Smackdown: Swifties V. Tiger Force

This second swift boat veterans ad, the one about Kerry’s anti-war testimony after his service, is making me crazy. The anti-Kerry crew are harboring a thirty year grudge against the man they believe betrayed them by speaking the truth about the war in Vietnam. But why is truth betrayal? Let’s take a second to recall what he said when testifying to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations in 1971:

They told stories that at times 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 fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

This, they say, is unpatriotic, an affront to the soldiers. In 1971, John O’Neill pointed at John Kerry on the Dick Cavett show and said, "this man has attempted the murder of the reputations of 2.5 million of us [servicemen], including the 55,000 dead in Vietnam." Today, O'Neill and other anti-Kerry swifties are being quoted daily saying how much Kerry’s remarks hurt them.*

Which would maybe be valid complaint — if it weren’t that everything John Kerry said was true for chrissakes. You can’t cry foul when the criticism is fair. Kerry did not say, “all soldiers are bloodthirsty demons”; he said that for some soldiers, the war was corrupting their souls and taking their lives unfairly, and with that famously eloquent line towards the end, he made a patriotic plea for the country’s colossal mistake to end. The anti-Kerry forces have drilled down into the details of the Winter Soldier Investigation, which is the testimony Kerry cited at the hearing, trying to impugn the credibility of some of those soldiers’ specific comments. But who cares? It’s not like those didn’t happen — it happened. Everyone knows it. My Lai was already front page news in 1971. And as for today — how could any one try to dispute the war crimes committed by some American forces in Vietnam? It’s a pathology of self-delusion that they’d need a whole new chapter in the DSM-IV to describe.

And if we didn’t already have proof enough, why hasn’t the entire country been re-reading the Toledo Blade’s excellent investigative report into the activities of the Tiger Force unit in Vietnam? The series describes how a culture of atrocity was cultivated among some soldiers in Vietnam. The only place I saw reference to the series in connection with the Swift Vets’ hallucinatory memory of Vietnam was in the Jerusalem Post, where they always read our news more closely than we do. The series, which barely got play when it came out, managed to win the Pulitzer, but that didn’t seem to help get it noticed again when the question of Vietnam war crimes became front-page news again.

I urge everyone to check it out.

The whole discussion gets at a sinister problem infecting the language of this election, which revolves around the question of what's more important: truth or loyalty? Of course, the Swifties for Truth are uninterested in truth; their declared highest value is loyalty — loyalty to your brothers-in-arms, to your country, right or wrong, and so on. This is what John O’Neill & Co. continued on to say on the Dick Cavett show, and it’s become the boilerplate of their crusade against Kerry today. In their view, any criticism, even truthful and moral, is somehow disloyal. But isn’t it the opposite? Isn’t the greatest loyalty one that is unshakable even when calling your country’s judgment into question? Isn’t it more loyal to want your country to correct it’s errors and right itself?

It is not patriotic to be a blind follower. O'Neill said that he’s been taught to support the army no matter the circumstances; that criticizing them breaks an unspoken military ethic. That’s what the Swift Vets call patriotism — to not think for yourself; to subjugate your entire identity to a higher authority; to become a reflexive part of some larger apparatus; to become, in essence, less human?

That’s O’Neill’s understanding of duty to the patrie if you take it at face value. And they have a name for that. It’s called statism, and it’s a failed political philosophy pioneered by one Benito Mussolini and improved upon by a fella named Adolph Hitler. O’Neill is basically saying that a soldier should never question orders, even if those orders entail war crimes or emanate from a government making a grievous error. It sounds familiar, because it's what the Nazis said at Nuremburg — “we were only following orders.”

Immoral orders, of course, don't have to be followed. That's called morality, an endowment that comes with our human agency. It seems the vets should be more pissed off at Bob McNamara and the government that sent them there, rather than the guy who had the temerity to say what even McNamara has now admitted: that the war was a mistake?

Which is what opponents of today’s war in Iraq are trying to avoid. Do we really want another Commander-in-Chief who won't try to correct an obvious error? Holding a steady course is only a valuable characteristic if the captain knows where he’s going. Not so for the Swift Vets. They don’t mind that our little Ahab from Texas has lashed himself to the helm and is muttering to himself about Iraq links to Al Qaeda while taking us straight into a goddamn gale. Can’t mutiny, the false patriots say, he’s the captain. But without a little mutiny, we're headed for Davy Jones' Locker.

_____

* What kind of soldier is it, anyway, who would be "hurt" by senate testimony? A guy who spent who knows how long crawling around in the mud dodging punji sticks is now so thin-skinned that a few honest words would scar them for three decades? It doesn't hurt him that cynical bureaucrats put him near those punji sticks? Feh.

