Kerry On Vietnam (in my head)

In light of the post below on Adeimantus’ excellent comments on the ‘Vietnam Truce,’ I thought I’d (belatedly) post my idea of a Kerry speech that would start to tie his career and divergent positions on Vietnam together. Personally, I’d have felt much better about his candidacy if he’d made a speech like this at the Convention or shortly thereafter.

It may not be too late.

Almost thirty years ago, I was a college student, and I spoke against the war in Vietnam. I wasn’t alone at that time; while standing against the war was not as common in 1966 as it was in 1972, it certainly wasn’t a position that was strange for someone to take.

I took that position after much thought – I do that, think about my decisions – some people seem to think that’s strange – and I took it for a few simple reasons. First, because like all sane people, I abhorred war. I grew up in the aftermath of World War II, and saw the destruction done to cities and people. I believed then, as I believe now, that we need to make war when we must, not when we can.

I thought we could have easily avoided the war in Vietnam by supporting the legitimate national aspirations of the Vietnamese people against the colonial power – the French – that ruled them.

I thought that we were sending the wrong message to the world by supporting dictators and by using our might to oppose a relatively weak and poor enemy. I believed then, as I believe now, that we have been given our power and wealth to help the weak and poor, not to kill them.

When I graduated college, like other young men of that era, I was feeling a draft. I wavered – I certainly wasn’t excited about fighting in a war that I did not believe in – but I also knew that I owed a duty to my country and to those who had fought for the freedom I enjoyed.

Duty won, as it often has in my life, and I enlisted.

Whatever I have done in my life, I’ve tried to do well. When I enlisted, I made a conscious decision that if I was to wear the uniform of the United States Navy, I would be the best sailor that I could possibly be.

And when I was given a command, I decided I was going to be the best leader I could be. I would execute my missions, protect and lead my men, and put my life on the line in service to the country that had given me so much.

I did my best to do so.

But it was difficult. Not only because the work was hard and dangerous, which it was and which I freely accepted when I put on the uniform for the first time.

It was difficult because what I had believed about the war as a college student was confirmed in front of my eyes every day by me and my men and the men who served with us. We used the machinery and power of a mighty state to kill people who – dangerous as they were to us as individuals – were no threat to us as a state, and whose desire was simply that we leave them alone and let them have their own country.

I talked to Vietnamese men, women, and children while I was there. Members of their armed services who rode on my boat, women and children in the cities where we were based. They hated the Communists, but knew that the Communists had only been able to take power when the French refused to leave. I began to regret every morning, every new mission, every bullet that we fired.

Today, looking at what tragedy followed out withdrawal, I am filled with a different regret. I wonder if I was right. I know that there must have been a better way.

The regret then became a moral struggle within me that I felt began to weaken my ability to perform as an officer, and would – I believed – either destroy me as a person or cause me to fail in my duties and endanger my men.

I took the option open to me because of my wounds, and asked – as many others did – to leave the theater of battle. I no longer had that moral certainty I had entered the Navy with, and as I struggled, the decision to simply leave certainly seemed like the right one to make.

When I came home, I began to talk to other veterans who felt as I did, and who questioned what we had done and what was being done by our fellows in our name. The more we talked, the more certain I became that the war was wrong, and that we needed to work hard to stop it.

I did so, in every way open to me.

In doing that, I said and did some things that were immature, exaggerated, and hurtful. I don’t know today if the moral value of any help I may have been in ending the war outweighs the personal hurt that I visited on my fellow veterans. I hope it does, and I offer my hand in apology to those whose wounds I deepened.

Today, I still believe that we have to balance duty and morality – a service to a higher honor, and that the hardest thing we can do looking forward is to strike that balance as best we can.

History and my Church both teach that we are imperfect. I know that in my own life, I have tried to balance the conflicts as best I can, and while I know that I could have done better then if I knew what I know now, that I did the best I could and I have never hung my head because I did not try.

The scar of Vietnam is deep within the memories of this country and the lives of the Vietnamese even today.

I cannot dissolve that scar and make it as though there was never a wound. But I can stand before you, imperfect and human, as we all are and offer my own life and service and my continued service to lessening the pain of the past and improving our vision of the future.

No one who stands behind the podium that I am behind today is free of ambition. But please know that the ambition I have is not for myself – I have already been far more successful than I ever dreamed as a child – but for the future we can make together, a future where wounds are healed by hope.

