… No: Don't Let `Blame America' Chorus Claim More War Victims

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 4, 2001 | by Mona Charen

One wonders whether the journalists pepper-spraying former senator Bob Kerrey about his conduct on a moonless night in Vietnam 32 years ago ever have faced anything more harrowing than air turbulence between New York City and Washington.

The image of these soft, pampered journalists hurling accusations of war crimes at a man who served his country and lost a leg in the process is obscene. And it is peculiar that the conflicted Kerrey has taken all the heat about this, when facts about Sen. John Kerry's, D-Mass., behavior have come to light, too.

It seems that Kerry, once head of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, perpetuated a little fraud. At a now-legendary demonstration, Kerry, along with other veterans, threw the medals they'd earned onto the White House lawn to dramatize their contempt for the war, their own service there and the nation that sent them. Kerry since has changed his tune, saying he is proud of his Vietnam service. But here's the kicker: It turns out Kerry threw down someone else's medals that day. He kept his. Hypocrite.

But this story did not engage the imagination of the press corps because it didn't fit into one of its tidy categories. Together with Hollywood and other centers of liberal thought, the press has created a bogeyman called American Soldier in Vietnam. He is a drug-abusing, stupid white guy who commits war crimes every day and comes home to become a derelict on a motorcycle. And it is all false.

Americans who served in Vietnam were no more likely than Americans in any other war to commit war crimes, and the overwhelming majority returned home to become solid citizens. Let's not kid ourselves -- crimes happen in every conflict. The suspension of normal rules encourages it. Even the valiant Americans who fought Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito engaged in murder, rape and pillage on rare occasions. Americans even have been known to commit crimes in peacetime. In 1995, three U.S. servicemen abducted, beat and raped a 12-year-old girl on Okinawa.

Vietnam did present more challenges to conscientious soldiers than World War II though because of the nature of the enemy. It was routine for Viet Cong to dress as peasants and blend in with them for camouflage. Americans never knew when a civilian they came across might pull a gun and kill them. They'd seen it happen to friends. And if Americans therefore killed more civilians than they otherwise would have, that guilt lies with the Viet Cong.

Bob Kerrey was a 25-year-old Navy Seal taking the six men in his command on a dangerous night mission. He and all the other veterans of that episode but one recall being fired upon and returning fire. Only when the shooting and confusion were past did they discover that they had killed women and children.

How many similar stories, one wonders, have come to the attention of the American press corps regarding other wars? And how many have received this kind of attention? None.

Neither has the U.S. press ever adequately told the stories of atrocities committed by the communists in Vietnam against their countrymen and against Americans. The treatment of our prisoners of war, for example, constituted an ongoing crime committed for many years -- not in the fog of combat, but in the quiet of camps and prisons. Yet that story has received precious little attention because to tell it might seem to justify the American side, and we can't have that.

There is so much nonsense still written and said about Vietnam. There still is the assumption, even on Bob Kerrey's part, that the lesson of the war is that we never should have fought it because it morally compromised us. That's rot.

We fought to give Southeast Asians a chance*at freedom. We then changed our minds and left them to their fate. Two million Cambodian civilians were tortured and starved to death after we lost heart. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese took to boats to escape communism and drowned. Equal numbers were shot or imprisoned.

Today, Vietnam is one of the poorest and most miserable nations on Earth. That isn't our doing, but it was turning tail that morally compromised us, not fighting in the first place.

Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist.