JOHN KERRY, VIETNAM, AND THE ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Sun Nov 24 2002 10:09:53 ET
Senator John Kerry's 'aristocratic reserve, his utter inability to pose as a
populist, is not a quality recently associated with successful candidates for
President of the United States,' Joe Klein writes in 'The Long War of John
Kerry,' in the December 2, 2002, issue of the NEW YORKER.
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Kerry will soon
announce his intention to run, Klein reports. To give himself a chance, Klein
suggests, 'John Kerry may have to become the politician he once dreamed of
being,' before naval service in Vietnam altered the course of his life. Kerry's
criticism of Bush's foreign policy is 'meticulous and comprehensive,' Klein
writes.
Kerry says, 'The Administration mistakes tough rhetoric for tough
policy. They may gain short-term domestic advantage as a result, but they are
damaging the long-term security of the country. This is a far more complicated
world than the ideologues of the Administration care about or understand.? For
example, Kerry argues, Bush's rejection of the Kyoto treaty on global warming
was short-sighted.
'One hundred and sixty nations spent ten years working to get
to a certain place and the United States just stands up and dismisses it out of
hand.... It just declares it dead. Now, what do we think those presidents of
those countries, those prime ministers and those finance ministers, those
environmental ministers are? Are they all dumb? Are we telling them they are
absolutely incapable of making judgments about science, that the ten years of
work that they've invested in conference after conference, many of which I
attended, was absolutely for naught.'
James
Carville tells Klein, 'I think he's had a hell of a year. Why? Because he's
actually saying something. People do notice that, you know.'
In Vietnam, Klein
reports, Kerry was 'something of a cowboy.'
During the firefight for which Kerry
was later awarded the Silver Star, Kerry, after his boat had crashed ashore,
found himself facing a lone Vietcong holding a B-40 rocket-propelled grenade
launcher.
'When he first stood up, he froze,' Kerry says, 'because he didn't
expect to see us staring him in the face, literally ten yards away.'
After the
man was wounded by one of Kerry's men, he began to run away. Kerry chased him
down and killed him. 'I didn't want to let him get away,' he says. 'I didn't
want him to run away and turn around with an active B-40 and take us out. There
but for the grace of God...The guy could have pulled the trigger and I wouldn?t
be here today.'
Vietnam and its legacy has dominated Kerry's political career,
from his leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War to his bipartisan
collaboration with Senators McCain, Hagel, and Cleland concerning policy on
Vietnam veterans and normalizing ties with the country.
David Thorne, a close
friend from college and Kerry's former brother-in-law, tells Klein, 'He knew
that his actions in Vietnam might have some bearing on his future life. But none
of us could anticipate the impact 'the psychological trauma' the war would have on
us. John's been able to live with the demons of combat, but they are there and
they've given his life shape and meaning in a way that he never anticipated.'
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