Post A Reply
my profile
|
directory
login
|
search
|
faq
|
forum home
»
Noncompliance
»
General Forums
»
Current Events
»
Kerry & Jobs
» Post A Reply
Post A Reply
Login Name:
Password:
Message Icon:
Message:
HTML is enabled.
UBB Code™ is enabled.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jomama: [QB] Lots of mis-info about Kerry's WAR record, a bit of which you refer to :rolleyes: http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/service.asp http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml By ANDREW COHEN Saturday, March 27, 2004 - Page D4 Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War By Douglas Brinkley Morrow, 546 pages, $39.95 On April 22, 1971, a decorated, thrice-wounded sailor from New England appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate. The ornate room was packed with veterans and reporters. The lone witness wore starched military fatigues bedecked with rows of ribbons. He faced questions from William Fulbright and Jacob Javits, the greatest legislators of their day. For two hours, he laid bare the fallacy of the war in Indochina. In "a low clear voice, calm and unhesitating," he spoke of what he'd seen as the skipper of a speedboat plying the waterways of South Vietnam, of freefire zones and U.S. atrocities. He spoke of the failure of "Vietnamization" and the folly of the Domino Theory. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" he asked. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" His name was John Forbes Kerry, and he made a splash. His eloquent appeal that day launched a career that would make him a public prosecutor, a lieutenant-governor, a three-term senator and, today, the nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency, a job for which his whole life seems to have been preparation. It would be easy to dismiss Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War as one of those instant campaign biographies that try to dress up threadbare candidates in stylish rhetorical suits. But Douglas Brinkley is a historian at the University of New Orleans who has written many books, including biographies of Dean Acheson and James Forrestal. He insists this isn't a biography, even though it chronicles the first 40 years of Kerry's life, drawing on extensive interviews with the senator and his unpublished wartime papers (the lone condition Kerry shrewdly imposed on Brinkley was that he publish the book by 2004). What emerges is a credible, poignant and reverential account of John Kerry before, during and after Vietnam. It is the most revealing examination of the life of the man who would be president we will see before the election in November, which is why, whatever its flaws, it has considerable value. This is John Kerry's War. It is his personal struggle waged on the water and within his soul, his own Apocalypse Now. It unfolds in stages, over years -- at home, abroad and home again, at once a glorious and mournful roll call of duty, doubt, courage, conscience, anguish, anger and acceptance. The story begins with Kerry as a rootless adolescent who lives in Europe (he arrived in postwar Berlin in 1954), travels widely and attends boarding schools in the United States and Europe. He is the son of a romantic father who was a linguist, soldier and diplomat, and a distant mother who was a Forbes, one of New England's wealthy families (the Kerrys were only comfortable). We see him as an adventurer who bicycled alone across England at 16, hiked the Swiss Alps, sailed the Norwegian coast, ran with the bulls in Spain and did foolish stunts piloting airplanes; and as a student at Yale University, where he was a debating champion, a varsity athlete and a member of the Skull and Bones, the exclusive secret society. As a young man, Kerry campaigned for John F. Kennedy. In 1962, while dating Jackie Kennedy's half-sister, he sailed with JFK twice -- the moment is captured in a photograph likely to be used in Kerry's commercials this autumn -- and came to adore him. Kerry was "devastated" by his death in 1963; Brinkley says that on hearing the news, he burst into tears and was "inconsolable" for days. Brinkley notes the parallels with Kennedy, but wisely refuses to exaggerate them. Certainly Kerry shared more with JFK than a monogram and Massachusetts. Dazzled by the idealism of Camelot, Kerry was a charter New Frontiersman, ready to pay any price and bear any burden. And there, of course, is where it gets interesting. The striving, preppy Kerry arrived at Yale in 1962 and graduated in 1966, before the war turned sour. By February of his senior year, he joined the navy. Even then, Kerry was skeptical about the war, which he expressed as class valedictorian. But