22 thoughts on “Kerry On Vietnam (in my head)”

  1. A.L.,

    There are still a few paragraphs which read pretty soft IMHO. Here’s a patch which would move things over to the right a foot or two and pick up at least some of the Reagan Democrats and other centrists. And if this movement cost part of the base, then, wow, what would that tell you?

    It was difficult because what I had believed about the war as a college student was confirmed in front of my eyes every day by me and my men and the men who served with us. We used the machinery and power of a mighty state to kill people – people who were trying to kill me and my fellow soldiers, mind you – and yet I could not understand how they posed a danger to us as a state. I believed that their desire was simply that we leave them alone and let them have their own country.

    I talked to Vietnamese men, women, and children while I was there. Members of their armed services who rode on my boat, women and children in the cities where we were based. They hated the Communists, but knew that the Communists had only been able to take power when the French refused to leave. I began to regret every morning, every new mission, every bullet that we fired.

    Today, I am filled with a different regret, that my beliefs, my understanding, was incomplete. The threat that Communism posed to the free world and our way of life became clearer to me during my life in public service. The reasons behind the hatred of Communism shown by the South Vietnamese I knew became horribly evident from the tragedy which followed our withdrawal. In the end we did leave them alone, and the Vietnamese did gain their country, but millions of southeast Asians lost their lives to Communism. I know that there must have been a better way.

    The last paragraph here should probably be moved toward the end, anyway, as the flow of the speech moves up to the present day.

  2. Actually, I think it is too late: Even if Kerry was to say something like that out of sincere belief, I suspect most everyone would think it was more posturing.

    And that’s the best case.

    It’s far more likely that Kerry would make such a speech out of political expediency and opportunism; another flip-flop when the going gets tough; a cry of Aidez-moi! Arrêtez-le! La douleur! after his opponents, in response to to his “Bring. It. On.” challenge, brought it on.

    It’d seem as obviously make-believe, fool-the-rubes as the dem convention, where the D delegates cheered Kerry’s feel-good Vietnam stories.

  3. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Our political climate has been poisoned to the point where changing one’s mind is a career-killer, even if it’s your mom filming you in first grade saying 2+2=5. But we can dream, can’t we?

    As Example A, does the following bother anyone besides me?

    “Text to display”:http://oraculations.blogspot.com/2004/08/what-do-we-know-about-kerry-1.html

    Just what our military needs, accusations from the right that it’s a total screw-up. And the left is attacking them on Abu Ghraib. And soldiers living now in dust and blood can’t figure out why we have such a distorted view of what’s happening over there.

    So now every time the phrase “war hero” is used, it will have to be prefaced with “allegedly,” because, after all, who knows? Whenever I see a decorated soldier, there will be a little voice whispering in my ear, “I wonder if he really deserved those?”

    Now, a chestful of medals and a couple of missing limbs will only get you a derisive sniff, a request for multiple affidavits from everyone within 200 miles at the time, and (if you’re lucky), a grudging “OK, maybe you’re legit.” Is that really what the SBVT wanted?

    I understand why some bloggers pounced on this like tigers on raw meat (and Kerry did essentially say “Bring it on” at the convention). Perhaps it needed to be said. Perhaps. But I think between pique and egos, it’s gotten out of hand. It’s a distraction from things that really matter.

    How I wish they had focused half their attention & ire on something that can help the soldiers who are actually fighting today. Something about the war we’re in *now*, not the one that ended before half of us were born.

    The blogosphere has such potential, and has proved that it can leave the mainstream media light-years behind. What a shame they chose this for their maiden voyage. Of course, there’s the consolation of knowing you “got” the New York Times (nyah-nyah-nyah). Mucho productive, folks.

    Will these billions of bytes up-armor a Humvee, or buy another suit of body armor? Will it fix a sabotaged pipeline, or send Sadr to his grave any faster?

    Thanks, warbloggers. An “A” for effort and execution. An “F” for practicality.

  4. Tina,
    I agree that there is no way this speech would work, but I put the blame on the left not the right. Also, if you think this was brought on by war bloggers, you are (to not put too fine a point on it ) nuts. The Swifties would have gone after Kerry as soon as he reached for a higher position than senator from Massachusetts. What surprises me is that the POW/MIA groups haven’t been after him longer, but maybe they realised that finally they had something they could punish him with. As to your screed about rightist attacks on the military, I don’t think so. Most of us realise that Benedict Arnold was a great American here before he fell from grace. But he had more excuse than Kerry did.

