Making America Secure Again - Kerry Style

Since JK has personally sworn off "demonization" of JFK (with the laudable but entirely unrealistic goal of keeping discussion about the election rational) it's now my responsibility to journal whatever information we learn about the would-be POTUS that might in any way be characterized as a "negative attack."

Let's consider once again JFK's war record. The media attention here has faded and the extent of residual public consensus is likely that Kerry was in-country during the Vietnam war while Bush was stateside, and that Kerry was injured in battle and awarded medals while Bush was neither. If so then the Kerry campaign has won the first battle in the war for the White House, and in sad fashion since there's much more to the story.

In late February, former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor W. Scott Thompson related to the New York Sun a conversation he'd had with the late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr., notable because the admiral personally pinned a Silver Star on Kerry.

“[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me — 30 years ago when he was still CNO —that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass,by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.‘We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,’ the admiral said. ‘Bud’ Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.”

Suppose Kerry, an unabashed admirer of J.F. Kennedy, joined the navy and requested patrol boat duty with the aim of manufacturing his own "war hero" reputation in the image of the original JFK. (The combat experience of the former President certainly translated into political capital for him, after all.) If his exploits and travails were staged or embellished rather than consequential to "just doin' his job," would this matter to anyone who judges a man's fitness for leadership by the content of his character? Don't we look differently at a man who heroically rescues potential victims from a burning building after we learn the same man started the fire?

The same Sun article characterizes some of Kerry's combat experiences:

"Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as “accidents of war.”And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post."

All of this is consistent with Kerry's own version of events chronicled on his campaign website, although in somewhat more glowing terminology. If JFK is truly as proud of his record as he postures he should not block the release of details about it. He should reply to questions about his action in combat by dryly retelling the events in minute detail. Alternately, he reacts with the very "negative attack" strategy he tries so assiduously to pin upon the Bush campaign by discussing service in the National Guard in the same breath and with equal regard as "avoiding the draft, ...going to Canada, being a conscientious objector." His are the traits of a man with something to hide. Obscuring his past is also a hallmark of the man who chooses the second-hand life, deriving his success, comfort and false-happiness from the achievements of others. The "good" Mr. Kerry made this choice fully, in both his professional and private life.

But enough about his personal character, we want to discuss JFK's policies for the "advancement of America." A WorldNetDaily article summarizes Kerry's address to the Council on Foreign Relations. It asserts that Kerry would abandon terror war, but alas, he's probably also claimed he would continue it. Oops, there I go again with that "demonization" bit!

Posted by JohnGalt at March 27, 2004 10:11 PM