The truth about Kerry, part 2

Like the Energizer Bunny, John Kerry keeps on running for president.

Some of us remember Kerry as responsible, more than any other individual, for the false image of Vietnam veterans as dysfunctional misfits, baby-killers.

When Kerry returned home from three months of combat duty in Vietnam, he joined a radical anti-war group named VVAW – Vietnam Veterans Against the War - and became a leader, organizer and spokesman.

It is fair to point out that many good, decent, patriotic Americans opposed the war in Vietnam, a war begun with a noble purpose but eventually mismanaged. VVAW, however, was a radical leftist group that gave aid and comfort to our enemy.

To serve their own anti-war purpose, Kerry’s group vilified the U.S. troops serving honorably in Vietnam. One VVAW flyer asked the reader to imagine U.S. troops had just passed through their town. “If you had been Vietnamese” American infantrymen might have “shot you ... burned your house ... raped your wife and daughter ... American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are ‘Gooks.’”

In a November 1971 VVAW meeting in Kansas City, this group discussed and voted on a plan to assassinate several pro-war U.S. senators, including John Tower, John Stennis, and Strom Thurmond. Kerry reportedly voted no.

But Kerry’s most famous role came before voting on assassinating U.S. senators. In April 1971 he appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator Fulbright, who was desperately searching for leverage to end the Vietnam war.

Kerry told the Senate Committee some fantastic lies, and his words took the nation by storm:

“... several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. They ... had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam ...“

Kerry went on to tell the committee that the South Vietnamese people didn’t care whether they lived under democracy or Communism, that America was “more guilty than any other body” of violations of Geneva Conventions, and that he was ashamed of his service in Vietnam.

As with all great lies, there is a small kernel of truth.

The truth is there are atrocities in all wars, on all sides. Killing each other is not the hard part in war; the hard part is stopping the killing when it is time to stop shooting but while passions remain hot for retribution. When command discipline breaks down, bad things happen. At the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968, our American soldiers lusted for revenge and, to our everlasting shame, instead of stopping them the commanding officer led them in murdering civilians, including babies.

My Lai notwithstanding, in the Vietnam War involving 3 million U.S. troops over a 10-year period, U.S. war crimes were rare. By contrast, our enemy trained their soldiers to use atrocities and terror as a daily tool in the war, and their atrocities were systematic and institutionalized while ours were isolated incidents.

But what about all those veterans who Kerry says “testified” in Detroit about atrocities in Vietnam?

That event, held at a Howard Johnson hotel, was called “Winter Soldier,” funded by Jane Fonda. Kerry’s Senate hearing testimony was of sufficient concern to senators that they ordered an investigation. Two military investigations were conducted, and several investigative reporters conducted their own independent inquiry.

They found that many of these Winter Soldier participants were impostors who had never been in the military, using the names of real veterans. Others had been in the military but had never been to Vietnam, some had served in Vietnam but never in combat. Even from those few who had actually served in combat in Vietnam, all of these investigations turned up the same result – there was not one credible atrocity story from John Kerry’s event. Not one.

It gets worse. Kerry knew these stories were false when he was testifying because he helped the Winter Soldier participants concoct their false stories. Here is one example.

Steve Pitkin from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., was one of those Winter Soldier participants. He had been a combat infantryman for a brief period in Vietnam before being wounded in the foot and sent home a disillusioned young man. He joined VVAW and he attended Winter Soldier in Detroit.

Kerry and his pals pressured Pitkin to testify to witnessing U.S. atrocities even though Pitkin repeatedly told them he had seen no atrocities. They pressed him harder because he was “one of the few” at the event who had actually been in combat in Vietnam, and so Pitkin caved in. He agreed to lie.

In 2004, 35 years later, Pitkin stood on a stage with the aid of a cane, hands and voice shaking as he spoke into the microphone to a group of over 4,000 Vietnam veterans gathered in Washington, D.C., to oppose John Kerry’s presidential bid.

Pitkin told the crowd that he was sorry, that at Winter Soldier in 1971 John Kerry had personally coached him on the words to use about indiscriminate artillery fire on civilians, burning villages, rape, murder and other atrocities. Pitkin told the crowd he thought he was helping to end the war and so he lied and told stories about atrocities that never happened while John Kerry switched roles and interviewed Pitkin on camera. With tears in his eyes and a wavering voice Pitkin asked his brothers gathered there to forgive him so he could put to rest what had eaten at his soul for all these years.

America was tired of the war in 1971, and the country believed John Kerry’s lies about our own troops. Betraying his brothers with these lies to promote himself didn’t seem to trouble Kerry. But Pitkin knew the damage he had helped Kerry inflict on his brothers, that a generation of fine young men who served their country with honor and courage in a miserable war had their reputation smeared as thanks for their service.

What does this matter after all these years? Why should young voters, to whom the Vietnam war is ancient history, care about events over 30 years ago? I’ll tell you next week in Part 3.