  5. That speech would work a lot better if it had a few paragraphs like this:

          “When I came home, I began to talk to other veterans who felt as I did, and who questioned what we had done and what was being done by our fellows in our name.  Unfortunately, I also talked with a lot of people, some demented and some evil, who lied endlessly about Vietnam.  They claimed to be decorated combat veterans, to have witnessed and participated in atrocities that never happened, and many of them had never even been in the armed forces at all, while others hadn’t been Vietnam.  They told stories of horrific atrocities routinely committed by U.S. troops, stories that were utterly false, spread for the sole purpose of advancing the Communist cause.

          “Those stories worked.  They led Americans to not only demand that we withdraw from Vietnam, but that we abandon South Vietnam and Cambodia to the non-existent mercies of the Communist dictators in the North.  The deaths of millions was the result.

          To my eternal shame, I repeated those lies.  I thought the stories were true, I thought the war was wrong, and that we needed to work hard to stop it.  But in trying to do what I thought was right, I carelessly spread lies that helped caused untold suffering to the Asian country I was trying to help.  I would like to apologize for that.

          “I also helped caused deep distress to hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans whose service was as honorable as mine.  Tonite, I wish to take the opportunity to apologize, to tell those brave servicemen and women that I would do anything to take back those words.  I have no excuse.  I was wrong to say those things, and I should have known it at the time.

          “Today, looking at what tragedy followed out withdrawal, I realize that our withdrawal was not the answer.  I know that there must have been a better way.  I can only say, my fellow Americans, that if you choose me as your President, I will try not to make those mistakes again.

          “We are at war today, right now, as I speak these words.  This time, we aren’t opposing people fighting for the independence of their country.  We are fighting murderers who indiscriminately slay anyone they can reach, who have already murdered thousands of us.  I pledge that as President, I will, as Commander in Chief of today’s brave service people, take the war to the enemy, and never relent till we achieve victory.”

    But alas, there’s no chance he’ll make any such speech.  Because this isn’t what he thinks.

  6. Was going to suggest a couple modifications… Stephen’s additions would be ideal – but like Stephen, I see no chance of Kerry saying that. Because he doesn’t believe it.

    Lewy14’s additions would also work better, as a softer version. Again, if Kerry believed it.

  7. There’s nothing in A.L.’s ghost-written speech or in any of the follow-on suggestions that Kerry couldn’t have used in his races for Congressman, Lt. Governor, or Senator. Or that he couldn’t have said in any of the innumberable interviews he’s given, from the 1971 Dick Cavett Show appearance on. Or that he couldn’t have had placed in one of his recent biographies.

    Of course, the full measure of the bitterness felt by many veterans wasn’t an urgent issue for Kerry’s political health until this summer.

    Don’t say what you don’t believe if you don’t have to” is a simple explanation for this aspect of Kerry’s behavior. Were he to make such a mea culpa speech now, it would be pounced on as an example of “Say what you don’t believe if you do have to.” Justifiably, in my opinion.

    Another one of the brilliant and nuanced John F. Kerry’s self-inflicted injuries. Whatever his true beliefs may be.

  8. Like if John Kerry “apologized” for hurting some Veterans feelings with his youthful comments 30 years ago, Republicans or NeoCons would feel any different about him.

    Joe: “I see no chance of Kerry saying that. Because he doesn’t believe it.

    And, to paraphrase a comment from Joe to me a while ago, “And there you have it.” Joe has convinced himself he already knows what Kerry thinks, so why bother listening to what he says? In light of this, is there any reason to debate this or any other issue with him any longer, on any topic relating to Bush vs. Kerry?

    Hey, we know what the strategy is now, guys: Tear Kerry a New One; Bush is way ahead in the A-hole count.

  9. VT,

    I think that talking about Kerry “hurting some Veterans feelings with his youthful comments” is unhelpful.

    It wasn’t “youthful comments”, and the veterans aren’t upset because he “hurt their feelings”.

  10. You could also insert:

    “I have been a pawn for propagandists of totalitarian regimes since my work with the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris. This gave meaning to my young life and I grasped it like a drowning man grasps a life preserver.”

    “If elected president, I will work together with the mullahs of Iran, with the dictator of Sudan, with Kim Jong Il of North Korea, with Fidel Castro of Cuba, and with any other totalitarian dictator I find, in hopes of re-capturing that youthful feeling of relevance that is still seared in my memory.

    I say with all humility, thank you for your support.”

  11. What, has everyone decided that the Vietnam War was a good idea?

    Except Robert McNamara, who thought it was then and now thinks it wasn’t, that is. He gave the figure of 3 million Vietnamese killed.

