Given the power of the Swift Boat Veterans’ criticisms of Kerry’s war record, his “Bring it on!” invitation to make an issue of his national security credentials is beginning to seem like a re-run of Gary Hart’s famous invitation to the press in 1987 to ‘follow me around . . . it will be boring.” But it also reminds me of another scandal that emerged, or didn’t, during a presidential campaign.
Regarding Kerry’s false statements about being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 (since, as InstaPundit shows [start at the top and keep reading], he has said both that he was in Cambodia and near Cambodia, something he has said is false) and the possibility that he submitted and has been repeating false information regarding the circumstances that led to his Purple Hearts and other commendations, I feel like I’ve been here before.
That’s because we’ve all been through this before. It was in 1992 when Gennifer Flowers revealed aspects of Clinton’s character that his supporters, and many others, did not want to believe, and so did not want to hear. I have a very good example of this will not to believe: c’est moi. Yes, I liked Clinton in 1992. I watched with great interest when he and Hillary went on CBS to respond to the Flowers charges, and I was immensely relieved when they successfully deflected the charges. Reading the transcript of that performance later on in Clinton’s second term, with the benefit of Paula and Monica and Kathleen and Juanita et. al., I shuddered (and still do when I think about it) at how gullible I was, and at how little I cared whether he was lying or not.
This uncomfortable memory suggests to me that we’re missing a larger point revealed by the Swift Boat veterans who are criticizing Kerry. Although I certainly think it is important about whether Kerry consciously lied about being in Cambodia and about whether he submitted false accounts of his wounds in order to gather three Purple Hearts so he could go home early to run for Congress, a more interesting and significant point may be that many of Kerry’s supporters don’t really care whether the charges are true or not. To them, lying is purely a personal matter, a matter of character, and as such is not really relevant to “the issues” on which Kerry, like Clinton was to them (and Nixon was to his similar defenders), is so good.
Don’t even think about pointing out to these see-no-evil defenders that in the not so distant past they claimed to believe that presidential lying was a big deal (Bush Lied! etc.). It will have no effect.
I don’t mean to imply that all of Kerry’s defenders against these charges are mindless hypocrites. Some are quite thoughtful. They just don’t seem to think that matters of personal character are that important in a president, or something. The establishment press as well has not seemed terribly curious about investigating these charges. In my view, the lack of concern with whether Kerry is telling the truth may well be more important than whether he is telling the truth or not.
Here are two examples, both pointed out on Instapundit (here and here):
Robert Musil, who argues: “Yes, there is considerable evidence – and always has been – that John Kerry has exaggerated certain aspects of his military record but so have a great many very brave and noble combat veterans throughout history – and it has always been that way, in and after every war.”
And Matthew Yglesias:
Personally, I’ve never maintained that John Kerry had a George Washington-esque level of honesty (see, e.g., my article about how Kerry is basically lying about his trade policy) so my world won’t be shaken to the core if this turns out to be a fib.
Yglesias was discussing Kerry’s claim to have been sent on secret missions to Cambodia, but I assume he would say the same about faked Purple Heart requests and false after action reports to make himself look heroic.
Mere “fibs.” They all do it. etc. In other words, déjà vu all over again.
“Don’t even think about pointing out to these see-no-evil defenders that in the not so distant past they claimed to believe that presidential lying was a big deal (Bush Lied! etc.)”
I support Bush, but let me play the devil’s advocate here: Those who say “Bush lied” (I know, he didn’t) believe this was more than a fib; they believe that people died because of it. That is not the case with Kerry’s lies.
I remember that CBS interview. Hillary still had her hair long with the Alice-in-wonderland ribbon, right? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I was skeptical of the GF story for various reasons, partly because I like to think that people are upright and honor their vows. It’s wrong to assume that immoral things are true of other people.
But I remember that when the interviewer said to her something like, “So there’s no truth to this, right? There was no affair between your husband and Gennifer Flowers?” she nodded, but very, very slowly. I got the distinct impression that for her it was like, “I’m moving my head up and down. You can interpret that as a nod if you want to.” I thought then, they’re lying.
And for me, it is a character issue. If I thought that Pres. Bush knew there were no WMDs in Iraq and that he deliberatly told us untruths to get backing for this war he wanted, I would never excuse that.
Not a single one of the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth actually served with Kerry. Their animus towards Kerry is based entirely on vehement disagreement with his antiwar statements, not on any first-hand experience or knowledge. (The man who says he handled Kerry’s first wound may be an exception, but Jon Stewart reported that this man’s name is nowhere to be found in the pertinent records.)
The Cambodia claim, similarly, seems to be mostly bogus. For example, a careful reading of the (allegedly inaccurate) claim that Kerry referred to something President Nixon said about Cambodia even though the incident in question occured in Dec 1968 (i.e., before Nixon was inaugurated and before Nixon made the statement in question) is just a grammar gotcha. It makes no more sense than accusing someone of lying if he said “I played rugby at Yale with President Bush.”
Where are the people, either for or against, who served with Bush-boy in those missing months of National Guard service?
Here are vets who support Kerry
Co-author of “Unfit for Command” and architect of smear strategies against McCain (2000) and Kerry is a bigoted far right-wing nut.
Kerry has many faults, but the “dishonest and dishonorable” [Sen. McCain] prevarications of the so-called Swift Boat Veterans are not among them.
