. Burkett points out in his book "Stolen Valor" that Kerry used phony veterans to testify to atrocities they could not possibly have committed. Kerry had engaged in defamation and slander against the military in order to further the anti-war cause.

Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House as a formidable anti-war opponent, because Kerry's war record as a Navy Lieutenant would insulate him from charges of being unpatriotic. Yet the group that Kerry helped lead, VVAW (Vietnam Vets Against the War), was quite radical. In protests, members mocked the uniform of United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues marked with pro-communist graffiti. They also marched under the flag of the Communist Viet Cong. The group, including Kerry, advocated the "People's Peace Treaty," a supposed "people's" declaration to end the war that was reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It proposed peace on the terms of the Viet Cong and the Communist Hanoi regime. Kerry publicly supported Hanoi's position to use our POWs as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a peace agreement.

Kerry's war service was a stage prop to garner attention to his anti-war activism, and it was a useful shield to deflect criticism of how damaging his words and actions were to those who served in the military. Kerry even suborned his own medals as literal props for political theater when he threw what appeared to be his medals over a fence in front of the Capitol building in protest, on camera. Yet years later his medals turned up displayed on his office wall when medals became something to be proud of again.

Through the years, Kerry has consistently helped the Communist Vietnamese regime. He worked on the POW/MIA issue, mainly trying to discredit the POW/MIA advocates' views and burying evidence that some men were reportedly left behind. He advocated normalization with Vietnam. He prevented the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, which signalled to Hanoi that Congress cared little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died. He voted to end the trade embargo against Vietnam. The rewards for service to Vietnam have flowed back too. Soon after Kerry in 1992 suggested 'rewarding' Vietnam for cooperation on the MIA issue, Vietnam granted Colliers International, a company headed by Kerry's cousin C. Stewart Forbes, a valuable contract as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam and giving it a hand in its infrastructure development.

Not everyone appreciated Kerry's performance on behalf of the Hanoi Government. Ted Sampley, in US Veteran dispatch in 1996, said: "No one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry."

Over the years, the politician John Kerry has followed the path laid out by his early anti-war activism. Senator Kerry today has echoes of anti-war protester Kerry then.

In the South Carolina debate on January 29, when asked whether President Bush has overstated the threat of terrorism, Kerry said, "I think there has been an exaggeration." This comment seemed extreme even to Howard Dean. In his 1971 Congressional testimony, Kerry made a similar claim: "I think we are reacting under cold-war precepts which are no longer applicable. ... I think it [the Communist threat] is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands. " Kerry's view has shades of Jimmy Carter's 1977 claim of the 'inordinate fear of Communism,' which Carter declared a few years before he was shocked by the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

Will Senator Kerry, who didn't consider Communism a threat in the 1970s, be too lax about the terrorist threat now? Senator Kerry's repeated pattern suggests so:

- Kerry voted against the first Gulf War in 1991. Without that successful war, Saddam Hussein would have remained in Kuwait; we would not have found out how close he was to nuclear weapons and stopped that program. It may well have led to Saddam's Iraqi regime as a nuclear power and effectively controlling the world's oil supply.

- During the latter Cold War period in the 1980s, Kerry opposed the entire strategic modernization effort proposed by President Reagan: the Peacekeeper, B-1 and B-2 bombers, the Trident submarine and D-5 missile, opposed the non-strategic modernization of the defense budget as well, and the deployment of the INF missiles in Europe. Instead, Kerry supported the nuclear freeze, the 1980s cause-of-the-moment for the unilateral disarmament left. Yet Reagan's aggressive approach to the Soviet Union forced the Soviet leaders to reform economically in order to compete with the U.S. Realizing their dilemma, the Soviet Union loosened shackles on its people, only to find it unleashed a political process that by 1989 led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and later the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. Had Kerry's viewpoint triumphed over Reagan's actions and Reagan's demand to Gorbachev to "tear down that wall", the Berlin Wall likely would have remained and the Cold War might not have been won.

- Kerry has consistently sought to downsize the military, the intelligence budgets and our national security procurement. For example, in 1995, Senator Kerry voted to freeze defense spending for seven years, cutting over $34 billion from the defense budget.

- Senator Kerry has has been a marvel at shaving his views on Iraq to catch up to the views of Democratic primary voters. Kerry voted yes on the original war authorization but then voted no on support for funding for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. In other words, Kerry voted against finishing what he voted to start. And his latter vote was for the worst of reasons: To get better anti-Iraq-war 'credibility' against primary opponent Howard Dean. Yet Kerry has damaged his credibility by describing his vote in October 2002 for military action in Iraq as something that supported only diplomatic efforts and threats of war - as if threats can be credible without being carried out when demands are not met.

