Kerry's Band of Brothers
EDITORIAL Kerry's Band of Brothers We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother. Henry V And in this journey, I am accompanied by an...
...John Kerry has never retracted the charge of war crimes...
...The difference is that George McGovern acknowledged this...
...More than any presidential candidate since George McGovern, John Kerry is a creature of the anti-Vietnam War movement...
...Nor did McGovern claim to be "reporting for duty" when he made his case for the presidency...
...Henry V And in this journey, I am accompanied by an extraordinary band of brothers...
...By indulging in that gesture, Kerry turned a spotlight on his Vietnam-era actions and invited scrutiny he may come to regret...
...John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, July 29, 2004 John Kerry is entitled to appropriate a phrase from Shakespeare...
...And he proceeded to describe in some detail the "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command," crimes that "this country, in a sense, made them do"—this country, the United States, that had "los[t] her sense of morality...
...Many believe that his service in Vietnam remains the most admirable chapter in his life...
...Give the words through...
...John Kerry doesn't...
...In effect, and without intending it, Kerry invited his fellow veterans to "bring it on...
...And it is this that chiefly explains his fellow veterans' disdain for Kerry...
...He claimed to speak not simply for himself...
...It is fair to hold him accountable for his testimony—but it is also up to each American to decide how much weight to give this, or any other, three-decade-old event...
...He is entitled to ask us to place weight on the testimony of the band of brothers with whom he served in Vietnam...
...But upon returning from Vietnam, Kerry did say that he and his fellow soldiers had routinely committed war crimes...
...He claimed to speak for "a very much larger group of veterans in this country"—for his extended band of brothers, as it were...
...On April 22, 1971, John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...Kerry's attempt now to suppress this debate will not work...
...And then Exeter, Westmoreland, and Bedford had shown up to challenge his bona fides...
...His entire public career makes clear that he was and is—using the term descriptively, not pejoratively—a McGovernite...
...But the Vietnam War, and the antiwar movement, are relevant to understanding a possible Kerry presidency at least in this sense: It is clear from Kerry's subsequent career that his real band of brothers—his political band of brothers, his ideological band of brothers—are the antiwar activists with whom he marched in 1971...
...John Kerry was hostile, to say the least, to the exercise of American power in 1971...
...They might have cited the contemporaneous reaction of Fluellen: "Kill the poys and the luggage...
...What was said or done during the Vietnam era may end up being relatively unimportant in determining how people vote in 2004...
...But he has a problem...
...A substantial number of Kerry's band of brothers—those who served at close quarters with him in Coastal Division 11 and Coastal Division 14 from late November 1968 to March 1969— oppose his candidacy for the presidency...
...Tis expressly against the law of arms...
...Their contempt does not rest primarily on what Kerry did or did not do in 1968 or 1969...
...The Agincourt Vets for Truth might, for example, have accused Henry of ordering war crimes when he told Exeter to have "every soldier kill his prisoners...
...Our band of brothers doesn't march because ofwho we are as veterans, but because of what we learned as soldiers...
...It is as if Henry the Fifth, three decades later, in a (needless to say, anachronistically) democratic England, had cited his experiences at Agincourt as a large part of his claim to lead...
...This is not a trivial matter...
...So they have...
...What they "learned as soldiers" has led them to distrust—in many cases, deeply distrust—John Kerry...
...Another difference is that McGovern had the decency not to tout his war medals...
...He has remained so ever since...
...No serious person thinks John Kerry was in any way a war criminal...
...John Kerry was critical, to say the least, of America's claims to moral leadership as a nation in 1971...
...He remained so for the next three decades...
...William Kristol...
...And like Shakespeare's audiences to this day, voters would have had to weigh Fluellen's charge against Henry's possible defense of himself...
Vol. 9 • August 2004 • No. 47
