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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Wednesday, February 25, 2004
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Kerry's Past: Some Information and Some Questions "It is the specter of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating". First, the junior senator from Marriagechusetts does not seem to be a particularly favorite alumnus at Yale not according to this article by Boris Volodarsky at today's Yale Daily News, anyway. + + + + + If you ever wander around campus on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, you may run into a curious spectacle. You are likely to see a bunch of people with seemingly nothing better to do than sit around college common rooms drinking, banging gavels, and discussing some terribly obscure or dreadfully obvious "resolutions." Sadly, I am usually one of those people, and you probably ran into a meeting of one of the parties of the Yale Political Union (YPU). The political union is by no means a "cool" organization. If you ever come to its events you will find that the proportion of people with a fixation with becoming president and those who like to drink on weekdays is abnormally high, even for Yale. Surprisingly, some of the political union people do make it big. The most famous example right now is John Kerry. If I had to paint a portrait of a typical YPU guy, I would simply take a picture of John Kerry to save time not today's Senator Kerry, but a young John Kerry when he was still a student at Yale College. Kerry was the quintessential, stereotypical "YPU man." The News' article about Kerry's life at Yale, published on Feb. 14, 2003, provides a lot of insight into his early personality ("Kerry '66: 'He was going to be president'"). Apparently, one of the first things he told his freshman year roommates was that he was going to be president one day. He clearly had nothing better to think about, such as de-bunking his bed or freshman English. Okay, fine, we all did some pretty silly stuff when we arrived at Yale. Kerry's problem was that he apparently never got better during his years at Yale. Just like many members of the YPU, Kerry was an amazing speaker. In fact he was probably the best. And it seems that at Yale, he was generally disliked. The Yale Liberal Party, of which I am a member and John Kerry used to be chairman, passes on many unpleasant stories about him. According to Liberal Party lore, Kerry was among the worst chairs in its history. Jorge Dominguez, currently a professor at Harvard and a member of Kerry's Liberal Party Executive Board, reports that under Kerry's leadership the party went on YPU probation. Probation means that the party's leader could not get enough of the party's members to sign a YPU attendance roster. Although getting people to sign in turns out to be a surprisingly arduous job, very few chairmen fail to do it in the end. Not getting enough signatures suggest one of two things: either the chairman faced some unfortunate circumstances or he has some personality problems. According to Dominguez, Kerry's leadership caused his probation. In order to get back at Kerry, members of the Liberal Party formed the Dixwell Society. By now, the group is largely defunct, although it still officially meets during Liberal Party reunions and its story gets retold for everyone wishing to hear. The society's major point was to include every former chairmen except one who most people disliked. You can guess who. In addition, the News' article reports that due to its conflict with Kerry part of the Liberal Party split off to form the Party of the Left. But wasn't Kerry later elected YPU president? It is true that he got elected. It proves much less then you think, however. First of all, the YPU presidency is a hard and often thankless job that very few people actually want. A person usually becomes political union president through some mixture of personal desire and Tammany Hall-like backroom deals. In my experience, very few political union officers get elected because they are liked or respected. Personally, I would not let Kerry circa 1966 run a public toilet, let alone a country. Hopefully, today's Kerry is a different man. Perhaps his service in Vietnam changed him for the better. Perhaps time has changed him. But maybe he has not changed. Recently Kerry mentioned that George Bush remains the same guy he was in college. If Bush didn't change, why would Kerry? Every time I go to a political union debate, I shudder to think one of those YPU people I see in front of me may one day run the country. It may happen sooner than I expect. Although I certainly do not think a hard-drinking frat boy of the George Bush kind is any better prepared for the presidency. Still, Democrats ought to consider other options. Edwards anyone? + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. They formed a club? Specifically so one person could not belong? That individual being John Forbes Kerry? Second, the article cited above a much longer and very much more flattering piece at The Yale Daily News, Feb. 14, 2003. + + + + + When Clark Abbott '66 first met classmate John F. Kerry in September 1962, Kerry told his neighbor in Bingham Hall exactly what he was going to do in life. "He told me he was going to be president," Abbott said. More than 40 years later, Kerry's aspirations have not changed. Now a Massachusetts senator, Kerry is considered by many in Washington to be the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination next year. And while his career has not followed a straight path from Jonathan Edwards College to stump speeches in New Hampshire and Iowa, the 2004 campaign is, in many ways, the culmination of four decades of preparation. As a three-sport athlete, president of the Yale Political Union, and a member of Skull and Bones, Kerry's undergraduate experience was seen by many of his classmates as a grooming for public office. Even his roommate of four years, Daniel Barbiero '66, joked with Kerry about his political hopes. "I think I once told him if he was president, I wanted to be his secretary of state," Barbiero said. 