Kerry vs. O'Neill in '71

Politics and religion
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Amusing transcript:

O’Neill comes off as a collassal ass, predictably.

MR. O’NEILL: Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on the war weariness and fears of the American people.

This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command,’’ who was quoted in a prominent news magazine in May as saying, "War crimes in Vietnam are the rule and not the exception.’’ Never in the course of human events have so many been libeled by so few.

MR. KERRY: I don’t think that any man comes back to this country to say that he raped or to say that he burned a village or to say that he wantonly destroyed crops or something for pleasure.

I think he does it at the risk of certain kinds of punishment, at the risks of injuring his own character, which he has to live with, at the risks of the loss of his family and friends as a result of it, and he does it because he believes intensely that people have got to be educated about the devastation of this war.

MR. CAVETT: Did you see war crimes committed?

MR. KERRY: I personally didn’t see personal atrocities in the sense that I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free-fire zones; I did take part in harassment interdiction fire. I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground.

And all of these, I find out later on, these acts are contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg principles, is in fact guilty.

But we’re not trying to find war criminals. That’s not our purpose. It never has been. What we’re looking for is an examination of our policy by people in this country, particularly by the leaders…

Using this as a springboard: what is it with certain kinds of conservatives who are unable to admit we a) systematically committed war crimes in Vietnam, or even if they can, to b) admit that the people who said we were at the time - like John Kerry - were right, or even then, c) that the people like Kerry were not “traitors”, or “losing the war”?

Seriously, I don’t get it. Doug’s stories about how his dad can say “yeah, I saw soldiers do appalling things over there,” and then in the next breath call Kerry a son of a bitch for saying the same thing just boggle my mind.

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1- i heard the winter soldier investigation and guilty “vietnam vets” apparently had quite a few fakers mixed in amongst them. the fact that there were atoricites is considered irrelevant.

2- kerry’s statements were made during wartime and used by the vietnamese. yeah, we weren’t going to win, but it was seen as being a betrayal by fellow vets.

whether you believe citizens should protest during wartime even if the enemy uses your words is a moral question and neither side will ever agree to the answer.

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whether you believe citizens should protest during wartime even if the enemy uses your words is a moral question

Bullshit. It is never, ever wrong to use your words against your government. The only argument is those in power wanting to stifle free speech if that speech happens to be inconvenient. If ones war is held on such flimsy ground that a soldier can knock it down with a press conference, you have other issues to worry about.

During a War is the time when we need to be the MOST critical of our government.

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that explanation is sufficient for me and you, but the guys who heard kerry’s words in a pow camp are often still bitter about it.

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What are they bitter about again? That he was right? I’m not following what the actual thing that offended them is, unless it’s just “said that the US did something bad and he was right.”

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Rather, it’s that Kerry’s words were played back to them by the VC and it seriously demoralized them. It’s very difficult to be objective when you’ve rationalized both your own suffering and the taking of lives in the name of some greater good. Display the “greater good” as a manipulative sham, and the response is to attack the messenger, not the manipulator, because it’s the loss of ignorance that shames more than the manipulation itself.

It’s considered bad form to criticize soldiers in such a way because the effectiveness of them as a fighting force depends on their motivation. Cynical and distrustful soldiers don’t make an effective fighting force, sadly, and most people know that their defense rests on the soldiery believing they are doing the right thing.

The misuse of soldiers for immoral and unjustifiable wars is a terrible crime really unlike any other. It divides society between the need to call the manipulators to account for their crimes (Kerry’s angle) and the need to protect the authoritarian innocence of the soldiers (Kerry’s legitimate critics’ angle). In the end, the only guilty parties are those leaders who would fight wars without clearly and indisputably credible justification.

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He didn’t criticize the soldiers; he said over and over it was all the politician’s fault.

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Nice post.

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Blind obedience is a problem, and ALWAYS WILL BE. Soldiers fighting in foreign wars especially need constant reality checks. They need to know that there are limits to what they can and should do, and they can and will be held accountable if they go beyond those limits. It is far too easy to simply justify an atrocity by the “well we’re in a WAR dammit” mentality.

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and the need to protect the authoritarian innocence of the soldiers

I have tried to wrap my mind around this, and I am coming up with several interpretations. I’d really like for a little clarification.

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It’s a little unclear. What I mean, specifically, is the need of the populace to protect the trust the soldiers have in authority – if your soldiers are cynical and inclined to constantly suspect their orders, they are severely diminished as a fighting force.

Kerry’s words indicated that the authorities issuing orders in Vietnam were explicitly untrustworthy and the soldiery had been cruelly played as fools. This is fundamentally disheartening, and the civilians of a country with disheartened and mistrustful soldiers have good reason to be afraid. Therefore, the population prefers to keep the soldiers’ morale high by threatening and silencing those who have credible and justifed complaints with the war authorities.

If the reasons for going to war are sufficiently murky enough, the leadership can keep the civilians supporting the war effort with this implied threat, and the civilian population will by and large generally parrot any false justification for the suppression of anti-war sentiment inasmuch as there remains even the smallest grounds for war. For example, touting that “taking out Saddam” (after the fact) was enough for the war, terribly inconsistent as it is with previous justification and current international policy, is continuously heard simply because the population at large wants the soldiers to know that we support them and that we’re trying – really TRYING – to help them sleep easier and that they are doing the “right thing” over there in Iraq.

Of course, suppressing such speech isn’t the answer, but this isn’t an area that’s clearly black-and-white when it comes to morality. For some, taking a stand against unprincipled and cavalier leadership is the highest moral prerogative; for others, it’s ensuring that our armed forces can operate when they need to unencumbered by doubt and broken morale and that the occupation of soldier remains respected.

However, when you first tell a soldier that he’s a homeland hero as he sets off to war, and then call him a traitor and a killer when he returns, he’s going to be upset with the public at large regardless of how wrongheaded the wartime leadership was. It’s hard enough for a soldier to reconcile his own doubts with the violence performed in the name of duty. As Kerry suggested back in '71: how DO you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake? Currently, the answer seems to be to violently declaim that any mistake was made.

Jason: the soldiers don’t want to hear that their buddies were the last ones to die for that mistake, nor do they want to hear that the violence they committed in the service of their country was a mistake. Like I said, they tend to blame the messenger for bringing it up and betraying that unspoken covenant between soldiers: that what we do in the name of duty is always justified, because if it isn’t, how can we do our duty?

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Jason: the soldiers don’t want to hear that their buddies were the last ones to die for that mistake, nor do they want to hear that the violence they committed in the service of their country was a mistake. Like I said, they tend to blame the messenger for bringing it up and betraying that unspoken covenant between soldiers: that what we do in the name of duty is always justified, because if it isn’t, how can we do our duty?

To be crass, maybe they should grow the fuck up then. It’s not like anyone blames them for what they did, but denying reality is a bit much.

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Kerry’s words indicated that the authorities issuing orders in Vietnam were explicitly untrustworthy and the soldiery had been cruelly played as fools. This is fundamentally disheartening, and the civilians of a country with disheartened and mistrustful soldiers have good reason to be afraid. Therefore, the population prefers to keep the soldiers’ morale high by threatening and silencing those who have credible and justifed complaints with the war authorities.

Well in this case those in authority WERE in the wrong, for the most part.

Also, those same soldiers (well soldier in the larger sense) are charged with ensuring that I am not kept from saying their leaders are idiots, or whatever, and that the populace is free to argue with me all it likes… but never silence.