The Winter Soldier

Suzanne Fields writes another column on the women vote today. That part isn't too exciting, other than that she doesn't spend any time wondering why nobody wants to analyze the "White Male" vote.

But she does include this history rewriting section.

Women, it seems to me, were turned off more by the replays of his slurs against the soldiers he left behind in Vietnam. It was one thing to attack the war, but quite another to attack the men fighting it.

When he described the American soldiers he left behind as guilty of raping, beheading and burning villages, the tales of his own heroism became suspect. Would he similarly mock the service and sacrifice of soldiers fighting in Iraq in what he calls "the wrong war"? Ask any wife, mother or daughter of a fighting man if that influences the way she weighs the candidates this fall.

Here are the questions before us. Were the accusations John Kerry read, and had entered into the congressional record, accurate (or as accurate as possible for the time)? And did John Kerry place the blame for such accusations squarely on the feet of the American Soldier?

The answer to the first one, as much as you might not want to believe it, soldiers in Vietnam did terrible, terrible things. I wish they hadn't, but they did. Senator Kerry's testimony was largely accurate by any serious historical standard. My Quiet Life has dedicated some time to reviewing this issue. But, of course, we are being asked not to judge his testimony by history, but by ideology.

Secondly, was John Kerry's mission to tear down and humiliate the American soldier? No, it was to decry the decisions that had led to a break down in military discipline. Somewhere along the way, these sort of actions became acceptable, from an institutional standpoint. Soldiers knew they could burn villages, or rape Vietnamese girls, and there would be little to no personal consequences to their actions. Once you put soldiers in a position where they know they can give into their darker impulses without consequences, than some will.

Of course, many, if not most, soldiers had an internalized moral code that kept them from doing such awful things. But some didn't. And the natural consequences followed. This is also what is so wrong with Abu Ghraib. Not what the individual soldiers did, which is bad enough, but that somewhere along the way the sort of brutality committed there became acceptable.

In fact it is a betrayal of our Soldiers that such lawlessness was allowed to exist, and fortunately, for the most part, it is not allowed today.

So to return to Suzanne Field's question, John Kerry told the truth in his testimony. Let me quote from My Quiet life.

John Kerry did his duty as a soldier, and he did it honorably. He then came home, and did his duty as a responsible citizen of this country. He spoke out. I think Dwight D. Eisenhower put it best:

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Dead on, in my opinion.