Another crude slur
With a campaign of distortion and lies, the right-wing smear machine is
trying to impugn the military honor of John Kerry.

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By Joe Conason


March 6, 2004 | The contrast between the military careers of George W.
Bush and John Kerry is drawing veterans to the Democratic Party -- and
maddening conservative Republicans who have grown accustomed to
monopolizing the symbolism of flag and country. To tarnish Kerry, the
right has reached back more than 30 years to develop a narrative that
transforms him from hero to traitor, by distorting his antiwar activism
after he returned from Vietnam.

They hope to convince America that by testifying and organizing for
peace, the young Navy lieutenant somehow "dishonored" his fellow sailors
and soldiers.

This effort began quite crudely, with the anonymous distribution of a
faked photo of Kerry with Jane Fonda. But now Kerry critics are focused
on the so-called "Winter Soldier" investigation -- a public event staged
in January 1971 by Kerry and other leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War to expose the brutality and devastation of the Indochina conflict.

The right-wing extremists at Free Republic have set up a new "Winter
Soldier" Web site devoted to that event, highlighting Kerry's subsequent
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about alleged
U.S. war crimes. According to the Freeper theory, he "launched his
political career" by denigrating his comrades in arms, although nobody
who reads his testimony will find much evidence to support that
accusation. (He did run for Congress in 1972 -- and lost in part because
of his VVAW connections.)

Coordinating with the Freeper attack are Texas chicken-hawk Rep. Tom
DeLay, who recently upbraided Kerry for the Winter Soldier episode, and
Gary Aldrich, the former White House FBI agent who fabricated salacious
stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton, who now suspects that Kerry was
"pro-Communistic" and is demanding to see his old FBI files.

Meanwhile, the National Review descended still further, featuring a
weird article by Romania's former Communist spy chief, in which he
insinuates that Kerry, and anyone else who talked about atrocities in
Vietnam, was really an instrument of KGB propaganda. (It is remarkable
to see a "conservative" magazine publish a smear written by a man who
once facilitated the atrocities of the Ceausescu regime.) The essay by
Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected to the West in 1978, is titled "Kerry's
Soviet Rhetoric," and claims that his testimony about the war in 1971
"sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were
sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era."

Had Kerry said or done something stupid at the impressionable age of 25
-- after surviving horrific jungle warfare that had cost the lives of
several close friends -- his furious protests would be forgivable more
than 30 years later. He, too, might have been "young and foolish when he
was young and foolish," as a famous man put it. But in contrast to the
VVAW's radicalized veterans and other elements of the antiwar movement,
Kerry was sober and mature. Some of his own allies openly disdained him
for his moderation. Although he, too, was disillusioned and angry, Kerry
insisted on working "within the system." During that period he spent
much of his energy trying to register young people to vote for antiwar
congressional candidates.

It's also true that he led raucous demonstrations in Washington, and
participated in the "Winter Soldier" hearings. When he appeared before
the Senate three months later, he spoke at length about reported
American atrocities, attributing most of the specific allegations to
veterans who had testified during Winter Soldier. Graphic references to
rape, dismemberment and murder took up less than a paragraph of his
lengthy testimony, but they certainly brought no credit on the U.S.
military. Yet his eloquent words won bipartisan praise from the senators
who listened to him.

Kerry didn't join the antiwar movement to indict his fellow soldiers; he
often spoke with passion about the injustices done to them, both during
the war and when they returned home to inadequate medical care and an
indifferent government. His purpose was to prevent more of them from
being killed, as he said over and over again.

He didn't try to absolve himself when denouncing the indiscriminate
violence of the war. On "Meet the Press," he confessed that he had
participated in "the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other
soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire
zones." But he felt strongly that U.S. military commanders and civilian
policymakers were far more culpable for those atrocities than the men
who obeyed their orders. Appalled by the civilian casualties in the
"free-fire zones" marked out by their commanders, Kerry and other junior
officers had gone to Saigon in January 1969 to complain to their
superior -- and were of course ignored.

The free-fire zones, the use of napalm, the carpet-bombing and the
assassination programs were all aspects of a guerrilla conflict that
could not be prosecuted without killing thousands of civilians. Only by
falsifying history -- and assuming that nobody will remember the truth
-- can Kerry's right-wing critics claim that he somehow misled the
country about what was happening in Vietnam. The smear depends on
historical amnesia.

Last year the suppressed recollections of that disturbing past emerged
again, when investigative journalist Gregory Vistica revealed wartime
secrets long concealed by Bob Kerrey. Although the most incriminating
details remain disputed, the former senator and Congressional Medal of
Honor winner has admitted that he and Navy SEALS under his command
massacred civilians during a nighttime raid on a hamlet called Thanh
Phong in 1969. The ensuing debate over his conduct revived searing
memories of My Lai, the village where hundreds of civilians were raped
and murdered in March 1968 by U.S. soldiers.

In 1971, John Kerry told the Senate that if William Calley and the other
soldiers who committed those atrocities were guilty, then so were the
commanders who had made such crimes inevitable and then covered them up.
"I think if you are going to try Lieutenant Calley then you must at the
same time, if this country is going to demand respect for the law, you
must at the same time try all those other people who have
responsibility, and any aversion that we may have to the verdict as
veterans is not to say that Calley should be freed, not to say that he
is innocent, but to say that you can't just take him alone." Kerry's
critics argue that My Lai was an isolated incident, but at least one
celebrated general doesn't agree.

Secretary of State Colin Powell held a command position in the Army's
Americal Division, which had included Calley's unit, and he was asked to
investigate the earliest allegations about My Lai. He failed to uncover
the massacre and was later accused of facilitating the coverup. Whether
that accusation is fair or not, Powell knows what happened in Vietnam.

"My Lai was an appalling example of much that had gone wrong in
Vietnam," he wrote in his bestselling autobiography, "My American
Journey." "The involvement of so many unprepared officers and noncoms
led to breakdowns in morale, discipline and professional judgment -- and
to horrors like My Lai -- as the troops became numb to what appeared to
be endless and mindless slaughter." For some reason, despite his loyalty
to the president, Powell doesn't seem eager to attack John Kerry.