[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL Kerry's Testimony LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-kerry26aug26.story

EDITORIAL

Kerry's Testimony

 August 26, 2004

 It turns out that the attack on John Kerry's war record was just Act 1. Now
the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (and, miraculously, all the right-wing
media) have turned to Kerry's antiwar record. After returning from Vietnam,
Kerry became a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a major
force in the antiwar movement. In 1971, he testified before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. This famous testimony launched Kerry's
political career and the talk of him as a future president. Richard Nixon
and Henry Kissinger can be heard fretting about it on the Watergate tapes.

 This at least is a real issue, unlike the manufactured nonsense about his
war medals. Does what Kerry said back in 1971 disqualify him for the
presidency 33 years later?

 There is some ambiguity, or purposeful confusion, about the precise
objection to Kerry's ancient testimony. Is it something in particular that
he said? Or is it the very fact that Kerry opposed the Vietnam War and
worked to end it?

 Many of those who condemn Kerry for opposing the Vietnam War are too young
to have been politically aware during that period. The rest are fighting
very old battles. But the fact is that the argument over Vietnam was settled
long ago, and a majority of Americans decided that Kerry was right.

 Members of the Swift boat group and like-minded Americans are free to try
to re-litigate the basic Vietnam question. They say, from the comfortable
perspective of 2004, that the antiwar movement emboldened the enemy and thus
lengthened the war. That's their premise: We could have won the war by 1971
if not for Kerry and his ilk. Of course, after continuing the war for three
more years, we still didn't win it. So even accepting the dubious premises
of these Hindsight Hawks, blame for the lives lost after Kerry's testimony
goes primarily to the leaders in Washington who kept the war going
needlessly.

 But most Americans came to accept Kerry's view that the war was ill advised
and unwinnable at any reasonable cost. Only when that happened did the war
end, and the antiwar movement made it happen sooner. If that historical
judgment is correct, which we think it clearly is, then Kerry saved the
lives of many more Americans in his antiwar role than he did as a Navy
officer.

 Kerry's testimony in April 1971 was eloquent, persuasive and damning.
Consistent with his cautious instincts, Kerry never joined the extremist
America-haters who hoped for a North Vietnamese victory, but instead he
patiently explained to senators why the war was a disaster.

 Undoubtedly, Kerry was overwrought when he declared that atrocities by
American soldiers were ubiquitous. They weren't. But it is ignorant fantasy
to suppose that the United States emerged from Vietnam unblemished by
horrible misdeeds. What about the free-fire zones and the dumping of more
munitions than during World War II? What about the Phoenix program of mass
assassinations? In his new memoir, retired Gen. Tommy Franks recounts how he
was tempted to kill inhabitants of a Vietnamese village because he feared
they were communist sympathizers. Sometimes, temptation was not resisted.

 But Kerry's anger was not directed at soldiers in the field. On the
contrary, in his testimony, he blamed the Washington establishment. He
lashed out at former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and former
national security advisor McGeorge Bundy: "Where are they now that we, the
men whom they sent off to war, have returned?" Kerry asked. "These are
commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious
crime in the law of war."

 None of what Kerry said was particularly novel or shocking. But his status
as a decorated sailor sent the Nixon administration into overdrive to depict
him as providing aid and comfort to the enemy, just as his current
detractors seek to depict him as a traitor unfit to lead the war against
terror.

 The late 1960s were a moral obstacle course for young Americans, especially
young men. Kerry is one of the few who got it right. He served, and served
bravely as even President Bush now concedes. Then he came back home and
worked to stop the killing and the dying.

 George W. Bush, by the way, dodged the second part too.


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