Timothy Noah writes Slate’s “Chatterbox” column. Jacob Weisberg writes Slate’s “Ballot Box” column. Scott Shuger writes “Today’s Papers” and served five peacetime years as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Michael Brus writes “The Week/The Spin.” This week they continue to discuss the factual and ethical disputes surrounding former Sen. Bob Kerrey’s raid on a civilian town during the Vietnam War. To read Noah’s columns on this topic, click {{here#2606:Show=4/29/2001&idMessage=7595}}, {{here#2606:Show=4/28/2001&idMessage=7591}}, and {{here#2606:Show=4/26/2001&idMessage=7584}}.
Post-Traumatic Excuse Syndrome
I don’t think we’ve got the full story yet about what Bob Kerrey did that night in 1969 when he led his SEAL team into Thanh Phong. But I do know this—neither Kerrey nor his vocal fellow-veteran defenders want me to get it. The main strategy they’re using to block my way is what you might call the “been there” defense—if you haven’t been in a war yourself you’re in no position to evaluate Kerrey. For example, Vietnam vets and Sens. Max Cleland, Chuck Hagel, and John Kerry—who’ve already decided no Pentagon investigation into their friend Bob Kerrey is warranted—started off their recent Washington Post defense of him by stating, “War is hell. We hear these words in daily conversation, but only those who have seen combat can truly understand their full and brutal meaning.” And John McCain wrote in the Wall Street Journal of Kerrey that “unless you too have been to war, please be careful not to form your judgment of him on your understanding of what constitutes a war hero.” So far, the defense has been surprisingly effective. The problem is, it’s absurd—it violates the basic assumptions of all forms of evaluation, including those of journalism, historical explanation, and law.
Because every form of human activity has its own unique challenges, if this defense really made sense, it would apply to everything. Television critics would have to be performers. Music critics would have to be composers. Judges would have to be both ex-cops and ex-criminals. And we don’t require juries in murder trials to be composed of people who’ve killed or at least who’ve been previously charged with homicide—actually the assumption is that justice is better served by excluding them.
And I don’t care how much combat Bob Kerrey, John McCain, et al., have seen, noncombatant reporter Gregory Vistica now knows more about what happened that night in Thanh Phong than any of them. He’s talked to more witnesses about the incident at greater length and read more relevant documents than Kerrey or his defenders have.
And where exactly is “there” anyway? Does an artilleryman or tank officer who routinely blows things up he never sees have the relevant combat experience? How can John McCain, who never killed anybody up close and personal, know enough about that to competently defend a commando like Bob Kerrey? The “been there” defense ultimately implies the nonsense that the only people who can sit in judgment of a SEAL assassination team are those who’ve been on SEAL assassination teams.
The “been there” defense seeks to ward off critics by brandishing admittedly unique levels of pain and bravery. A former Marine named Gary Solis was doing this when he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed about Kerrey that “[w]ar-crime assertions by Americans against Americans sometimes seem parlor entertainment to those for whom the war was a TV series.” And ditto for McCain, who was quoted in the same paper saying his job was “to try to heal the wounds of war and not reopen them because of any specific incidents.” But the problem is that when it comes to possible war crimes, the pain and bravery occasioned by combat are not morally or legally extenuating. Hitler was seriously gassed in World War I and won the Iron Cross. The Nuremberg tribunal’s definition of a war crime doesn’t mention the personal experiences of the accused. And what of those combat vets who at additional personal risk to themselves managed somehow to be not only brave but also just? The “been there” defense would not allow those of us who’ve not been under fire to say they did the right thing
With its emphasis on the personal, the “been there” defense takes on a particularly self-indulgent quality. Kerrey told Vistica that the feelings he has as a result of the mission are “far more than guilt. … It’s the shame. You can never, can never get away from it. It darkens your day. I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don’t think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that’s the memory that haunts.” The Cleland-Hagel-Kerry piece refers to the Thanh Phong episode as Bob Kerrey’s “very private memory,” the same phrase used by Kerrey and six of his SEAL team members in their letter disputing important details of Vistica’s article.
And it’s a short step from such narcissism to the flat-out avoidance of responsibility. McCain compares Kerrey’s feelings of remorse to “our shame over those occasions when circumstances conspired with our own weakness to make an awful experience worse.” Cleland-Hagel-Kerry tell us “for our country to blame the warrior instead of the war is among the worst, and, regrettably, most frequent mistakes we as a country can make.” The world depicted here is one where men with guns float helplessly on a sea of overwhelming external forces, where there is death but never murder. In the hands of the “been there” defenders, personal accountability is MIA.
A comprehensive reading of how we got into Vietnam and why we had so much trouble getting out shows that Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and their top aides were far more concerned with how their political fortunes might suffer than with what their decisions meant to the people of Vietnam. The Kerrey controversy proves that this brand of folly is alive and well—the “been there” defense reveals that many of America’s Vietnam warriors still think Vietnam was all about them.