Kerry defended himself on his October 2002 vote to Rolling Stone magazine by claiming he had no idea that Bush would "(expletive deleted) it up so badly". How badly was that? A war with over 30 allies on board (just not the French), a war that deposed Saddam's Iraqi regime in 3 short weeks, and an occupation that has rebuilt a country despite remnant terrorist fighters. There is much to worry about in Iraq, but there is hope as well so long as the U.S. stays the course. The challenge will be to make the new Iraq a self-sustaining and stable democratic state. To do so, we must avoid the kind of 'cut-and-run' approach that ultimately left South Vietnam prey to the Communist North Vietnamese Army. But Kerry, in bobbing and weaving on Iraq, shows exactly the dangerously vacillating temperament that could cause us to defeat ourselves through lack of determination to win. In contrast, President Bush has re-iterated the constant theme that we will be there until the job is done.

Given Kerry's record of weakness on defense issues, it is not surprising that his campaign reaches back to combat experience 35 years ago to give him national security credentials. The contrast with Bush's military service, which lacked combat experience, is a talking point Kerry has used often on the stump. Bush served in the National Guard as a homeland-based jet pilot and got an honorable discharge in 1973 after 5 years of service. Flying jets over Texas doesn't stack up against skippering a boat on the Mekong if you are comparing war stories, but that doesn't make Bush's military service any less than honorable. As for the phony "AWOL" story about Bush, it is refuted by Bush's honorable discharge in 1973 - Bush collected the service credits he needed to fulfill his service requirements.

For both Kerry and Bush, however, it's not the service of their youth but their recent actions as public leaders that truly marks their calibre as President.

As President, George Bush has been leading as commander-in-chief these past 3 years, and it's that role which is critical for evaluation. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush has had to make many tough choices to fight the war-on-terror and act aggressively against threats. Out of necessity not choice, Bush has been a war-time President. Under Bush's leadership, with willing allies, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, successfully deposed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein dictatorships, and set those countries on the path to democracy. Our victory in Afghanistan has helped us cripple Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization. Our victory in Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein enabled us to roll up the international ring of nuclear weapons technology trade among rogue nations, and opened up Libya, Iran and North Korea to weapons inspectors. How do we know this? After Qadhafi's Libya came clean on their WMD programs, including their nuclear weapons program, Qadhafi said in interviews in December that: "I will do whatever the Americans want because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid".

Whether all Bush's decisions in the war on terror have been correct or not is a worthy question in a Presidential contest, but it is clear that Bush has led. He's made tough calls and let our military professionals execute on our key goals, and he doesn't need to show off medals he once claimed to throw away to prove this leadership. It's the leadership, constancy of purpose, ideals and solid strategy that determines who is the best steward of our national security as President, not necessarily whether one manages to avoid mistakes.

During their primary campaign, some Democrats have acted in a non-serious way to the serious issue of national security. Wild and unfounded allegations against Bush have been tossed around, e.g., the phony "AWOL" claim, the egregious Michael Moore (noted non-veteran) claim that Bush was a "deserter", etc. So when we read about the attempt by Democrats to bring up the "AWOL" story about Bush, we need to ask a few questions to clarify what the real deal is with Kerry:
- Does Kerry think Vietnam military service was a shameful military exercise or something to be proud of? If he is proud of his service, how does he now feel about his anti-war activism?
- Does Kerry regret his defamations against the military in 1971 and does he apologize for it? Or does he still stand by his characterization of the US military in Vietnam as engaged in "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command"?
- Does Kerry claim that his service of 4 months in Vietnam means he will protect our nation better? What should we make of Kerry's 35 years in politics tearing at our national security institutions, defaming our military, voting against military budgets, and being wobbly on matters of defense and security?
- Does Kerry believe invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was a mistake? If he was President, would Kerry have let Saddam stay in power, given what we know now? For how long? For how long would sanctions last?

We also need to ask this, given Senator Kerry's long record of questionable views on national security, defense, intelligence, and his nonchalant view that terrorist threats are exaggerated: Who really is the one who went AWOL?

Ted Sampley has his own answer to that: "I have personally dealt with John Kerry on the issue of US POWs left behind in Vietnam. Kerry is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of US veterans. Many Vietnam vets have been duped into thinking Kerry is their friend. He is not. To us, he is 'Hanoi John'."

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