'A senatorial accent' Like Kerry, Michael Avery '66 was one of the top members of the Yale debate team. But while Avery was a polished orator, he did not even bother to attend tryouts for the privilege of serving as Class Day speaker. "To be honest, I fancied myself a good public speaker," Avery said. "But I didn't even go I knew Kerry was going to go, and there wasn't much point in going against him." Kerry's selection as class orator surprised no one, since he had spent much of his Yale career speaking to classmates in his distinctive Massachusetts accent. "I think it was a cultured accent, and it's frankly a senatorial accent," Abbott said. "It just sounded awfully funny to hear this accent out of an 18-year-old kid." Under the guidance of renowned speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won dozens of competitions against college students from across the nation and even across the Atlantic. In February 1966, Kerry and his partner, William Stanberry, Jr., won a match against a previously undefeated traveling team from Britain. As the closing speaker, Kerry defended the importance of the United Nations, arguing that it had "supplied a meetingplace for harmonizing differences." And although Kerry was chairman of the Political Union's smallest party the Liberals he gained enough support across the political spectrum to win the presidency late in his sophomore year. Presiding over the Political Union during the heated presidential elections of 1964, Kerry even earned the admiration of students on the other side of the aisle, said former Party of the Right chairman John McGonagle Jr. '66. "John was a person who took the process of politics very seriously and he gave it a great deal of respect," McGonagle said. But Kerry's YPU presidency was not universally supported. During his tenure, a group of younger students split off from the Liberal Party to create a new Party of the Left. Members of the new party said Kerry's vote against a measure supporting a progressive income tax helped instigate their secession. Kerry said in an e-mail that the Political Union provided a way to get involved with the prominent issues of the day, like the civil rights movement and President Kennedy's "New Frontier" program. But Kerry, who successfully underwent surgery for prostate cancer Wednesday, said he did not view his political activities in college as a springboard for his future plans. "I was also caught up in the times and inspired by a lot of things happening which really made me want to get involved in public service, but I never thought of myself as on some kind of career track," he said. "The Political Union was a great way to debate issues and play some small role in what was happening in the country and what Ivy League universities tend to be insulated from, particularly at that time." A reputation for seriousness Kerry was, in many ways, a member of the old guard that had dominated Yale until the 1960s. His father graduated from Yale in 1937, and Kerry was one of 18 students to enter Yale from his graduating class at the prestigious St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H. Kerry had traveled extensively as a child, and he was already fluent in French when he entered Yale. He played soccer, hockey, and lacrosse sports most commonly played in New England prep schools at the time. While his family was not particularly wealthy, his father was a foreign service officer and his mother was a member of the prominent Forbes family. "He was kind of preppy," said John King '66, a classmate of Kerry's in Jonathan Edwards. "There was a little of that aristocratic sense that you still get with him." Many of Kerry's friends at Yale, whether on the soccer team, in the Political Union, or in Fence Club, had attended prep schools. But Barbiero, who was a friend of Kerry's at St. Paul's, said Kerry "came more into his own" in college. "In prep school, he had a pretty small group of friends guys who were interested in philosophy and political science," Barbiero said. "In college, he got to know everybody." Yet in Kerry's day, as Yale President Kingman Brewster began liberalizing the Yale admissions process, a divide remained between prep school graduates and students who attended public schools. To some students who had not attended New England boarding schools, Kerry seemed like the "ultimate preppy," Abbott said. "At that time, I think he had a bit of a reputation for standoffishness, which I think was a bit well-deserved," said Robin Landis '66, who played with Kerry on the soccer team. But Kerry's friends say his reputation for aloofness which led the New Republic to run a cover story last year asking, "Can John Kerry Make People Like Him?" is inaccurate. "I think John as an undergraduate at Yale had some of the same rap that he gets today, that he's overly serious, that he takes himself too seriously," said Frederick Smith '66, a fellow member of Skull and Bones who later founded the FedEx Corporation. "I think that's really a misnomer, because he's actually a lot of fun." Kerry certainly was serious at Yale. Because he often woke up at 5 a.m., his suitemates gave him a single, Barbiero said. Between his sports teams, his political activities, and his classes, Kerry did not have much time to spare. "John was just a guy who was very impatient," Barbiero said. "He didn't like lines he had so much energy, he had no patience to queue up." Nearly everyone who knew Kerry expected him to enter public office, and he pursued his interests relentlessly. While he never shied away from attention, other members of the debate team and the Political Union said Kerry also worked hard behind the scenes. "John was much more serious about the things he was interested in than most people," Barbiero said. "He was really dedicated to the things he wanted to do." On the field and on the road Kerry was perhaps best known on campus for his political activities, but when asked about his time at Yale, he emphasized his less serious interests. "Playing hockey, soccer, taking flying lessons out at Tweed my senior year those seemed to be my areas of focus too often," Kerry said. Although Kerry played three sports at Yale, he earned his only letter playing soccer his senior year. While he was not a star on the soccer team, he was a talented athlete, and he scored three goals against Harvard in his final game. As one of the fastest players on the team, Kerry's gawky running style occasionally earned him the nickname "The Camel" from his teammates, said David Thorne '66, one of Kerry's teammates and a fellow Bonesman. But in contrast to Kerry's other activities, he played more of a supporting role on the field, his teammate Landis said. "He was not really a leader on the team," Landis said. "Unless you were a really good player, it's hard to be a leader on the team." Kerry said his time on the playing field was among the most valuable he spent at Yale. "I loved playing hockey, soccer, and lacrosse, and I still play hockey," Kerry said. "I have such great memories of it, and it taught me some terrific lessons: a team ethic, a sense of competitiveness and drive that is a part of who I am and everything I do." Off the field, Kerry tended to socialize with a small group of friends. While he was a member of the Fence Club fraternity, Kerry who was not a heavy drinker seldom attended the club's weekend parties, Thorne said. Instead, Kerry and his friends would frequently go on road trips. Kerry was an avid skier and sailor in college, and his roommate Harvey Bundy said he spent much of his free time seeking adventure. After their freshman year, Kerry and Bundy set off for Europe without a definite plan. In London, Kerry delivered an impromptu speech from the famed Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. And in the Alps, he insisted on climbing a mountain at 5 a.m. and then ran down the peak, Bundy said. "He was not a frat boy, and he was not someone who was that sociable, necessarily," Thorne said. "He was adventurous and liked doing interesting things, like flying and skiing and riding a motorcycle, but he didn't like the social scene that much." Kerry also loved his parakeet, Dodi, whom he had taught to greet visitors in English, French and Italian. So when Dodi flew out Kerry's window and into a tree early one Sunday morning, Kerry was prepared for another adventure, his roommates said. Kerry found a ladder and climbed into the tree in pursuit of the bird. But while Kerry was in the tree, Yale police officers traveling down York Street became suspicious, Barbiero said. "It took a good 10, 15 minutes for the police to look and see that there was actually a parakeet," Barbiero said. A sense of duty In March 1965, as the war in Vietnam continued to escalate, Kerry won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that criticized U.S foreign policy as arrogant and unrealistic. "It is the specter of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating," Kerry said in his speech. "We have grossly overextended ourselves in areas where we have no vital primary interest." The next year, Kerry discarded his original Class Day oration which had already been published in the Yale Banner for a new address echoing many of the sentiments of his prize-winning speech. In a speech that was unusually political for a Class Oration, he criticized the United States for intervening in Asian affairs and isolating itself from the world community. "I think he was ahead of his time," Smith said about Kerry's attitude towards Vietnam. "I think he felt that the war was much more controversial at an earlier stage than anybody else." But even before delivering his oration, Kerry had enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Despite his public misgivings about Vietnam, Kerry was preparing to enter the military soon after commencement. While Kerry criticized the war and its goals, he was committed in his decision to serve. In contrast to Yale students two or three years later who more frequently tried to avoid the service at all costs, many members of the Class of '66 volunteered, Smith said. "I was very proud of my decision to go into the Navy and I still am," Kerry said. "But keep in mind, when I joined the Navy, the first draft card hadn't been burned. Vietnam was nebulous. It wasn't yet the war it would become." By volunteering, students could avoid the draft and enter the officer corps. But for the Class of '66, graduate school deferments were still available. If Kerry had not wanted to serve, he could have entered law school immediately after graduation. Yet for a class that grew up in the wake of World War II and the Korean War, military service seemed a patriotic duty that few of Kerry's classmates questioned despite growing ambivalence concerning the war itself, said his classmate Peter Day '66. "There was a much larger sense of obligation, that it was your turn just as the generations before had done it," Day said. So when William Bundy assistant secretary of state and uncle of Harvey Bundy visited Kerry and his suitemates and said the country needed them to enlist in the officer corps, Kerry listened. "I think that it would have been almost five times harder for him not to have gone than to go," Smith said. "The predilection of our class was much more old-school." Although Kerry could have avoided more dangerous combat as a naval officer, he volunteered to captain river boats in Vietnam. He was wounded three times in only four months and awarded the Silver Star for significant acts of courage. But it was Kerry's actions after he returned home that eventually thrust him into the national limelight. By 1971, Kerry was the spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He spoke at protest rallies and led a group of veterans in throwing their medals at the Capitol steps. Thorne, who also served in the Navy and remained close friends with Kerry after the war, said Kerry's military experience profoundly affected him. "Anyone confronted by the actuality of combat is deeply changed forever," Thorne said. "It's terrifying people are hurt badly and killed. It makes you grow up, and most of us began to deeply question what we were doing." At the age of only 27, Kerry was already a national celebrity. He was featured in Time magazine, and he denounced the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After two unsuccessful runs for the House of Representatives, Kerry attended Boston College Law School. In 1982, he won his first statewide election; two years later, Kerry was a U.S. senator. Facing the Kennedy legacy It is by historical accident that John Forbes Kerry shares his initials with the most influential politician of his youth. But since before Kerry entered Yale, he has shared more than a monogram with President John F. Kennedy. Like Kennedy, Kerry is a handsome Massachusetts Democrat with an Ivy League pedigree. Like Kennedy, Kerry is a decorated veteran who gained national recognition shortly after returning home from military service. "He came of age in a time when many of us were inspired by the visionary aspects of the Kennedy administration," said Duncan Campbell '66, one of Kerry's fellow debaters. "He was in a way very much influenced by the Kennedy government and the Kennedy era." Kerry also spoke with an accent and certain rhetorical flourishes that evoked Kennedy's oratorical style, Campbell said. Whether intentionally or not, both Kerry's manner of speaking and his political views invited comparisons to President Kennedy. He had met Kennedy personally, and he had sailed with the president at a Kennedy family retreat in Newport, R.I., Thorne said. Kerry first met Thorne at the retreat, where both were interested in the same woman Janet Auschincloss, Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister. Kerry and Auschincloss dated while he attended Yale, and his personal interactions with Kennedy led him to view the president as "larger than life," Bundy said. But in the fall of Kerry's sophomore year, Kennedy was assassinated. Kerry and Thorne were playing in a soccer game against Princeton when they heard the news. Kerry went straight from the game to church, Thorne said. Bundy, who first met Kerry at a Kennedy rally on the New Haven Green during their freshman year, said Nov. 22, 1963, was one of the most difficult days of the young Kerry's life. "I remember John lying on the floor of the room focusing on this little black-and-white TV," Bundy said. "He didn't take his eyes off of it." Forty years later, Kerry still invites comparisons to Kennedy not merely because of his mannerisms and personal biography, but also because Kennedy was the last New Englander to win a presidential election. And of course, the senior senator from Massachusetts is Ted Kennedy, one of Kerry's most ardent supporters for the Democratic nomination. On the campaign trail, Kerry frequently invokes President Kennedy's name and accomplishments, and he said politicians need to return to the idealism that made Kennedy a compelling leader. "We must be ready to refuse the course of least resistance confront the seemingly popular and offer a vision that looks beyond the next poll to the next decade and the next generation," Kerry said. "That means not just quoting the words of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, but matching their leadership with our own, with daring and commitment, with new thinking equal to a new and different time." + + + + + Next, Gary Aldrich wants to know the kind of information about John Kerry's past that hundreds and thousands of mainstream-media journalists demand about George W. Bush's past. + + + + + I experienced something akin to humiliation when the President of the United States ordered subordinates to release his dental records to the public. President Bush acted in hopes of ending the ridiculous argument surrounding his National Guard service. Nothing is sacred in today’s politics of personal destruction – invented and perfected by the Democrats. Not even the number of fillings in George Bush’s teeth. Thus, Senator John Kerry and his followers “opened the door.” It’s only fair that many will now choose to walk through that door. No competent attorney would ever open a line of inquiry in the courtroom unless he knew how the same issue would impact his own client. Democrats should not complain now if certain similar questions are asked of the good Senator. In the debate about which man has given more to his country, no evidence has been more emotionally persuasive than Senator Kerry’s own claims of war heroism. One basis for this assertion is that while serving in Vietnam, Kerry showed great courage in leaping off his boat to attack and kill a wounded North Vietnamese soldier. Evidence suggests the Vietnamese soldier had previously been wounded by a 50-caliber round. Veteran friends of mine tell me if a person is hit by a 50-caliber round, it is highly unlikely they could continue to be a threat, because of the hydro-shock associated with the impact of the round. I am assured this is true regardless of where the enemy was hit. I know from my own FBI training that certain high-powered rounds can destroy vital organs and blow away entire limbs – due to this same hydro-shock factor. Kerry’s claims that he saved his fellow soldier’s lives by taking the life of the wounded Vietnamese fighter now lie in reasonable doubt. Also, Kerry’s ardent fans clamor over the Purple Hearts he received for each of his several wounds. What is not widely known is that even a minor wound can qualify for a Purple Heart, and a combination of Purple Hearts can be the basis for reassignment to a safer post. Kerry did, in fact, take a safer post after accepting his war medals. Other veterans tell me they didn’t even put in for Purple Hearts, because they did not want to be transferred home unless they were seriously wounded. These veterans didn’t want to leave their buddies behind just to seek the safety of distance from the battle. In total, it appears Kerry was in-country less than five months. Yet some prisoners of war served more than seven years and had many serious wounds. Today, Senator Kerry likes the political attention his medals afford him. However, during one protest, Kerry was seen tossing his precious medals over the White House fence. Except now he says those were not actually his medals, but somebody else’s medals he discarded. Another version has him tossing over just the ribbons. Which is it? Anyone visiting his Senate office can see medals hung in a display case on the wall. Well, whose medals are in the display case? Are these Kerry’s, or did he or a member of his staff buy a few similar medals at a local pawn shop? Finally – in the biggest controversy of all – Senator John Kerry says he is a hero for standing up to power while protesting against the War in Vietnam. According to news reports, Kerry was protesting the war even as he served as a full-time member of the armed forces. Did Kerry take leave-time to attend these rallies, or was he AWOL from his post while he traveled around protesting the war? Did he only participate in peaceful war protests, or did he join the Hard-Left, anti-US, pro-Communistic cabal of Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and other well-known Hard-Left, anti-US radicals? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know where to find them. Every significant leader of any anti-war, anti-US protest from the 1960’s has a large file sitting in a file drawer over at the FBI Headquarters. The Bureau’s headquarters is located at 9th street and Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington, D.C. To get a copy of the FBI file, which would clear up this entire thing, Senator Kerry merely has to file a form. But HE must be the one to do it. Nobody else can get a copy – only John F. Kerry. And, because it’s a U.S. Senator asking, I am sure the FBI would find and copy the file in a hurry. Then, like President Bush, Senator Kerry could release his FBI file to the media. All questions would be answered. We could put the matter behind us and, as the Democrats are fond to say, “move on to real issues.” Like what Kerry would do as president if we were attacked by terrorists. Senator Kerry can also get a copy of his service records from the US Navy using the same kind of form. These naval records would clear up a lot of good questions about his military service in Vietnam. Today I am announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to encourage and assist Senator John F. Kerry in the acquisition and distribution of these two files. In due course, we will send the appropriate forms to Senator Kerry to be filled out. Soon, following President Bush’s lead, Senator Kerry can reveal to the mainstream media the various documents establishing the truth about his conduct. Vietnam veterans and former FBI and intelligence bureau agents are invited to join our exploratory committee. These individuals have a real sense of the truth about Senator John F. Kerry, and the Vietnam veterans have a large stake in the argument. We’re calling our exploratory committee, “Americans for Truth About Kerry.” Gary Aldrich is president and founder of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a Townhall.com member group. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. Last, an op-ed by Tony Blankley at WaTi today. + + + + + I disagree with those who believe that George Bush's National Guard record, or John Kerry's 1970s antiwar statements, should not be considered by voters in 2004. In fact, voters should know about drunk-driving records, marital relations, college cheating,war records, old resume enhancements and all the other bric-a-brac of a life about two-thirds lived if the man is running for president of the United States. Intelligence, judgment, character and personality as well as political philosophy and policy positions are all needed predictors of how a man will perform as president. American voters have a right to know and a duty to find out as much as they can about the man they would elect to the office; because an American president is not only the most powerful man in the world he is potentially the most dangerous. All people, but politicians especially, try to hide their weaknesses and shortcomings from public view. Thus, an election is not only a contest between two candidates, but a contest between each candidate and the public over a search for the full truth of the candidate's nature. Each piece of information, positive and negative, is probative (but not necessarily dispositive ) of determining that true nature. While self-consciously high-minded people condemn even honest negative campaigning, it is only through such efforts that hidden and embarrassing facts or conditions are revealed that may well be needed to properly understand the nature of the man and his fitness for the presidency. While we will surely find out more, we already know a lot about George W. Bush. As a well-born son of a famous family, he performed adequately, but not exceptionally, in his youth and early adulthood. He fell away from his faith, came to drink and party too much and drifted from one job or venture to another. Then, his life all changed. He sought out and re-found his faith, gave up his sybaritic ways, returned to the fold and focused his energies and abilities. We know this story well it is the parable of the prodigal son. And he ended up as president and headstrong leader of a great nation at war. But what is John Kerry's story? It has not yet come into public focus. We need to find out what makes Mr. Kerry tick. I have a suspicion that we will not truly know him until we understand what happened to him in the jungles of the Mekong Delta. Did the jungle, and what happened there, creep permanently into his psyche? Grass and vines quickly reclaim ground despoiled by human warfare. Slower to heal are the bodies, and sometimes the minds, of the warriors. Somemenareactually strengthened and made more wise by battle. Others leave the traumas of warfare on the battlefield. Yet others hide it deep in their minds and, upon returning home, go on about a regular peacetime life seemingly neither worse nor better for wear. Then there are those for whom war becomes the great, personally defining event of their lives. It not only shapes, but distorts, their perception of the world. Often this sort of man entered combat as an idealistic youth. Shocked by the brutality of war, they spend the rest of their lives failing to come to intellectual and psychological terms with the disparity between their youthful expectations and grim battle. These were good men, once. But they become spiritually damaged. Sometimes the more intelligent of these traumatized former soldiers turn to ideas, rather than liquor or opiates, to numb their troubled souls from their painful memories. World War I produced many such examples from the pacifist poets like Siegfred Sasoon and Wilfred Owen to the sensitive cultural scholar and novelist Robert Graves all the way to the demented ideologue Hitler. Is Mr. Kerry one of these types? Certainly he is not a Hitler. But is he one of the others? Did his experience with the horrors of war breed in him not a healthy caution before turning to military force, but an irrational obsession to never use force even when it is necessary for our national security? Certainly Vietnam never seems far from his lips or his mind. Of course he is not the first politician to take advantage of a good war record. Other than being a little unseemly, if his constant references to Vietnam are merely a pragmatic exploitation of a political asset, so be it. But if his experience in Vietnam has deranged his capacity to make rational judgments about the use of military force on behalf of national security, then, while he was an excellent junior officer 30 years ago, he would be unfit to be commander in chief today. Mr. Kerry should help us better understand his true nature by permitting the government to release his full military files. We can't afford to elect a pacifist president in a time of war. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Wed. 02/25/04 08:42:09 PM |
