A trip down memory lane, election 04
James Taranto has a particularly good discussion of John Kerry's failed campaign and how the media's lapdog status actually hurt him.
The Kerry camp evidently hoped the media would gloss over the candidate's antiwar activities, and for the most part, for many months, they did. One exception was ABC's Charlie Gibson, who in April 2004 confronted Mr. Kerry about the 1971 medal incident. Mr. Kerry answered evasively, then muttered into a live microphone that Mr. Gibson was "doing the work of the Republican National Committee." This was a telling comment. Mr. Gibson was, in truth, doing the work of a journalist: asking a politician tough questions. But Democrats expect the mainstream media to treat them sympathetically--an expectation that has ample basis in experience.Consider the Bush is AWOL story, not to mention Rathergate. The hypocricy is breathtaking, is it not?
Yet it's far from clear that such sympathy serves the Democrats' interests. Suppose that, once Mr. Kerry secured the nomination, the media had aggressively investigated and reported on his antiwar activities. The candidate would have been forced to respond. If he had been smart, he would have delivered a major speech in which, without renouncing his opposition to the Vietnam War, he repudiated and apologized for his decades-old slanders against fellow veterans. He might have concluded by saying of the Vietnam conflict, "I hope and pray we will put it behind us and go forward in a constructive spirit for the good of our party and the good of our country"--the words with which he ended a February 1992 Senate speech criticizing fellow Vietnam vet Bob Kerrey for trying to make Bill Clinton's draft avoidance an issue in that year's Democratic primaries.
posted by Seth at 3:31 PM
5 Comments:
Everything Kerry said in his 1971 testimony was and is true.
To back away from it would have been dishonest and wrong.
Bull. Kerry slandered and demeaned his fellow soldiers and the country he fought for. Undoubtedly atrocities did occur--just like every war. But Kerry went beyond honest truth-telling
Why are you so willing to take Kerry at his word but not the many soldiers who are outraged at his comments?
It's not his word. It's the word of the soldiers who committed the acts Kerry described.
The soldiers who were outraged (although many cheered Kerry on) were not present, and so we have no way of knowing whether they were outraged because they believe Kerry slandered them, or were outraged because he spilled the beans.
I actually posted about this subject months ago, long before you ever graced my blog with your presence, Loyal. Here is part of what I said:
I would never say that a soldier who acted courageously in combat in Vietnam is not a hero because I disagreed with the war. Even though the Democrats opposed the Vietnam War, that doesn't mean (in principle) that it's inconsistent for them to recognize a hero from that war.
...
I have come to some conclusions. Either Kerry committed atrocities, and he is not a war hero, or he did not and he is a liar, and thus casts doubt on his heroics.
Your line of reasoning baffles me. No one ever said that every single person who fought in Vietnam committed atrocities of the type Kerry described in '71 (rape, mutilation of bodies, etc.), and so it would be perfectly possible for him to have served on swift boat, acted bravely, and come home to talk about the horrrors suffered by so many other people in Vietnam. Just because he wasn't at My Lai or any of the many places like it doesn't mean he can't speak out about it. What he means when he says that he 'committing atrocities' are the kinds of indiscriminate free-fire attacks American troops were constantly ordered to engage in, making the nature of the war barbaric and brutla beyond anything a supposedly civilized nation should engage in.
You can 'support' a soldier by recognizing his bravery and wishing his survival without believing that the war he's been sent to is just. This shows an understanding that soldiers did not choose to be sent to obscure corners of the world to fight people they never met; that decision was made by comfortable cowards back home, and they, not the soldiers, are the ones who are the war criminals.
And we could've never won the Vietnam War. Never. Not without burning the whole country to the ground. That was their country, and they wanted us out.
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