he and his friends signed up anyway. This is critical. Kerry could have avoided Vietnam by marrying, going to graduate school or joining the National Guard, like George Bush. Or he could have found a desk job in the Pentagon, become a conscientious objector or a draft dodger. Why didn't he? "We never plotted it," he tells Brinkley, who doesn't explore this pivotal moment. "We just all thought it was the right thing to do. . . . Duty dictated that we enlist." So, in early 1968, Kerry went off to Vietnam on a frigate in the Gulf of Tonkin. Bored silly, he asked to retrain at home and return to Vietnam for a second tour as the captain of a swift boat, the light, fast, noisy vessels that became the backbone of "the brown water navy." His mission was to engage the Viet Cong in the rivers, canals and coves of the Mekong Delta. Drawing on his letters, journals and tape recordings, Brinkley meticulously reconstructs his tour from his arrival in Cam Ranh Bay on Nov. 17, 1968, when he took command of PCF-44, until March 17, 1969, when he asked to leave Vietnam. During those five months, Kerry saw enough horrors to wonder why he was there. As he took his boat into enemy sanctuaries to draw fire, inspect sampans or transport Vietnamese troops, he doubted the whole bloody enterprise. He saw crazed, trigger-happy kids kill Vietnamese civilians and he saw friends die of friendly and unfriendly fire. Three times he was wounded, though never seriously, which earned him three Purple Hearts. For two acts of bravery, he won the Navy's Silver Star and the Bronze Star. Curiously, he never talked much about his exploits. But he does now, on the campaign trail, hoping to reaffirm his credentials on national security and accentuate the differences in character between him and the President. At home again, a disillusioned Kerry came out against the war. He threw his decorations away in a public act of anger (well, not all of them, we learn later) and became a prominent spokesman for the anti-war movement. Later, as a senator, he made 14 trips to Vietnam to investigate missing prisoners of war. It wasn't until the United States normalized relations with Vietnam that he laid his demons to rest. Finally, his long tour of duty was over. What does it mean today? By all accounts, Kerry was a superb leader -- sensible, brave and fair. His men say they liked him; if they didn't, Brinkley doesn't tell us. In fact, there is nary a discouraging word about Kerry (his divorce is mentioned only briefly), which suggests that Brinkley is too enamoured of his subject. When Brinkley does find a veteran or classmate cool to Kerry, he usually doesn't identify him; generally, he lets them describe him as serious, ambitious or opinionated, which critics gleefully interpret as "pompous," "aloof," "dour" and "self-aggrandizing." Brinkley does his research well, perhaps too well. This book is too long and too dense, slavishly following minor tributaries in Kerry's life which seem longer than the Mekong River itself. It is also badly written in places, marred by ungainly language (he favours "in-country" and "transited out") and he misses opportunities to evoke the mood of the place. Actually, Tour of Duty is best when Brinkley allows Kerry to speak through his first-person accounts from his diary. The boy could write. The author takes pains to tell us that Kerry co-operated fully but exercised no (Brinkley's italics) editorial control. Not that he had to; Brinkley has nothing unkind to say, and no study in character to offer. While the army of detail is mobilized and sent into the battle for Kerry's reputation, the analysis goes missing in action. You are left wondering, then, how the conflicted Kerry could oppose Vietnam and still fight and kill there, and why he felt he had to do both. What was it? Ambition? Adventure? Careerism? Was it the Kennedyesque recklessness he showed in fighting or flying, the need to take risk? In time, no doubt, we will learn more about the character of John Forbes Kerry. As the campaign intensifies, the Republicans will try to define him as indecisive and equivocal, a misguided, self-seeking opportunist who often takes both sides of an issue. When they do, here is the antidote: a portrait of a heroic young man at war, emerging from the chaos with a sense of equanimity, morality and integrity. It is the kind of profile in courage that may make Lieutenant Kerry commander-in-chief. [/QB][/QUOTE]
Instant Graemlins
Instant UBB Code™
What is UBB Code™?
Options
Disable Graemlins in this post.
*** Click here to review this topic. ***
Contact Us
|
Noncompliance.com
Noncompliance Copyright 2005
Powered by
Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2