Sunday, August 08, 2004
Kerry's petard
I've been searching for the perfect reduction of John Kerry's weird reliance on his status as a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war. George Neumayr nails it:
Whatever you think about the hideous charges and countercharges hurled between veterans who support Kerry and those who denounce him, he won't dispel the sense that he is exploiting the misery of both the Vietnam war and the Iraq war without taking responsibility for either or saying clearly what would have been the right thing to do in either case.
CWCID: Cassandra.
Kerry is being hoist by his own petard. Did he really think that he could launch his political career on discrediting the Vietnam war, including his role in it, and then complete that career by taking credit for fighting in it? Kerry has never persuasively explained why he deserves so much credit for fighting in a war he said was utterly discreditable. A pol who starts his career by saying "We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service" and then ends it by campaigning on those memories invites the backlash we've seen this week.
Kerry can't quite pull off his stance as an antiwar war hero. It is far too confusing and contradictory. He can't make a show of his "shame" and then convincingly deny charges that he behaved shamefully. He can't call Vietnam a "barbaric war" and then take pride in fighting for the barbaric side. He can't throw his ribbons to win a seat in the Senate, then retrieve them to win the White House.
He can't posture about his "guilt" and then not expect people to ask: What have you done that would make you feel so guilty? He can't itemize the sins of soldiers who had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads…cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks," without being asked: How did you learn about all of this?
Kerry has wanted praise for feeling the shame -- as this shows that he is a very thoughtful fellow -- but none of the blame for the shameful acts of war. Kerry once said to the New Yorker cryptically, "I just won't talk about all of it. I don't and can't. The things that really turned me I've never told anybody. Nobody would understand…These things are very personal. It was our youth."
But now he can't stop speaking about the war he denounced as unspeakable. It is fitting that after years of overheated anti-war posturing he is subject to the charges he once was happy to hurl himself.
Whatever you think about the hideous charges and countercharges hurled between veterans who support Kerry and those who denounce him, he won't dispel the sense that he is exploiting the misery of both the Vietnam war and the Iraq war without taking responsibility for either or saying clearly what would have been the right thing to do in either case.
CWCID: Cassandra.
0 Comments:
