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is most unnerving about former senator Bob Kerrey's defense against
the charge that he is a war criminal
is
his apparent lack of indignation. An innocent man charged with rounding
up and shooting unarmed civilians — including women, children,
and a baby — and leaving behind a pile of corpses, would usually
express outrage at being foully traduced. He would certainly denounce
the motives of his accusers and perhaps demand some sort of recompense
for the slur on his honor. He might threaten a libel action to regain
his good name — even if a public figure has almost no chance
of winning substantial monetary damages in today's legal climate.
Yet the senator has done nothing of the sort. He has retreated instead
into a kind of neurotic confessional mode in which he denies the
actual charges made by the article in The New York Times Magazine,
but then pleads guilty to nothing in particular of the most haunting
kind. Thus, in the senator's own words: "I went out on a mission
and, after it was over, I was so ashamed I wanted to die." He has
spoken of feeling a fraud for accepting a medal for his leadership
on that night. And Kerrey's distinguished defenders in both parties
have taken similar lines in anguished psychobabble — suggesting,
for instance, that he has a right "to keep this memory private."
A war crime cannot, of course, be treated as a private matter. And
if Kerrey is innocent of such a crime, he should wish to establish
clearly not only his own innocence but also that of his Navy SEAL
colleagues. What explains his reluctance or inability to do so in
a straightforward way?
The simplest explanation is that Kerrey is lying; that he did take
a leading part in deliberately killing innocent civilians and that
he is now orchestrating a cover-up to protect his hide and his future
career. Evidence to support such a dark conclusion, alas, is not
lacking. As Thomas H. Lipscomb pointed out in a UPI commentary,
Kerrey's account of what happened — his unit fired round after
round into the village, and, when they entered it, discovered the
Vietnamese civilians all dead and neatly stacked up in the middle
of the village — is inherently implausible.
After years of war, the villagers would have developed some survival
skills and known better than to collect in the village square during
a firefight. Even if they had presented such an easy target, Kerrey's
men would have had to have been extraordinary marksmen to hit them
all by firing with light weapons on a dark night through heavy jungle
foliage — and still more uncannily accurate to kill (not just
wound) all of them.
Admittedly, the Vietcong might either have retrieved the wounded
or, quite possibly, themselves shot the villagers, leaving them
for the Americans to find. As Lipscomb points out, however, the
Vietcong did not usually retrieve wounded civilians. And if they
had murdered the unarmed villagers, surely Kerrey and his men would
have reported such an atrocious enemy war crime on their return.
But they didn't.
Taken together with Sen. Kerrey's half-ashamed demeanor since the
allegations were made, these implausibilities count heavily against
him. Occam's razor — the philosophical principle that the simplest
explanation of any event is generally to be preferred to other accounts
— would suggest that he is guilty as charged by the New
York Times. Of course, Occam's razor is a general guide rather
than an infallible test. So what is the alternative explanation?
It comes down to three linked possibilities:
1. Sen. Kerrey is not guilty as charged, but is guilty of something.
During the assault on Thanh Phong, he did something of which he
is ashamed and has no wish to defend before the world. Suppose,
for instance, that Gerhard Klann (the Navy SEAL who is the source
for the Times story) is telling the truth when he alleges
that Kerrey helped him kill an old man whom they thought to be a
Vietcong lookout. That would be a grisly deed, and if they later
concluded that he was not an enemy agent, his death would be a tragic
mistake. It would not, however, be a war crime. Civilians are sometimes
mistaken for soldiers, especially in guerrilla warfare when soldiers
disguise themselves as civilians. And since an old man can as easily
shout a warning as a young man, age is properly no guarantee against
attack. It would be very understandable if Kerrey returned to base
that night with a heavy heart and cursing the war. He might still
find that particular incident — essentially a fatal military
mistake — too painful to discuss. And he might salve his feelings
by confessing to…nothing in particular and everything in general.
