A Reply to Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis doesn’t much care about Vietnam and is tired of the whole Swift Boat controversy.

You know, I can understand that. I’m getting a bit tired of the whole issue, too. I’m sad to see that it took nearly two weeks for one aspect of the story to get a good investigative report in the Washington Post.

I want to digress just briefly to talk a little about the WaPo article. I read the whole thing in print today and I’m damned impressed. Given the hatchet job they did with the first story they every wrote on the issue, I expected much of the same. What I read was a detailed and fair accounting of the incident involving the rescue of Jim Rassman. Now I do have a quibble in that the article is headline “Swift Boat Vets Accounts Incomplete” which does leave the impression that their accounts of the incident were the only accounts that were incomplete. Kerry’s account has some pretty big holes in it also, and the article points them out pretty starkly. What it comes down to is that we may never know for sure what happened there and neither Kerry nor the SBVs should claim to have the entire truth about what happened. But, if you’ve followed this story at all, you’ll know that what the SBVs have been trying to do is to point out that Kerry’s account of the incident is not as accurate as he’s been saying it is.

And that leads me back to my original point. I’m actually writing this hoping that Mr. Jarvis will happen along and find it. I could probably have put it in the comment section of his post, but it would have gotten lost in the chatter and I wouldn’t have been able to be as expansive as I like to be (yeah, I know it can be too expansive at times. I’m working on that).

Mr. Jarvis, I understand that you’re tired of the Vietnam talk and that you want it to stop. God knows I’d love nothing more than for it to happen. Unfortunately, we can’t, at least not now. You are right when you say that John Kerry opened the wound. He’s invited the conversation and he perpetuates it at every single campaign stop. His entire pitch boils down to “Vote for me because of what I did in Vietnam”. The problem is that there are an awful lot of folks who were there with him in Vietnam who remember things a lot differently. Their recollections are at least as valid as Kerry’s. I, as a voter, would be pretty ticked with them if I found out after the election that they held their peace and didn’t say what they’ve said now because they wanted to keep the level of discourse pleasant. So what we’ve basically had is a conversation where Kerry has said what he’s said and the SBVs have said “We don’t remember you doing all the things you said you did, and we were there, too”. The essential question this controversy is asking is, “Is John Kerry being honest?”. The answer so far is that he is not.

The situation would be different had Kerry not been so adamant about his recollections – had allowed that after 35 years he might not remember things as clearly as he once had. But he hasn’t. He’s treated his recollections as if they were written in stone and unassailable and acted as if questions about his memories of those 4 1/2 months were attacks directly on his character. Not everyone – not even the SBVs were saying that John Kerry was a coward or that he did anything that an awful lot of other veterans did. What they are saying is that his medals and awards don’t exactly make him Sgt. York and that he didn’t stagger out of Vietnam like John Maclane at the end of “Die Hard”. They’re also saying that if you’re going to trash your fellow soldiers in front of Congress and the world, you probably shouldn’t wraps your arms around them 35 years later and say how much you love them and are one of them when you want to run for President. That’s just not quite fair play.

Now earlier, I said that the SBVs have shown that Kerry has not been telling the truth. I know that raises a lot of hackles, but it’s true. Many of Kerry’s accounts have been proven inaccurate by Kerry himself. His own diaries and the history he’s provided to his ghostwriter aren’t consistent with what he’s said earlier.

And it goes farther than that. My sticking point in the entire controversy is his “Christmas in Cambodia” story. This story could have been a case of just another soldier remembering things through the foggy lens of many years, but it isn’t. Kerry has insisted that his time in Cambodia on Christmas 1968 was not only “seared” into his mind but also was a major turning point in his opinions of the Vietnam War and helped inform his policies on the use of the US military in our foreign policy. We’d agree, I think, that all of those things make this very important. As it turns out, his recollections weren’t accurate. The events weren’t “seared” into his memory, and his foreign policy has been formed on a flawed recollection of the events.

Was John Kerry ever in Cambodia? We ahve no records to show that he was, so we have only his word on the issue. Was he there on Christmas Day, 1968? No, he wasn’t. He’s admitted as much. Was he ordered there in some fashion thanks to the policies of Richard Nixon? No, that didn’t happen either. Now, his story has changed. Now, he is saying that he was near Cambodia sometime in 1968 or 1969. He doesn’t say when, or even where he was in Cambodia. He doesn’t appear to remember who he took in there, even though one of the men gave him a hat he’s carried with him for 35 years. None of the boats that patrolled the Vietnam/Cambodia river border remember any Swift Boat mission anywhere around that time. None of his superior officers remember any boat from his group going out of the patrol area to which they were assigned in order to get to Cambodia.

Only John Kerry remembers this mission, and even he doesn’t appear now to remember it all that well. Yet, this is the mission that was “seared” into him and became so important that he carries a memento from it to this day. This is the mission that determined his entire stance on the war, led him to the Winter Soldier investigations and Congressional testimony, and caused him to speak so adamantly against actively helping the Contras in the 1980s. As distasteful as it may seem now, this is something we have to consider if we’re going to decide whether John Kerry is trustworthy enough to be our President.

So even though I don’t like how we’re rehashing painful memories of Vietnam, I don’t see how we can possibly avoid it. It’s the only issue that John Kerry’s given us on which to decide his fitness for the Presidency. He is the one who stood there and asked us to vote for him solely because he was a war hero who ran into combat when others ran away. I don’t blame the SBVs for raising the issues they have. I would be angry at them if, after the election, I found out that they had information that put Kerry’s version of the events in doubt and kept quiet about it. That would be irresponsible. I don’t consider what they’re doing “pouring salt in the wound” even if I’m not thrilled about what this entire discussion has become.

And about your correspondent, please ask him to relax a bit. Point him to the Captain’s Quarters blog who has done more investigating and has written more even-handedly than any major newspaper he could find. Better yet, explain to him what we both already know about bloggers. They are biased just like every newspaper reporter on the planet. Unlike those reporters, we are open and honest about our biases, which gives him the opportunity to read past those biases to the facts of our posts. Sure, he could do that with newspapers, too, but I bet you dollars to donuts that digging through the bias there is a much harder thing to do, disguised as it often is as “objective reporting”.

No related posts.

Category: General