Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Jacob Weisberg writes "Ballot Box." Scott Shuger writes "Today's Papers." Michael Brus writes "The Week/The Spin." This week they 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}}.
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponDear Jacob,
The 60 Minutes II broadcast about Kerrey and Thanh Phong aired last night. I didn't see it, but I have reviewed the {{transcript#2:http://cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,288832-412,00.shtml}}, and that should be sufficient for our fact-gathering mission. (Do I sound here like Robert McNamara? In moments of self-doubt, I worry that we're entering into this inquiry with the same can-do spirit that got us into the Vietnam War. Still, I remain convinced that the facts of this case are worth gathering and scrutinizing. And your {{list of reasons#105338:iMsg=1}} to believe or disbelieve Kerrey was an excellent start.)
In the CBS broadcast, Kerrey continues to lacerate himself to a degree that seems disproportionate if he is really describing a tragic error rather than a deliberate, cold-blooded killing of innocent people. "[I]f I'd lost both arms and both legs and my sight and my hearing … it wouldn't have been as much as I lost that night," he tells Dan Rather. He says he felt as though "I just killed my own family." He says, "[L]et the other people judge whether or not what I did was militarily allowable or morally ethical or inside the rules of war." But if Kerrey's version is true, why would other people accuse him of being outside the rules of war? (All Kerrey will say is that "I can make a case" that he behaved inside the rules of war.) Perhaps most maddeningly, Kerrey says:
[T]o me it's as bad as if it had happened the way Gerhard, you see dramatic differences and I don't I mean and I just don't see dramatic differences. Because I feel no moral or military justifications for their deaths.
No dramatic moral difference between a deliberate massacre of unarmed women and children and an accidental one? I promised you I would no longer speculate on why Kerrey would all but say, "Yes, I am a war criminal" while at the same time sticking to a version of the story that makes him sound not at all like a war criminal. But the disconnect remains so extreme that it must at least be noted.
The 60 Minutes II broadcast also reports that Kerrey has decided to give back the Bronze Star he won for the Thanh Phong raid. A subtheme of the commentary that's come out of the Thanh Phong story has been that Kerrey either falsified or allowed others to falsify the official version of what happened that evening. Although this is hard to dispute (click {{here#2:http://cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Kerrey_bronzestar.pdf}} to read the Bronze Star citation, which contradicts just about everybody's version of what happened that night), it also strikes me as being beside the point—a very minor misdemeanor. CBS quizzed Kerrey so relentlessly on the Bronze Star business that, Dan Rather reports, Kerrey "told us he thought we were cross-examining him." Kerrey has a point. I say, let's steer clear of this tributary.
Instead, let's take another look at the somewhat-neglected first hooch. You say that what happened there was a war crime because "[t]he {{rules of war#2:http://www.adtdl.army.mil/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/27-10/Ch3.htm}} do not allow soldiers to intentionally kill noncombatants for either self-protection or mission-protection." But there's an argument about whether the inhabitants of the first hooch were noncombatants.
Klann says they were "a mixture" of men, women, and children, and that one of them was an old man. Pham Tri Lanh, a 62-year-old woman who still lives in Thanh Phong, backs Klann up and says she saw Kerrey's squad cut the old man's neck. (This is the same Pham Tri Lanh who initially said she also saw the subsequent gunning down of unarmed women and children at the second hooch but has since said she only heard it. On the other hand, 60 Minutes II reports that Klann's version tracked Lanh's pretty closely even before Klann knew the details of Lanh's account. And another Vietnamese witness, Thi Luom, also backs up Klann's account. And Mike Ambrose, another SEAL, agrees that one of those killed at the first hooch was an old man.)
Kerrey says that the first hooch was occupied only by men, and that (I'm now quoting the {{Times Magazine#2:http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/magazine/25KERREY.html}} piece) their function was to act as "security, as outposts." If Kerrey's version is true, I suppose you could say technically that he was in violation of the rules of war because you're not supposed to kill an enemy soldier if it's possible to take him prisoner instead. But the salient point, I think, is that Kerrey maintains that the people his men killed at the first hooch were not noncombatants, hence this cannot be characterized as a slaughter of innocents. To make these waters even murkier, I suppose it's possible that the old man and his family were acting as "security, as outposts," though we don't seem to have a good fix on what would have caused Kerrey to think so.
I think you're a little too rough on the other SEALs (that is, the SEALs minus Klann) when you call their joint statement "Clintonian." Its vagueness might constitute deliberate evasion, but it might also constitute … vagueness. It may well be that they thought the only matter that needed addressing was whether they were fired upon—something Klann denies. They say they were fired upon. End of story.