Comments

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[ambrogio]

Where did you get the idea that what Kerry testified was TRUTH???? One screwy source, the Toledo Blade? The Blade investigated all of about 50 vets, and one particular company (Tiger Force). That crapola "investigation" --- Pulitzer or not --- does not support Kerry's blasphemous comments in testimony. In that Dick Cavett show you source, Kerry admitted that he had NOT WITNESSED ANY OF THE ATROCITIES that he testified about. There's no question that atrocities occurred ... it was war after all ... and guess what, there are no "rules", despite the Geneva Convention. However any atrocities committed by US soldiers pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by the VC. It's easy to sit in your warm chair and comfortable, peaceful home and say "well two wrongs don't make a right". ANYTHING is easy when you're a spectator! If you were there, in Vietnam, that's one thing. But it's obvious you weren't. The blind follower appears to be you, another lemming swallowing all that the liberal-loving, pen pushing press will throw at you. Just because it's on TV, or in the newspaper, doesn't mean it's TRUE. Hopefully, you will never have to know what war is from personal experience. And you can thank our US soldiers for allowing you that comfort. Enjoy your first amendment rights, but please remember there are three sides to every story, and don't be so quick to align yourself with one of the first two before researching the third.

[Rob]

"...the sailors Kerry served with in the brownwater Navy, most of whom will tell you they never did a dsihonorable thing during their tour of duty..."

That's an interesting observation. Of the just under 3500 Swift Boat servicemen, I'd wager a fair portion of them would admit to participating in war crimes - dishonorable or not. Kerry did. John O'Neill of the Swiftboat Vets for Bush did (on national TV, no less). Most of the crew that REALLY served with Kerry did as well.

The psychopaths weren't just in Tiger Force. The psychopaths weren't just in the platoon that slaughtered 504 innocent civilians at My Lai. The psychopaths weren't just in the unit that slaughtered 90 civilians on the beaches of My Khe. The psychopaths weren't just in the unit that slaughtered 14 women and children in Thanh Phong village. The psychopaths weren't just in the planes that left 1232 dead and wounded when they bombed Bach Mai hospital. The psychopaths weren't just in the planes that bombed the civilian streets of Kham Thien city, or the Red River Dikes just to "weaken the resolve of the civilian supporters of the North." The psychopaths weren't just in the dozens of units that caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths through the execution of Westmorelands "Search and Destroy" missions for body count.

Your comparison to Abu Ghraib is a little silly, and I doubt anyone will buy it.

You say, "For the Swifties, many of whom did thanklessly reckless things like ferry doctors into hot spots, Kerry's 'we' was a personal indictment because Kerry did not see the things he talked about..."

Kerry's indictment was of the administration and military leaders that developed and/or allowed criminal military policy. He states so several times during his testimony before that Senate committee. Anyone with a modicum of comprehension knows this. Anyone claiming to be "slandered" or "wounded" by Kerry's words is either an idiot, a political schill, or both. I suppose there are always a few nutcakes that are looking for a reason to claim they've been victimized one way or another - they should look elsewhere, lest they wish to end up looking the fool.

Perhaps, Jim, you should watch or read his testimony. Observe who the "we" really are. You might also consider Kerry's admissions to war crimes he personally witnessed and participated in.

[Jim]

What kind of soldier? I don't know, but the sailors Kerry served with in the brownwater Navy, most of whom will tell you they never did a dsihonorable thing during their tour of duty, should not be compared with the psychopaths in Tiger Force. That's like comparing the marines trying not to get killed in Falujah with the miscreants who engaged in romper room-style interrogations at Abu Ghraib. A Seabee's experience in Vietnam will differ greatly from a SEAL's, and so on. For the Swifties, many of whom did thanklessly reckless things like ferry doctors into hot spots, Kerry's "we" was a personal indictment because Kerry did not see the things he talked about (if he did, as an officer he would be guilty of some very serious crimes), he was reporting what was already known. What is not generally known is that the Swift Boat community, such as it is, is very small. Very few people had John Kerry's experience in Vietam, so when he testified on the Senate floor and spoke as if he'd personally waded through rivers of blood, he brought disgrace to a small group of men who had been asked to do a very difficult and dangerous job. Remember, in 1971 there was no such thing as a war hero.

[Jim]

What kind of soldier? I don't know, but the sailors Kerry served with in the brownwater Navy, most of whom will tell you they never did a dsihonorable thing during their tour of duty, should not be compared with the psychopaths in Tiger Force. That's like comparing the marines trying not to get killed in Falujah with the miscreants who engaged in romper room-style interrogations at Abu Ghraib. A Seabee's experience in Vietnam will differ greatly from a SEAL's, and so on. For the Swifties, many of whom did thanklessly reckless things like ferry doctors into hot spots, Kerry's "we" was a personal indictment because Kerry did not see the things he talked about (if he did, as an officer he would be guilty of some very serious crimes), he was reporting what was already known. What is not generally known is that the Swift Boat community, such as it is, is very small. Very few people had John Kerry's experience in Vietam, so when he testified on the Senate floor and spoke as if he'd personally waded through rivers of blood, he brought disgrace to a small group of men who had been asked to do a very difficult and dangerous job. Remember, in 1971 there was no such thing as a war hero.