Who Shot HD? Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCVIII An article by Ciro Scotti at Business Week today. + + + + + Poor Howard Dean. The Icarus of the Democratic Party is back in Vermont now with what drippings are left of his wax-winged candidacy. But, to torture this allegory further, one question remains: Did Dean fly too close to the sun or just too close to the power source of the Democratic Party? The pundits of the Media Establishment and the jokesters of late-night TV would have us believe that Dr. Fury imploded, that he got so mad that he stamped himself into a political grave. Dean wasn't temperamentally suited to be President, they said, his message wasn't sunny, he was a loose canon, [sic] he wasn't electable, and the electorate sensed that. Yada, yada, yada. But was any of that true? Yes, some of it. Dean blew into the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination as The New Yorker dream candidate socially liberal, fiscally prudent, disarmingly candid, and personally charming in a smarty-pants, prep-school-boy sort of way. By all accounts, he had been a good governor of Vermont. He was a country doctor, not a Washington lawyer/politician. He respected women enough not to drag his physician wife out on the road with him. He wore cheap suits and never had his tie exactly straight. NICKELED AND DIMED. In another year, Dean would have been a respectable candidate with a sensible, eat-your-spinach message. And then along came Iraq. He spoke forcefully against the American invasion and stuck to his guns. More dangerously, he talked about taking back the Democratic Party. Meantime, Joe Trippi, architect of the Dean insurgency, went mining on the Internet and tapped into a mother lode of youthful discontent. Dean meetups spread across the country, much as be-ins and sit-ins had in other eras only the meetups were a lot nerdier. And Web-driven contributions poured in. Kids and little people frightened by the Bush Administration sent in their nickels and dimes, and Howard flew higher. As Mission Accomplished in Baghdad gave way to Mission Impossible and Mission Unnecessary and finally Mission Totally Fabricated, Dean soared. In the background, the Democratic powerbrokers shivered and quivered, and huddled together much like the Republicans in 1992, when the Buchanan Brigade momentarily threatened the GOP status quo. The man had to be stopped. If party stalwarts like Dick Gephardt and John Kerry couldn't do it, then by God they'd send for reinforcements. And so in rode General Wesley Clark on a makeshift horse that looked suspiciously like Bill and Hillary Clinton with a sheet thrown over them. AGAINST THE MACHINE. The big-media press, like the big-time pols they pal around with, didn't like Dean all that much (never got the genuflection thing right), but they liked the story and the excitement. A coronation ensued. In all the front-runner giddiness, Dean began to believe the dispatches. His message got sloppy. The gaffes piled up. And all the while the guru Trippi was spending campaign donations like Joan Rivers at a cosmetics counter and taking his big fat cut of media buys. For a while, Dean was able to shake off the flubs, but he was peaking too soon. Left alone, he likely would have cracked from the sheer weight of his unconventional and badly managed campaign. That was too chancy, though. No upstart from the woods of New England was going to seize the self-fulfilling, self-aggrandizing, self-lubricating power machine of special interests, corporate lobbyists, New Democrats, fat-cat law firms, think-tank theoreticians, union pooh-bahs, foreign policy blowhards, and coddled Washington pols. So the Democratic Party savaged one of its own. As The Washington Post reported on Feb. 11, a group called Americans for Jobs & Healthcare spent $500,000 on ads attacking Dean in the run-up to the primaries. The Post said the group was headed by David Jones, a longtime adviser to Gephardt. It said the group's spokesman was Robert Gibbs, who had previously been working for the Kerry campaign. And where did the money come from? According to the Post, disgraced former Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, a Kerry supporter, gave $50,000. REASON TO SCREAM. Other money, according to the Post, came from Alan Patricof, a Clark fund-raiser, and Bernard Schwartz, chairman of Loral Corp. Schwartz is a longtime moneybag for the Democratic Establishment who had close ties to the Clinton Administration. One ad the group ran questioned Dean's foreign policy expertise and used an image of Osama bin Laden. By the time the Iowa caucuses arrived, the attacks and the spendthrift Mr. Trippi had taken their toll. And then came The Scream which wasn't really a scream but just a weary man in a noisy room trying to rally his troops. In one wild night, Dean had been stopped. He hadn't been allowed to try to take back the country. And, more important, he hadn't taken back the Democratic Party. It remained safe in the soft, manicured hands of the Teddy Kennedys, Bill Clintons, Terry McAuliffes, John Sweeneys, and, yes, John Kerrys of the political world. And Howard Dean became Howard the Duck. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Wed. 02/25/04 05:44:18 PM |
