Missing the point in the Kerrey controversy

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© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com


It has been revealed that former Sen. Bob Kerrey led a Navy unit that killed 13 women and children in a Vietnamese village in 1969.

Mr. Kerrey has claimed that he and his men were returning fire in the night and didn't know they were killing civilians.

The argument over whether his actions were justified misses the point.

It has been said over and over that in war terrible things happen sometimes. I agree, but why don't we draw the obvious conclusion from that?

If war produces such terrible events, why do our politicians keep dragging us into wars?

We were told we had to "draw the line" in Vietnam. Well, we drew the line and the communists crossed it because we couldn't stop them. Over 47,000 Americans and God-only-knows-how-many Vietnamese died there, and still Vietnam fell to the communists.

But that hasn't stopped our politicians from rushing Americans to fight or otherwise be killed in Panama, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Colombia, and plenty of other remote places in the world. Not one of these little adventures achieved the goal the politicians gave for going there in the first place. Or haven't you noticed that Saddam Hussein still sits on the throne in Iraq and drug-dealing still permeates Panama?

What is war?
The politicians tell us how essential each war is -- and they try to make us imagine heroic young men marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and bringing peace and democracy to the world. But their stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes averted from what war really is.

War is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're even fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. It is your brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people -- and to hate people who are just like themselves and who don't want to kill anyone either. It is your children seeing their buddies' limbs blown off their bodies.

It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the ones they loved.

It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as your career means to you.

It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on other Americans and on people in other countries -- taxes that remain long after the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the jailing of people who criticize the government.

Often it has been the imposition of slavery by forcing young men to serve in the military.

War allows the politicians to goad us to hate foreign people and races -- whether Arabs or Japanese or Cubans -- so we become insensitive to cruelties inflicted on them. It is cheering at movies or news footage of "their" pilots killed in planes, of "their" young men blown to bits while trapped inside tanks, of "their" sailors drowned at sea.

Other tragedies inevitably trail in the wake of war. Politicians lie even more than usual. Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule rather than the exception. The press becomes even less reliable.

War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, dishonesty and slavery.

War is the worst obscenity government can inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime -- corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty -- seem petty.

Government's role
If government has a role to play in foreign affairs, it isn't to win wars, to assure that the right people run foreign countries, to protect innocent foreigners from guilty aggressors, or to make the world safe for democracy -- or even a safer place at all.

If government has a role, it can be only to keep us out of wars -- to make sure no one will ever attack us, to make certain you can live your life in peace, to assure you the freedom to ignore who is right and who is wrong in foreign conflicts.

The only reason for military power is to discourage attackers, and -- if they come anyway -- to repel them at our borders. Such things as stationing troops in far-off lands, meddling in foreign disputes, and sending our children to foreign countries as "peacekeepers" only encourage war.

To make America safer and to assure that we stay at peace, we don't need to put more weapons in the hands of government employees, or to reform military purchasing methods, or to make more treaties with other governments, or to increase the military budget.

In fact, we need just the opposite of these things. We need to make it as hard as possible for politicians to involve us in war. And we need to discover a defense system that relies as little as possible on the normal workings of government.

Government is no more able to achieve military goals than it is to end poverty or stop drug use or run our health-care system. And it's time we started questioning why we allow politicians to continually drag us into unwinnable and fatal conflicts.

More important than asking whether Sen. Kerrey's actions in Vietnam were justified is the question: Why was he there in the first place?



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Harry Browne was the 2000 Libertarian presidential candidate. More of his articles can be read at HarryBrowne.org, and his books are available at HBBooks.com.

I think it is a bunch of BS that politicians, media types and others who have most likely never seen a real combat zone to judge Kerrey.  None of these people laying blame know what it was like over there, or what the circumstances were.  Most of the folks laying blame probably either were not born yet, or were not old enough to know what Vietnam even was at the time.  From what I've read on the topic Kerrey was in a no win situation.  I have read that the folks were rounded up and shot so that the SEALs could escape.  Well, if he hadn't done that, and the whole SEAL team had been gunned down, mutilated, and put on display, everyone would have been whining about what a terrible leader he was.  Well, he did what he had to do to get his men out safe and that is commendable in my opinion.  

WHAT HE SAID! Except don't leave veterans alone Honor them

WHAT?? Where did you get this? How would killing civilians allow them to escape?

I agree that most people judging him have never been near combat. I'm not sure that disqualifies them to judge. But it does speak to there qualification to judge.

Sen. Kerrey has said that they were taking fire so they returned fire. After it was over they found they hadn't killed the enemy, just civilians. Some other guy that was there says they killed the civilians intentionally. Sen. Kerrey says he has spoken to others that were in the unit and they remember it the way he does, not the massacre version. Sen. Kerrey say the other person may remember it differently. Sen. Kerrey didn't degrade the other person when he denied the incident, but did say that it may not be an accurate remembrance.

Sen. Kerrey has always seemed, to me, to be honest prinicpled person. You man not always agree with him but he will not stoop to name calling or "misinformation" I don't think he would lie, no matter what the consequences of telling the truth are, and I believe his version of the incident.

The one judging that I give any credence to is the other member of the unit who has a different story.

Kerry is a politician. If his lips are moving there is a good chance the full truth isn't coming out.  I noticed the "liar" brush was quickly gotten out (not by Kerry but by his supporters) & used upon the other unit member who broke the story.  

Joker: "How can you shoot women and children"?

Door Gunner: "Easy, you just don't lead'em so much"

Funny how a guy who votes for more gun control was a guy who earlier in his life murdered unarmed old men, old women, little children, babes, mothers, etc.  Makes me feel and fuzzy inside.  

From what I've read so far, there is more than enough evidence to begin an official war crimes investigation against Her Kerrey and his NAZI SEAL team.  

                                            War is the abolishment of laws/morals.....at least temporarily.....you fire when fired upon, or when suspect of enemy activity, whoever gets in between is victim of war, end of it....Kerry is in the center of political meandering....whether or not we ever find out the real reason is yet to be seen.....the worst part is how a focused group can make/break a man`s charachter by digging up sins of the past......too bad that the media fuck-up assholes can pick up on washington power swing and sway opinion on what a man did under the stress of war....rather than what/who that man really is today........flame all you want......remember oliver north?...and hear this....the media ,morons could/would ruin swartskolff if they wanted/needed to....[heavy]

Shit happens. Just say "fuck it" and soldier on.
Unless, of course, you are a media vulture and it's a slow day. Or, you are full of angst and just have to make sense of it. It doesn't make sense. It just is. Always was. Always will be.

Women and children were often the instrument of war for the Vietnamese. It was hard to tell so I say they might have done what they had to do.
That should be the end of it.

Not so long ago it was common pratice to kill innocent women and children. WWI and WWII.

Hiroshma & naggasaki. We all cheered!!

LET IT GO!!

oldeschool.... you said it!

What we have here is another example of a media feeding frenzy.  There are plenty of liberal minds in the media that were protesters or would have protested had they been old.

Show me anybody with a weapon in hand that won't return fire when fired on.  Maybe you don't believe they were fired on.  Maybe you believe the vietnamese woman who reportedly was there and who still lives under communist rule and has changed here story several times.  Did you ever wonder just how they found her so fast when this story broke?  I sure do...

Who wouldn't be bothered after finding that you shot and killed civilians - women and children.  But what were they doing in a free fire zone?  I haven't heard anybody talk about finding enemy weapons - the sharks will say that is because there weren't any in the first place.  How many times did the VC start a fight and then disappear.  How many times did Victor Charles use civilians - women and children as insulation?  They sent little kids with satchels filled with explosives to "die for their country" and kill American GIs.  Intel said that this official was supposed to be there.  Everything sounds solid up until they realized that the only dead were women and children - what a moral victory for Charlie.

I'm gonna say it again loud and clear - unless you have been faced with a similar situation - you don't have any place to judge or mouth off about it - you have no clue!

The media realized they had a live one here and they are determined to wring it out...

Talk about what you know about - if you don't know then keep quite.

[sniper]
[b]The Sniper