QandO

August 28, 2004

Never again
Posted by McQ

Teresa Heinz Kerry has broken her silence of weeks to wade into the fray about her husband's VN service and war-protesting. Perhaps she shouldn't have:

"I believe that discussions or attacks on [my husband's] service undermine the peace of mind not only of Vietnam veterans but of those now fighting for their country," she told the Dayton Daily News.

"Let us hope that if they volunteer for service their reviews are not going to be so nefarious in the future," she added.

In a word, Ms. Heinz-Kerry: "Nonsense". If anyone, those fighting in Iraq know exactly what this is about, even if you don't.

What they know is the veterans of the Vietnam era, who were so maligned by your husband, are going to make sure of two things. A) He doesn't get a pass on if as he has for 30+ years and B) that the sorts of lies and exaggerations he told against our military will never again go unanswered or unconfronted. Not if the veterans have anything to say about it.

While this may be painful for you and your husband, try to imagine how painful it was for those who were branded wholesale as murderers, rapists and war-criminals by his false testimony. Imagine having to live silently with the lies your husband told about them for all these years.

Is this detrimental to the morale of the troops in Iraq? Hardly. What would be detrimental to their moral is to have to endure a Commander-in-chief who trashed the institution they hold dear and has worked incessently during his Senate career to cut their funding, weapons systems and size.

Asked Monday about the Swiftvet criticism by the Gannet News Service, Heinz Kerry responded less forcefully, saying, "I honor my husband's work. I honor his past."

"I may be wrong," she added. "But I have to believe that no veteran today, including those who don't plan to vote for my husband, feels very good about these attacks."

In this case you're precisely right. But its like surgery. We may not like it but its something which must be done. This has been a festering wound among veterans for 35 years. But there's never really been a forum to present the tide of resentment which has abided in Vietnam era vets that this particular man seeded with his testimony and activites in 1971.

Until now.

As you saw at the VFW Convention, what your husband did in 1971 has not been forgotten and it certainly hasn't been forgiven. You, like most of the left who were complicit in the lies and the resulting shabby treatment of members of our military at that time, would love to just pretend like it all never happend.

Well it did.

And your husband is in large part responsible for that. This is the first opportunity on a national scale for the veteran community to finally have its say about what he did. The time has come for John Kerry to face up to it and pay the piper.

Is it hurting morale in Iraq? Don't kid yourself. Its most likely building it up ... our troops know that, at least in the veteran community, we'll never let this happen again if we can help it.

UPDATE: Reader Peter distills the essense of the anger felt by Vietnam veterans toward John Kerry with a passionate and articulate rendering of his deepest feelings about what this has awakened and why its important to him and to others like myself:

I cannot speak to any effect that this controversy has on serving Military. I cannot even speak to any Viet Nam Veteran but myself.

This controversy has affected my morale, albiet not in the way Mrs. Heinz-Kerry seems to think. This controversy has made me ashamed of myself.

Make no mistake, my tours in Viet Nam were not the stuff of the glorious fiction of a John Wayne movie, my war had far more to do with lonlieness, homesickness, fear and exhaustion than it had to do with charging enemy pillboxes shooting a flame thrower from the hip. I was simply one of millions doing an ugly job in an ugly place.

I do not apologize for my mundane service, I went where I was sent and did what I was told, to the best of my ability. My shame comes from when I came home to the cacophony of the 'anti-war' movement.

For a little while I tried to defend myself and my comrades, when few would listen I gave up. In my weariness, my desire to fit in, my eagerness to build a civilian life and, yes, my cowardice, I shut up, put my head down and allowed the Haydens, Fondas and Kerrys to define me, and, worse, those who had done more and sacrificed more than me. I sat silent for three and a half decades while the children of men who died over there were taught the same thing that mine were, that the men who fought that war were a bunch of raping, murdering thugs of subhuman intelligence but enough cunning to master the incredibly complex machinery of then-modern war and unleash it, not in defense of freedom but in opposition to it.

As I sat with my family and told them of the absolute integrity, love and honor of so many of the young men I was privileged to stand alongside, the superhuman courage, born out of love, that I had the honor to see, a small voice in my soul was asking 'who is telling this to the children of the dead?' It wasn't me. It should have been me.

Now, after years of my silence, the man who, more than any other single man, put that black cloud over those 58,000 names carved in black granite, is back. Three and a half decades after pissing on every single one of those 58,000 neatly-folded flags he is wrapping himself in them.

I'm angry and ashamed. Angry at myself for allowing this. Angry at him for doing this.

I am not competant to judge the quality of Kerry's service in those boats. I was nowhere near them, my job was elsewhere. I simply don't know enough about the war on the rivers to have an opinion, I defer to those who served on the rivers.

I do know this. John Kerry surrounded himself with 'veterans', many of whom had never spent a day in uniform. Others had never been assigned to Southeast Asia. None of those 'veterans, not a single one, would testify under oath, to all of these 'widespread atrocities'. Even after being offered full immunity they would not testify.

This is what I know. John Kerry slimed the good name of every single one of the millions of good men I had the honor of standing beside. He did it on purpose, knowingly. He did it after running for office as a hero and losing. Discovering that heros weren't selling very well he turned to knavery. Had he spoken only for himself I could forgive him for his lies and myself for my silence.

I am silent no longer. Everywhere my voice is welcome and places where it isn't, I'm speaking out. I should have done this decades ago.

This isn't about George Bush. It's not about me. It's about scrubbing the slime off that black granite wall. It's about the pride and love being, thirty-odd years too late, restored to some 58,000 families.

Please forgive the length, somebody smarter than me could probably say this in a single sentence.

Thank you Peter. I don't think I could have said it better if I had tried.

Thank you for you service ... and welcome home.

TrackBack