Hmm. I'd meant to take your findings, combine them with mine, and organize them into a chart. But I seem to have run out of steam for today. Perhaps tomorrow.
Did the NYT Just Call Joe Biden the Second Most Powerful Vice President Ever?
Meet the TV Genius Behind Jon & Kate, Table for 12, and the Duggars
Does the Health Reform Bill Really Restrict the Rights of Gun Owners?
Don't Fall for Best Buy's Scam To "Optimize" Your New Macintosh
Would Sen. Obama Approve of President Obama's Afghanistan Plan?
How Roald Dahl's Stories for Children Eclipsed His Fiction for Adults
Reader Comments From The Fray:
The "you can't judge if you weren't there" is a copout, or an invitation to one. Nobody says that about battlefield heroism, though it may be just as true. And it's suspicious when that line comes in reference to someone the press loves. Weisberg has it exactly right on this: you shouldn't be overquick to judge someone's actions in very difficult situations. But you shouldn't use the difficulty to argue that nothing matters. Or--if you're really willing to argue that--you should apply it even to people you hate, like Serb death squads, sleazy Argentine "dirty war" types, and French secret police in Algeria forty years ago. But nobody seems to want to do that.
They're right not to do that, but if you're going to judge some, you have to judge everybody according to the same standard. At least, you have to if you claim to care about justice.
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
I have spent years reading police reports, listening to and watching tapes of police interrogations. Kerrey's statements and conduct bear an uncanny resemblance to a confused, frightened criminal suspect who has the feeling something terrible happened but isn't quite clear what it was. This doesn't prove his guilt, of course, but it also doesn't prove the tenderness of his conscience. In my experience, guilty suspects exhibit this confusion at least as frequently as innocent ones, perhaps more often.
--Yukon
(To reply, click here.)
If a majority or large plurality believe that a full scale investigation of those events 30+ years ago are warranted, I don't supppose that their desire is in any way illegitimate, but we shouldn't fool ourselves as to the possibility of ever determining, to any large degree of certainty, what actually occurred, unless a tremendous amount of yet-undiscovered circumstantial evidence becomes available. The nature of conflicting, or even unconflicting, eyewitness accounts in circumstances such as these are no basis for forming judgments.
--Will Allen
(To reply, click here.)
In an otherwise remarkably thoughtful and incisive essay on Bob Kerrey and his conduct in Vietnam, Jacob Weisberg makes one crucial misstep. He writes that
"Bob Kerrey is a good person who evidently did something awful, and possibly something profoundly evil, on a single day of his life. Such a contradiction doesn't just challenge our view of an individual. It shakes our view of morality itself. If Bob Kerrey could do that, good and evil aren't fixed within a person for a lifetime. Decency is less of a choice than the lack of sufficient reason to do evil."
The error here is perhaps best illustrated by considering a kind of diametric opposite of the Kerrey case: the story of Oskar Schindler. Schindler's numerous "character flaws" have long been documented, and while he was known to be very charming, few would have described him as possessing a saintly personality; yet he saved a thousand lives at great personal risk. Would we therefore say that Schindler was not a good man, just because Jacob Weisberg, if given the chance to interview him, might well have failed to feel the enormous warmth and sympathy he feels towards Bob Kerrey? Does the heroism of such an imperfect person shake our view of morality itself, or tell us that selfishness is less of a choice than the lack of sufficient reason to act altruistically?
On the contrary, it teaches us an ageless lesson: that we are all ultimately judged by what we do, not by what others perceive us to be. We don't yet know, and may never know, what Bob Kerrey did or did not do in Vietnam, but we surely know one thing: that Kerrey's choice was, like Schindler's, his to make, and that the moral state of his soul will finally be determined by his choices--not vice versa.
--Dan Simon
(To reply, click here.)
(5/2)
Reader Comment From The Fray:
I did not read the Hagel-Kerry Op-Ed to reserve exclusively the role of judge for Vietnam War combat veterans. Rather, I thought the article suggested whom we should call as witnesses in the "trial." No procedure for judging actions can rationally require that the judge have been identically situated with the judged. Accepted procedures do, however, recognize the value of witnesses to inform our judgments. In evaluating, post hoc, the actions of combatants, the testimony of other combat veterans, then similarly situated, is certainly some of the most relevant evidence available. Most combatants in Vietnam did not commit war crimes. Far from stacking the deck with biased sympathizers, considering the perspectives of combat veterans may permit a more complete and informed evaluation of his actions.
--Sean Watts
(To reply, click here.)
(5/9)