John:
You are absolutely positively correct to draw this analogy. I say this with conviction because . . . I’ve drawn it myself. In fact, I just wrote a letter to the editor this AM–the local paper, in a lead editorial, more or less took the position that it doesn’t make much difference, and I pointed out–correctly, I would say!–that we almost had a constitutional crisis with Clinton because the public, press and candidate all suddenly got lazy about character.
If the Kerry charges were less minor, no big deal. No one’s perfect. But the SBV charges amount, sorry to say, to much., much more than that. At least potentially. Which is why, while I have not drawn a firm conclusion on the matter, they are to my mind of significant consequence in terms of the election.
A month or so back you may recall pleading with me not to lose heart and support JFK. I’m coming round. And as my parents used to say, we’ll see.
Fenster
Dom – I think it’s valid to contrast “lying” us into war (which some think GWB did) with resume-padding, self-aggrandizing lying. Still, veterans who refused to accept Purple Hearts for real, legitimate wounds are, I think, entitled to be no less engraged over Kerry’s behavior (assuming, of course, that the Swift Boat vets are correct).
Fenster – Hang in there. Don’t just watch the Swift Boat Vets ad but read UNFIT FOR COMMAND.
Andy – We usually disagree but I rarely (if ever; can’t recall) say you’re WRONG about something. Reasonable people can disagree over many important things, can have different but still legitimate interpretations of events, etc. But here I think you’re simply wrong. Of the 250 or so Swift Boat vets who have signed on to the Kerry criticisms, a very large number actually did serve with him. They were not on his boat (although none of the 6 or 7 or 8 who now accompany Kerry, presumably at his expense, themselves served with him for more than 4 or 5 weeks), but they served with him in the same way that members of different squads in the same platoon, or different platoons in the same company, served together. One of the most controversial and significant of their claims that he’s lying — his rescue of the special forces guy, Rasman, from the river, there were three boats involved, and during the events in question they were frequently no more than 10 yards apart. Same with the guys who said one of wounds was not from enemy fire but because he himself fired a grenade into a rice storage bin, no enemy around, when he was too close to it. That’s why some rice was extracted from his behind along with sharpnel. There’s not much rice in the middle of the river, where, in Kerry’s version, he received the wound from an exploding mine.
P.S. I intended to include in my comment but forgot the following two additional points:
1) Re Kerry’s recent retraction of what was “seared, seared” into his memory (as he said on Senate floor in 1986) about being illegally ordered into Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 by President Nixon, whom he listened to lying about it: three members of Kerry’s own crew have stated they were never in Cambodia (nor, for that matter, was Nixon president in 1968).
2) Kerry has used on his web site and in his ads a picture of him standing with 18 (or is it 19?) of his fellow Swift Boat officers, possibly implying that they support his candidacy but certainly indicating that they served together. 11 of them have signed a letter asking him not to use their likeness in his campaign material; a couple are dead; and several didn’t want to be involved one way or the other. If Kerry himself uses a picture of people he served with, surely the people he served with are entitled to say they served with him.
“Not a single one of the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth actually served with Kerry.” As John has already pointed out, that assertion is false. True, they were not his crewmates, but they don’t claim to have been his crewmates. They were fellow officers and, thus, served with him in the same squadron. Moreover, five of the Swiftees in the ad (Elliot, French, Thurlow, Elder, and Hildreth) are pictured with Kerry (in the photo John mentioned) that Kerry’s campaign uses. If they’re good enough for Kerry to use that way to support his campaign, without their approval, why aren’t they good enough to impugn his credibility?
Oh. Wait. They are good enough to impugn Kerry’s credibility. That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?
As to Dr. Letson, he has sworn that he was the only doctor stationed there at the time. (Which ought to be easy enough to verify, or to disprove, if anybody in mainstream media cared to do so. Which they don’t.) Someone on his support staff signed the papers. Big whoopee ding dong: as if that kind of thing doesn’t happen every where, every day. Somebody please remind me to never cite Jon Stewart (of Comedy Central!) as an authority, okay?
Allow me to highly recommend Beldar, yesterday.
Kerry appears to have been off by two or three weeks. Big whoop.
I think when it comes to the respective war records of the candidates, Kerry’s strategy is what poker players call check-and-raise. Have you worked out a timeline of Bush’s NG service yet, gap and all? Compared it to the (false) claims of his 2000 campaign [“George W Bush served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 until 1973”]?
Andrew,
Of course they won’t. You don’t have to go back thirty years to discredit George W. Bush. Just look at the economic data TODAY. Look at the dead bodies piling up in Iraq TODAY. Look at the hatred of America in the world TODAY. These right wingers on this blog will say ANYTHING to defend Bush. Right now, the current strategy by Karl Rove is to have the swift boat veterans launch attacks, just like they attacked John McCain, and Max Cleeland. Look how quickly the conservative sharks frenzied on Jessica Lynch once she decided she didn’t want to be used by the GOP propaganda machine?
It’s very simple with these folks, Andrew. Any criticism of Bush is “unpatriotic”, and any veteran wounded in ANY war who supports a democrat is a liar at best, or a traitor at worst.
This is what America 2004 has come to.
–Cobra
Have you wondered whether all that schrapnel in Kerry’s leg (or is it arm?) sets off the bells in airports? If so, it would be one easy way to clear up one Purple Heart claim.