Thirty years later, it still makes their blood boil. When, in April 1971, John Kerry testified to a Senate committee that “…war crimes committed in Southeast Asia [were] not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command,” he said that the average American soldier who fought in Vietnam was a war criminal. Kerry’s statement was false, a blood libel that hangs in the air to this day. If John Kerry had apologized, maybe he’d never have had to deal with the little group that calls itself “Vietnam Veterans for Truth.”
A Martian observer at the Democratic Convention could have concluded that we won the Vietnam War, and did so because of John Kerry’s bravery. He wouldn’t know that there are really three John Kerrys: presidential candidate Lt. (j.g.) Kerry, radical anti-war protester Kerry, and Senator Kerry. If–as many now believe–Kerry lied about his war record, that’s bad news for candidate Lt. Kerry. But if Lt. Kerry lied, he was lying about himself. For the common soldiers of the Vietnam War, anti-war radical Kerry lied about them in his Senate testimony. For that, they will neither forgive him nor sit idly while he pursues the presidency. And Candidate Kerry is about to have a very bad day: A whole bunch of those common soldiers Kerry purported to speak for on that April 1971 day are coming to Washington on September 12. They will rally under a banner that says, “Kerry lied while good men died.”
That Sunday afternoon, hundreds–perhaps thousands–of Vietnam-era veterans will gather near the Capitol building to condemn Kerry for his 1971 libel, and for repeating those lies again and again in his political career. Members of Vietnam Veterans for Truth–and other Vietnam vets–will come by plane, by car, and by bus from New England and Florida, from the Midwest and all over.
When I spoke to organizer Larry Bailey, he said that about 5,000 men were expected at the rally. More than 500 have contributed to Vietnam Veterans for Truth in amounts as little as $2 and as much as $1000. Money was coming in, but the story needed to get out. As you’d expect, the Vietnam Veterans for Truth aren’t getting any coverage in the papers or the network news. They need help spreading the word.
This rally may be bigger than its organizers anticipate. Because what they’re protesting is not some vague moral principle: It’s not, in the words of Vito Corleone, “only business.” It’s personal to men like Tony Snesko, Larry Bailey, Mike Bradley, Denny Baum, and Pete Webster. They were the men serving on the Swift boats, in the infantry. They were the ones who risked their lives, shot and were shot at, and were often wounded. They were the ones who saw their friends killed. What resonates so loudly in their minds is likely to reach many of the other Vietnam vets who don’t remember Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry, and don’t think much of Senator John Kerry–but who all remember John Kerry, leader of the radical Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
When Kerry accused Americans of raping, cutting off ears, heads, and limbs, and razing villages in the manner of Genghis Khan, he wasn’t talking about some random “other”: He was talking about these men. They and their fellow Vietnam veterans were–and are–innocent of the atrocities of which Kerry accused them. They can’t forgive Kerry for what he said, or forget what they suffered because of it. They took Kerry’s accusation personally. It would have been impossible for them to do otherwise. In Larry Bailey’s words, “I never told a lie about John Kerry. He never told the truth about me.”
Tony Snesko is a Swift-boat vet. He didn’t know Kerry in Vietnam and–like the others I spoke to–doesn’t want to debate Kerry’s medals or combat experiences. Snesko says Kerry’s testimony “put a plague on anyone that served in the war that would last the rest of our lives. … I don’t think there’s any way to ever remove from us the stain … [Kerry’s] testimony about us being called rapists, child-killers and the like … I don’t know of anyone of the hundreds of Swift-boat guys that I know and Vietnam veterans that ever participated in any kind of atrocity.”
Since the beginning of June, Snesko–with a handmade display of posters and papers mounted on a split U-Haul wardrobe box–has been spending his weekends sitting near the Vietnam War Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. His display includes copies of Kerry’s 1971 testimony, one of the fliers that Kerry’s group–Vietnam Veterans Against the War–distributed on one of its marches, and the like. Snesko talks with hundreds of people each day. He shocks them by reading passages from Kerry’s statements. Snesko says, “I change a lot of minds down there. … It happens every hour or so when someone says, ‘I didn’t know that, I’m not voting for Kerry.’”
Mike Bradley had a lot of problems when he returned from Vietnam, and he thinks Kerry–and the rest of the anti-war crowd of those years–is responsible for them. He suffered discrimination against returning vets; for a time, he was even denied permission to date the lady who’s now his wife because he was “one of those guys.” Bradley remembers another Kerry libel against the Vietnam vets: that they were all alcoholics and drug addicts, and, as he told me, “we got that stink on us and that’s what we lived with.” Pete Webster is yet another Vietnam vet who blames Kerry for much of the suffering of returning soldiers: “If anyone got raped, it was the Vietnam vets who served honorably. Kerry is a serial rapist. He smeared us every day in the press, and raped us again, and again and again.”
Denny Baum is totally disabled as a result of wounds received in Vietnam complicated by disease. Baum will never forgive Kerry for what he said and did in protesting the Vietnam War. “I want to do something to prevent a person with the character of John Kerry from becoming the president and commander-in-chief of this country.” Baum remembers Kerry’s Senate testimony: “He proceeded to tell my mom and dad, my sister … everybody that I knew, the entire world, that I was a war criminal. And he said I intentionally murdered civilians, I raped women … we looted and plundered. … And he said that we did that on a day-to-day basis with full knowledge of our commanding officers. That is such a gigantic lie, he can never be forgiven for it. And the thing is that to this day he won’t apologize. We’ve asked him to, and he won’t.”
This isn’t about politics. Pete Webster told me, “If the GOP were running Hillary Clinton, we’d still be saying, ‘Kerry lied.’” The Vietnam Vets for Truth want their reputations restored, and they want Kerry to apologize for more than 30 years of defaming their character. As they see it, Kerry stole their honor from them in 1971. They want it back–and they’re coming to get it.
–NRO contributor Jed Babbin is the author of Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe are Worse than You Think.