2001-04-29
Wikipedia on Kerrey
Has the story taken an
ugly turn? Kerrey met with six of the seven members of his commando team on April
27th for a long, evening meeting. The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to get
their stories straight. The six emerged from the meeting all agreeing that they had
been fired upon first by the enemy before returning fire. They all denied that
villagers had been rounded up and shot.
What is kind of strange here is this: Kerrey has admitted to an act that
certainly should raise questions about criminal prosecution. Then he held a meeting
with all the American witnesses-- except for Gerhard Klann, who denies that shots were
fired at the commandos-- to coordinate their stories. If Kerrey had been charged, it
would be illegal, of course, for witnesses to gather together to "get their story
straight".
Kerrey and the six commandos then issued a press release insisting that they had
been fired upon first. Why should we believe this account? To contradict this
story would be to admit to cold-blooded murder, and the six ex-commandos would not likely
embrace any other alternative. I'm not saying that we know their statement is
false. But no court of law in America would accept or even allow the testimony of
six witnesses who met together prior to giving testimony in order to coordinate their
stories.
It should be noted that there are problems with this story in any case.
First of all, none of Kerrey's men were wounded. Secondly, all of the
villagers died in the first hail of bullets, according to Kerrey. They all died?
Not a single survivor? Not a single wounded? This strains credulity.
Kerrey also initially denied that he had anything to do with the murder of an old
man at a "hooch" (hut) at the outskirts of the village. Now he admits,
"we used lethal methods to keep our presence from being detected". Oh the
euphemisms! This one smells. Try "we killed several villagers at the
outskirts of Thanh Phong so they wouldn't give us away."
"The unanimous view of the six was that we were young men and we did what
was right and what was necessary". The defendants have spoken: they're not
guilty. Think about it. He can't have it both ways.
Either the civilians were killed in cold blood or you were shot at and there
is no need for the "we were young" and the "right and necessary". No
need at all.
What has being "young" to do with it? What is he trying
to excuse, for which we would be less forgiving if they had been "old"?
2008-05
One last note: Kerrey received a medal for this action. Think about
that. No Viet Cong were killed. No military objectives were achieved.
The raid was not even successful in any sense at all. But, by golly, you get
medals for failure in the army.
If you haven't already read Bob Kerrey's "confessions" to the
New York Times and CBS' 60 Minutes by now, you owe it to yourself. It is a stirring,
compelling story.
It seems unfair to summarize this riveting account, but the basic facts
are important. In February 1969, Bob Kerrey, a Lieutenant, the commander of a Navy
Seals Squad, led his men into the village of Thanh Phong in the Mekong Delta. Shots
were fired. "Thirteen to twenty" unarmed women and children were dead.
That's really all there is. Well, you know, there is of course a
long story with it. No one can live with himself having murdered twenty women and
children without have a long story about it. And I don't necessarily mean that Kerrey
excuses his actions. But I do mean that when you add a long story and you admit that
you are confessing a terrible secret and the secret is that you murdered twenty women and
children, the truth is that you believe that what you did was different in some way from
what a cold-blooded murderer does but very, very awful, but different, but awful... well,
how far back can you step, from the basic facts? On my first reading of the account
published in the New York Times, it certainly struck me that Bob Kerrey was confessing to a
very serious crime. Just above his confession is a link to a story about attempts to
prosecute the men who set a bomb off at a church in 1963 in Alabama which killed four
children. You understand: we are trying to prosecute these men. And I had to
wonder, of course, if anyone is going to try to prosecute Bob Kerrey.
Kerrey tells us that the women and children were killed because someone
fired upon them and his men returned fire, and when they examined the bodies, they found
only women and children. But he admits that before they returned fire, and
before someone allegedly fired upon them, they had already murdered an old man and an old
woman and three children in a hut on the outskirts of the village. If there is
ambiguity about what happened to the people in the village proper, there is no ambiguity
about the actions of the men earlier. They were afraid that these villagers would
reveal their presence to the others. They had to be silenced. They were
murdered.
Gerhard Klann, who was with Kerrey that night, doesn't agree with Kerrey's
version. Neither does Mike Ambrose, who was also there, nor a Viet Namese woman who
claimed to have witnessed the incident. Pham Tri Lahn. Klann says they were never fired
upon. Instead, they rounded up the women and children and when they realized that
the
man they were looking for, a Viet Cong officer, was not present, they decided to kill the
villagers. They did not want to leave witnesses to the earlier murder of the
grandparents and three children, and they did not want any enemy in the area to know they
were there. Of course, as the Times points out, firing your weapons would certainly
give away some information about yourself.
Now, there are a lot of people out there who will immediately object to
my use of the word "murder". I would expect they would argue all or any of
the following:
1. "civilians"-- women and children included-- were
known to operate as part of the Viet Cong and sometimes killed unsuspecting U.S. soldiers,
therefore, Kerrey was justified in treating them as a threat to their lives.
2. This was war, after all, so you have to accept civilian
casualties. The normal rules don't apply.
3. It was all a regrettable mistake, but not something you could
compare to a deliberate act under entirely different circumstances. The men were
justifiably frightened.
The trouble is that all Western nations agree that, even in
hostile territory, the deliberate murder of unarmed civilians is not permitted. This
is the military speaking-- not some pie-in-the-sky liberal pacifist. This is the
standard that German officers were held to at Nuremberg. This is the standard that
the U.S. has publicly agreed to in treaties and protocols signed and ratified by the
government. This is the standard we are holding above the thugs and murderers of
Kosovo and Serbia.
The trouble is, the civilians were unarmed. They did not
attack the soldiers. They did not call out for help from hiding Viet Cong
commandos. They did as they were told. They waited for the men to complete
their search. Then they were shot in cold blood.
The trouble is that even if Kerrey's account is to be believed--
that they were fired upon first and that they returned fire in self-defense-- they still
murdered the old couple and three children in the first "hooch" in cold blood.
That is a war crime. That is cold-blooded murder.
And Kerrey's account is troubling. If they were fired upon
first and returned fire in a random, panicked spree of self-defense... why were all of
the civilians killed? Were none wounded?
In the movie, "The Great
Escape", a German officer informs an American commander that a group of the escapees
were killed while fleeing their pursuers. "How many," asks the American,
"were wounded". The German officer, whom we are given to
understand is a honorable man fighting for the wrong side (a typical myth of militarists
everywhere: that honorable men can fight for evil causes and still be
"honorable") painfully admits,
"none".
We know exactly what he means. And we know why it is so
troubling that Kerrey tells us that none of the unarmed villagers were "wounded".
This is the part of the evening that Kerrey, while claiming to have made a
damning confession, refuses to discuss.
There are strange ambiguities in the world. We still prosecute
Nazi war criminals when we find them. We're trying to prosecute the murderers of
those four black girls in Alabama in 1963. An international tribunal in Holland is
trying to bring Milosevic and his cronies to justice for similar crimes.
We throw children and young adults into brutal prisons for long terms
for smoking a harmless weed. We try to impeach presidents for having sex
with women they are not married to. We ruin the lives of athletes and politicians
and business executives who lie or cheat or harass.
In Viet Nam, on a dark night thirty years ago, a group of American men
entered a village and murdered 20 civilians. I think Kerrey is genuinely sorry it
happened. But so is everybody.
