Kerrey and Vietnam
Veterans must tell the story in all its truthful
brutality
By Stan Goff
Guest columnist
I don't know whether former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey of
Nebraska ordered the execution of 15 Vietnamese women and
children in 1969. I suspect he is dissembling with the story
that they were caught in the crossfire.
My own military experience tells me that 15 people don't get
killed outright in the crossfire of a single, short,
small-scale firefight. The odds against it are astronomical.
Most times when everyone on the losing side dies in a combat
engagement--combat veterans who are honest will tell
you--executions likely took place after the outcome of that
combat was already resolved.
On April 23, 1971, as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War, future Massachussets Senator John Kerry, whose name
and background are so similar to Kerrey's that it had me
confused for a day about the Kerrey story, testified to the
U.S. Senate that U.S. troops he knew "had personally raped, cut
off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones
to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown
up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in
fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for
fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the
countryside" and that "[t]hese were not isolated incidents but
crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness
of officers at all levels of command."
(It helps to be there, for it to be tactile, visceral.
Kerry's repugnace for violence against civilians was swept away
by--what? Democratic Party loyalty?--when he supported the
bombing of Yugoslav civilian targets during the NATO aggression
in the Balkans. Life on the inside of bourgeois politics is a
slippery slope for a conscience. Pragmatism and opportunism
become unfocused and indistinct.)
So I don't know whether Bob Kerrey is telling the truth
today, but I can assure you that John Kerry told the truth on
April 23, 1971. I was a machine gunner with the 173rd Airborne
Brigade in a mountain range we called the Suikai on that day.
All that he was describing to the comfortable white men of the
U.S. Senate was still taking place in Vietnam at the very
moment of his description.
Bob Kerrey says he is ashamed. I have to believe that, too.
But I don't think our shame is enough. Military people,
especially that minority who have actually been the combatants,
who take that first baby step of comprehending the poisonous
lies of the American military fetish, have a duty to go beyond
mere shame. We must witness. And we must interpret. Kerrey's
foray into the Mekong, and the My Lai massacre, and No Gun Ri
in Korea, and the current lethal sanctions against Iraqi
civilians, and the violation of Yugoslav sovereignty, and the
financing and advisement of the bloodthirsty Colombian Army and
their drug-trafficking paramilitary allies.... These are "not
isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis
with the full awareness of officers [and political officials]
at all levels of command."
The truth has ever been the same. The cover stories have
ever been the same. The job of penitent veterans must be to
assault the denial that these cover stories market to the
public consciousness and conscience.
Even as many of our own people go without, we have
acquiesced before a government in the thrall of corporate money
and power that has appropriated $300 billion for what is
euphemistically referred to as "defense." The U.S. military
establishment is a monstrous thing, put to monstrous purposes,
and we who were the instruments of that establishment--if we
are to reclaim our own humanity--must come forward and help
Americans understand what is done in their name.
We must be the blasphemers, because that gives others
permission to confront the orthodoxy of reverence before
"warriors." Your children who go, as I did, into the armed
services, are being made tools--or worse--for an organization
whose sole purpose is to employ violence against those who
threaten the dominance of those who are dominant, and against
those who would tell the submissive that they need not
submit.
We often worry about sending our children to die, but we
should also worry about sending our children to kill.
I hope Bob Kerrey can find it within himself to explain
this. I hope he can come to terms with it.
The women and children who died in the Mekong on February
25, 1969, do not have the living luxury of shame and
reassessment. The most any of us can do for them now is tell
their story, in all its truthful brutality, and tear down the
walls of denial that stand between a people and their
consciousness.
Stan Goff is a Vietnam veteran living in Raleigh, N.C. He
served for 24 years in the military, largely in the Special
Operations field. He worked in Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.
He is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier's
Memoir
of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press,
2000).
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page