[Mb-civic] Patriotism is truth, today as in Vietnam - John F. Kerry - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Patriotism is truth, today as in Vietnam

By John F. Kerry  |  April 22, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, I testified before the United States 
Senate. I was a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran who believed the war had to 
come to an end.

It was 1971.

Three years earlier, Richard Nixon had been elected president with a 
secret plan for peace -- a plan he kept secret from the American people 
as young Americans continued to die for a mission high-ranking officials 
of two administrations had decided was unwinnable.

We would watch the Nixon administration lie, break the law, and work 
overtime to squash dissent -- all the while claiming absurdly they were 
prolonging war to protect our troops as they withdrew. We were a country 
deeply divided. World War II fathers split with Vietnam generation sons 
over a war that was tearing us apart -- and split, particularly, over 
our responsibilities during a time of war.

Many people did not understand or agree with my act of public dissent. 
To them, supporting the troops meant continuing to support the war, or 
at least keeping my mouth shut.

But I couldn't remain silent. I felt compelled to speak out about what 
was happening in Vietnam, where the children of America were pulled from 
front porches and living rooms and plunged almost overnight into a world 
of sniper fire, ambushes, rockets, booby traps, body bags, explosions, 
sleeplessness, and the confusion created by an enemy who was sometimes 
invisible and firing at us, and sometimes right next to us and smiling. 
It was clear that thousands of Americans were losing their lives in 
Vietnam while politicians in Washington schemed to save their political 
reputations.

Thirty-five years later, in another war gone off course, I see history 
repeating itself. It is both a right and an obligation for Americans 
today to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong, 
and a course in Iraq that weakens the nation. Again, we must refuse to 
sit quietly and watch our troops sacrificed for a policy that isn't 
working while Americans who dissent and ask tough questions are branded 
unpatriotic.

Just as it was in 1971, it is again right to make clear that the best 
way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their 
lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves the American people and 
our principles.

True patriots must defend the right of dissent and listen to the 
dissenters. Dissenters are not always right, but it is always a warning 
sign when they are accused of unpatriotic sentiments by politicians 
trying to avoid accountability or debate on their own policies. We 
should know by now that those who are right should never fear scrutiny 
of their policy and thorough debate.

In World War I, America's values were degraded, not defended, when 
dissenters were jailed and the teaching of German was banned in some 
public schools. It was panic and prejudice, not true patriotism, that 
brought the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II, a 
measure upheld by Supreme Court justices who did not uphold their oaths 
to defend the Constitution. We are stronger today because no less a 
rock-ribbed conservative than Robert Taft stood up at the height of 
World War II and asserted, ''The maintenance of the right of criticism 
in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more 
good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might 
otherwise occur."

In recent weeks, a number of retired high-ranking military leaders have 
publicly called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld. And from the ranks of this administration and its conservative 
surrogates, we've heard these calls dismissed as acts of disloyalty or 
as a threat to civilian control of the armed forces. We have even heard 
accusations that this dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy. That 
line of attack is shameful, especially coming from those who have never 
worn the uniform.

Generals and others who call for recognizing the facts on the ground in 
Iraq are not defeatists, they are patriots. At a time when mistake after 
mistake is being compounded by the very civilian leadership in the 
Pentagon that ignored expert military advice in the invasion and 
occupation of Iraq, those who understand the price being paid for each 
mistake by our troops, our country, and Iraq itself must be heard. At a 
time when our nation is imprisoned in a failed policy and we are being 
told once again that admitting the mistakes, not the mistakes 
themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda 
victory, that we literally have no choice but to stay the course even to 
a bitter end, those who seek to reclaim America's true sovereignty and 
freedom of action must be respected.

Iraq is not Vietnam, and the war on terrorism is not the Cold War. But 
the threat of jihadist extremism is another ''long, twilight struggle," 
as President Kennedy said in his inaugural, and the threat is very real, 
but we will never defeat terrorists by trampling our own freedom and 
democracy. The Swift Boat-style attacks that have been aimed at 
dissenters from Gold Star mothers to decorated veterans like Jack Murtha 
hurt our democracy even more than they wound their target.

I still believe as strongly as I did 35 years ago that the most 
important way to support our troops is to tell the truth. Patriotism 
does not belong to those who defend a president's position -- it belongs 
to those who defend our country, in battle and in dissent. That is a 
lesson of Vietnam worth remembering today.

John F. Kerry is speaking at Faneuil Hall today on the 35th anniversary 
of his Senate testimony on the Vietnam War.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/22/patriotism_is_truth_today_as_in_vietnam/
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