2. The discrepancies and implausibilities in the account of the
Thanh Phong assault given by all of the Navy SEALs except Klann
are exactly what we should expect in honest accounts of a frightening
and confusing event that happened a long time ago. Even contemporary
eyewitness accounts are generally mistaken on some points. And when
we have massaged painful memories over a long period, we have generally
embroidered them as well. As Sir Robert Morton, the cross-examining
lawyer in Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy, observes
of an honest witness whom he breaks down: A simple liar would have
put together a far more plausible story.
3. Finally, Kerrey, like almost all Democrats and the media, has
internalized the Left's version of the Vietnam War. After 30 years
of amendments to suit the political purposes of liberalism, that
version is now quite complicated. To oversimplify, however, it goes
something like this: The Vietnam War itself was the essential war
crime because it compelled ordinary soldiers to commit war crimes
in order to survive; but the Vietnam vets who fought the war were
heroes — especially if they were Democratic candidates who
could rid their party of what by 1980 was the stigma of being anti-defense.
So when Kerrey steps forward and explains his actions at Thanh Phong,
not only does he give a suspiciously confused version of events,
he also defends himself by blaming the war. In an elliptical way,
of course, so that he ends up declaring:"The Vietnam War made me
do — something."
Whereupon Sens. McCain, Cleland, Hagel, and John Kerry all step
forward to declare him an authentic war hero who deserves to be
left alone to solve his own anguish. The effect of this, of course,
is to entrench the Left's view of the Vietnam War as the authorized
version binding on all. We are served notice that if we wish to
protect an apparently decent moderate Democrat like Bob Kerrey,
the price of his absolution is an endorsement of the Vietnam-as-war-crime
doctrine. Kerrey, Lt. William Calley, or anyone else who might have
committed crimes while fighting is thereby acquitted. Whereupon
it follows, as night follows day, that Presidents Kennedy, Johnson,
and Nixon and (of course) Secretary of State Kissinger must take
their places in the dock.
In neither legal nor historical terms, however, can the guilt or
innocence of Lt. Kerrey at Thanh Phong be determined by whether
Lyndon Johnson acted rightly in pushing through the Tonkin Gulf
resolution. Nor can we take refuge in a Good Ol' Boy verdict of
"there but for the grace of God go I" — since that is a guilty
verdict expressed in a euphemism. Unfortunately, it is very hard
to see exactly how Kerrey's guilt or innocence can now be established.
The preponderance of evidence, as outlined above and tested against
Occam's razor, seems to be against Kerrey. But the weight of it
falls somewhat short of the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard
that is required for a conviction. Nor does it seem likely that
either new evidence or contemporary witnesses can change this stalemate.
Kerrey's comrades (however innocent) have an interest in supporting
his denials, and the Vietnamese witnesses cannot speak freely since
they are living under a totalitarian regime. A congressional or
U.S. Navy inquiry might bring some new information to light. But
neither is likely to settle the matter.
That puts the ball firmly in Kerrey's court. Either he should step
forward, firmly declare his innocence of any war crime, and take
legal steps to recover his good name, or he should equally frankly
admit that he committed actions of which he is so deeply ashamed
that he cannot in good conscience continue in public life. What
he cannot do is confess vaguely to dark deeds, leaving open the
possibility of a war crime, and then give the keynote address to
a conference of New Democrats.
One final point. It seems unlikely to me that a "benefit of (military)
clergy" defense would be allowed to protect, say, Newt Gingrich
from allegations of war criminality. It strikes me as still more
unlikely that Newsweek would have sat on a similar story
about, say, Pat Buchanan just because he seemed unlikely to be elected
president. And I cannot help reflecting that Republicans like Dan
Quayle and George W. Bush have suffered worse abuse from the media
for not serving in Vietnam than Kerrey has sustained for the not
wholly implausible accusation of mass murder. But doubtless I am
biased.
This
originally appeared in the Chicago
Sun-Times.
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