"Humpty Dumpty Logic" A stupendous essay on the perils of attempting to redefine/undefine marriage and how much damage has already been done to the institution, the nation, and especially to children by Orson Scott Card at The Ornery American, Feb. 15: .... America's Anti-Family Experiment In this delicate balance, it is safe to say that beginning with a trickle in the 1950s, but becoming an overwhelming flood in the 1960s and 1970s, we took a pretty good system, and in order to solve problems that needed tweaking, we made massive, fundamental changes that have had devastating consequences. Now huge numbers of Americans know that the schools are places where their children are indoctrinated in anti-family values. Trust is not just going for them it's gone. Huge numbers of children are deprived of two-parent homes, because society has decided to give legal status and social acceptance to out-of-wedlock parenting and couples who break up their marriages with little regard for what is good for the children. The result is a generation of children with no trust in marriage who are mating in, at best, merely "marriage-like" patterns, and bearing children with no sense of responsibility to society at large; while society is trying to take on an ever greater role in caring for the children who are suffering while doing an increasingly bad job of it. Parents in a stable marriage are much better than schools at civilizing children. You have to be a fanatical ideologue not to recognize this as an obvious truth in other words, you have to dumb down or radically twist the definition of "civilizing children" in order to claim that parents are not, on the whole, better at it. We are so far gone down this road that it would take a wrenching, almost revolutionary social change to reverse it. And with the forces of P.C. orthodoxy insisting that the solutions to the problems they have caused is ever-larger doses of the disease, it is certain that any such revolution would be hotly contested. Now, in the midst of this tragic collapse of marriage, along comes the Massachusetts Supreme Court, attempting to redefine marriage in a way that is absurdly irrelevant to any purpose for which society needs marriage in the first place. Humpty Has Struck Before. We've already seen similar attempts at redefinition. The ideologues have demanded that we stop defining "families" as Dad, Mom, and the kids. Now any grouping of people might be called a "family." But this doesn't turn them into families, or even make rational people believe they're families. It just makes it politically unacceptable to use the word family in any meaningful way. The same thing will happen to the word marriage if the Massachusetts decision is allowed to stand, and is then enforced nationwide because of the "full faith and credit" clause in the Constitution. Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a "marriage" does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing. If you declare that there is no longer any legal difference between low tide and high tide, it might stop people from publishing tide charts, but it won't change the fact that sometimes the water is lower and sometimes it's higher. Calling a homosexual contract "marriage" does not make it reproductively relevant and will not make it contribute in any meaningful way to the propagation of civilization. In fact, it will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it's another nail in the coffin. Maybe the last nail, precisely because it is the most obvious and outrageous attack on what is left of marriage in America. Supporters of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm. You can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research. Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like. But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction. So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is. Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage. They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.... (Thanks, Bryan.) [Follow-up: "For Better or for Worse?"] Lane Core Jr. CIW P Wed. 02/25/04 05:32:43 PM |
Vietnam Veterans Question Kerry's Vietnam Service Though mainstream media is curiously un-curious about it. First, an article at FrontPage Magazine, Feb. 20 (emphasis in original). + + + + + The following was sent to a Marine chat net by a retired Marine Master Sergeant who was in S-2, 3rd Bn, 1st Marines, Korea in 1954. It calls into serious question John Kerry's military actions in Vietnam. We present it to give our readers another perspective to the media's one-sided "war hero" adulation, and to open his actions to the light of public discourse. The Editors. I was in the Delta shortly after John Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used, and I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command. Here are my problems and suspicions: (1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware that fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job, but that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs. (2) He collected three Purple Hearts but has no limp. All his injuries were so minor that he lost no time from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on, the boats were almost always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds, at least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the three Purple Hearts to request a trip home eight months before the end of his tour. Fishy. (3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong. (a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's. (b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring-do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too. (c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple: If you had somebody on the beach, your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight. Something is fishy. Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Japanese destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early and requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970, so he reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and has Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes against the Gulf War (a big political mistake since that turned out well), then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war. I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering out flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander-in-Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. Second, a blog at The Corner, Feb. 11 (brackets in original; JFK stands for John Forbes Kerry). + + + + + VERY interesting, from a military reader. I post the following because of its authentic-sounding quality, with no wish to slight or disparage anyone certainly not anyone who did combat duty in Vietnam. Would be very interested to hear comments or rebuttals from knowledgable servicemen or ex-servicemen, and will post them, though I reserve the right to edit (as I have, slightly, here). "Three caveats to remember before examining JFK's war record: "(1) Medal inflation. The Viet Nam War (VNW) was unpopular; in unpopular wars medals are generously awarded to try (usually unsuccessfully) to boost the morale of personnel and/or alter public opinion [the Wehrmacht on the Russian Front comes to mind]. The Navy was especially troublesome in this area because the majority of Naval personnel (aviators being the most prominent exception) in the VN theater were almost never exposed to enemy fire there were virtually no naval battles in the VNW (probably not even Ton-kin Gulf as it turns out). River patrol craft personnel were thus the Navy's entree into the medal arena they got lots of them. "(2) Three and out. It was a naval tradition NOT AN OFFICIAL POLICY OR REGULATION that allowed personnel with three Purple Hearts to transfer to non-combat duty. JFK was well aware of this tradition. "(3) JFK's Rank. Although JFK was not a high ranking officer he was always the highest ranking officer ON THE SCENE these were small craft and small operations. Enlisted men would be unlikely to risk contradicting JFK's account of what happened and 'boot lickers' would be encouraged to corroborate him. As ranking officer he was the one writing the eye-witness reports. In a sense his medals though approved by higher-ups were 'self awarded.' "With these three caveats firmly in mind let's look at JFK's record: "JFK experienced his first intense combat action on 2 December 1968. He was slightly wounded on his arm, he was awarded his first Purple Heart. "JFK was awarded his second Purple Heart after sustaining a minor shrapnel wound in his left thigh on 20 February 1969. "JFK was given a Silver Star for an action on 28 February 1969: JFK's Patrol Craft received a B-40 rocket shot from shore, he beached his craft in the center of the enemy positions and an enemy soldier sprang up from a nearby (10-15 ft.) hole and fled. The boat's forward machine gunner hit and wounded the fleeing VC as he darted behind a hooch. The twin .50s gunner also fired at the VC. The gunner said he 'laid 50 rounds' into the hooch before JFK leaped from the boat and dashed in to administer a 'coup de grace' to the soldier. JFK returned with a B-40 rocket and launcher. [In contrast, Army and Marine personnel were and are still routinely trained to engage and close with the enemy. Had JFK been commanding a platoon or rifle company this action going towards and not running away from enemy fire would have been routine.] "On March 13, 1969, a mine [this is dubious; marine mines were hardly used by NV forces; it was probably a propelled grenade of some type] detonated near JFK's boat, slighting wounding Kerry in the right arm. He was awarded his third Purple Heart. On the basis of these awards JFK then petitioned to be removed from combat operations. Interestingly JFK also made sure to have the men who served in his craft transferred to safer positions (easy to due in the VNW Navy) perhaps to ensure their endorsement of his actions." + + + + + See also BUSH WAS AWOL, KERRY AWARDED HIMSELF THAT CHEST FULL 'O' MEDALS. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Wed. 02/25/04 07:34:55 AM |
"Behind the Debate Over Gay Marriage" Margaret calls my attention to this article by Alicia Colon at The New York Sun, Feb. 23: .... Consider the fact that gay rights is not the only social issue that has resulted in many political figures cashing in long-held beliefs for political gains. Abortion is another. Those who charge that there is a cultural war going on in America are closer than they realize to the truth. Over 40 years ago, Rep. A.S. Herlong of Florida introduced into the Congressional Record, January 10, 1963, excerpts of a book written by a former FBI agent, Cleon Skousen. It was called “The Naked Communist,” and the excerpts were “current communist goals.” There were 45 in all, at least 40 of which have been achieved. These are some that need to be noted as apropos to what is going on in America today: • Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. • Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.” • Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.” • Discredit the family as an institution. • Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights • Eliminate prayer or any phrase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” Mr. Skousen’s book was written during the Cold War and before many of the goals had been reached. I was aware of the Soviet Union’s “five-year plans” but I thought he had taken liberty with his interpretation of the communist agenda until I reread the “Communist Manifesto” written by Marx and Engels. One quote in particular resonated. “Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love.” .... See also "The Western Disease": .... Where did this disease come from? Would I be too much of a crackpot if I speculated that, if Communist infiltrators subverted our institutions decades ago — infecting them with anti-Americanism to be passed on from generation to generation in order that our whole society would be weakened and possibly destroyed without the need of a conventional war to do it in — "The Western Disease" might very well be the longed-for result? And see also Castro and America's Liberals: Go figure. They despise George W. Bush. Bush = Hitler, dontchaknow. (Okay. They don't all despise him. I'm talking the left-wing bigmouths.) But the real murderous brutal tyrant, Fidel Castro, they love. On the one hand, it defies all reason: they adore the man who has ruled the despotic, repressive dictatorship closest (geographically) to the USA. Yet, it makes perfect sense: he is a communist; he is a left-wing tyrant; he is a leftist. Like they are. So he can do no wrong. He's one of them.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P Wed. 02/25/04 06:42:31 AM |
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