  12. When a U.S. Senator has served twenty years and produced virtually nothing in the way of legislation, how can he run on his record? He thus chose to pin his hopes on convincing voters that he is better qualified to be Commander-in- Chief than has been President Bush…. As a retired USAF officer, I resent the treasonable actions he took while still an officer in the USN Reserve. I am sure I am not alone in my feelings.

  13. Clyde;

    Lighten up. Kerry has “very good”:http://blog.johnkerry.com/rapidresponse/archives/002284.html record in the Senate, if you care to look past the Republican spin.

    Just for comparison, here’s Cheney’s record over 11 years:

    97th Congress: 4 Sponsored: 0 became Law
    98th Congress: 8 Sponsored: 0 became Law
    99th Congress: 7 Sponsored: 1 became Law (H.R.1246 : A bill to establish a federally declared floodway for theColorado River below Davis Dam.)
    100th Congress: 7 Sponsored: 1 became Law (H.R.712 : A bill for the relief of Lawrence K. Lunt.)
    101st Congress: 1 Sponsored: 0 became Law

    That’s two, count ’em, TWO, bills passed. I guess, by your measure, he is also unfit for higher office.

    Not to mention Bush, who’s major accomplishment prior to being POTUS was trading Sammy Sosa to the Cubs…

  14. Clyde,

    You see this comment a lot, but it doesn’t square with the facts. Here’s a link to a prevent comment of mine on competence:

    Link here

    As you can see, he actually has quite a lot of accomplishments.

  15. VT,

    Don’t you have anything better to do than to cut-and-paste the DNC talking points?

    Believe it or not, but there’s a difference between representatives and senators. If they’re in the majority or the majority matters (especially in the House). If they serve 10 or 20 years matters. Likewise, things like committee assignments, expertise and personality matters.

    What’s next, a cut-and-paste about Bush’s 7 minutes with My Pet Goat, his “vacations”, or whatever the Michael Moore-influenced D talking point is today?

  16. I don’t know what to think!
    Wait, here are the DNC talking points.
    Wheeewww! Now I know exactly what to think and say. What a relief!
    Open.
    Insert talking points.
    Talk, talk, talk.

  17. Response to Sensings challenge, funny I think it is better here:

    Kerry has a better chance to be a “Uniter not a Divider”

    He has to admit mistakes, which Bush would not do in response to Disk Clarke.

    He has to not respond to criticism by trying to sue, or otherwise quash criticism. (This by the way is a big adbvantage for Bush}

    Fellow Senators and politicians DON’T hate Kerry. (This is a big plus.)

    Kerry knows the gravity of the situation in the “War on Terror”. Really. He knows.

    He is financially independent (except for his wife). Beholden to no one.

    Jettison the Michael Moore and the DNC.
    Cop to mistakes on Post-Vietnam.
    Pump up the “Uniter, not Divider”.

    I’ll vote for Bush anyway, but these are some suggestions.

  18. Richard Clarke, like Sandy Berger and Joe Wilson were the ones lying. Bush knows he makes mistakes, but because the MSM is so biased, he can’t be honest with the people.

    The left has been nailed in more whoppers lately than I can count. John Kerry lied about his service in Vietnam and then about the service of the men he left behind.

    If George Bush was in Kerry’s shoes, the media would be chewing him up right now, instead of protecting him as they are Kerry.

  19. DaveC,

    A better start would be a complete blood transfusion and a change of batteries. God, I miss Gore’s charisma.

  20. Dems know that their own “moral superiority” is based on PC Leftism. And that Kerry’s Lies are part of the foundation of PC.

    It’s not a “culture war” — it’s a war over moral superiority.

    http://tomgrey.motime.com/1093544824#329796
    The 3 big issues the Kerry Lie brings up:

    1) Kerry’s Lies means Kerry is unfit to be commander in chief; he will be sunk by the Swifties.

    2) The press has been enabling Kerry for years, covering up his lies. The PC press beliefs and their censorship of discussion, and cover up of the facts, has been and continues trying to enable Kerry’s Lie.

    3) Kerry’s Lie helped create Political Correctness; “ending the Vietnam war, now” as the morally superior position. PC is built on Kerry Lie sand, and it is now developing cracks.

    What is worth fighting for, what is worth fighting against? The evil commies deserved to be fought against; Saddam deserved to be fought against. Kerry’s Lie is a loser in the Moral Superiority War.

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