A Sense of Dishonor?

WHAT 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.”

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

WHAT 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.”