The Lesson of Bob Kerrey's Ordeal

The Hill

May 2, 2001

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey's (D-Neb.) current ordeal is instructive on several levels. Everyone who knows the senator says he is a good man. He fought in a war that some of those questioning his actions today opposed, and he did so with uncommon valor. We know that because the Medal of Honor is not lightly bestowed even in today's world.

On his return home, he won the support of the people of his state and served then both as governor and senator. He was a liberal, of course, but he thought about his positions and was thus never a simple ideologue like some I could name.

Now, after his retirement from public office, he is being dragged through the mud because of unproven and unprovable allegations that strike me as less than credible given the man's personality and public record.

We are today in a period when we truly want wars to be fought by the Marquis of Queensbury's rules and are prepared to condemn anyone who has fought them as though they were…well…wars.

Think about it. If the treaty creating the International Criminal Court that former President Clinton asked the Senate to ratify as he left office had been in effect 40 years ago, Kerrey would today be subject to extradition and trial as a war criminal in the Netherlands. He might even be able to look forward, had it not been for his colleague's refusal to ratify the treaty, to sharing a cell with Mr. Milosevic or one of his Balkan friends.

That prospect alone should convince the Senate that we ought to resist the politically correct desire of many to create such international tribunals, if only because the Kerrey case demonstrates the irrationality of trying to fit the chaos of wartime behavior into a nice, neat intellectual and academic framework.

This is not to excuse wanton acts of violence visited upon civilians, but to point out that modern wars are terrible undertakings and that those who fight them are all too often asked or even required to engage in acts that leave them scarred for life.

I don't know whether Bob Kerrey's version of what happened three decades ago in Vietnam is accurate, but I do know that he and his fellow SEALs were there that night because we wanted them there. They were young and scared, but ready to do what they were trained to do for a country that has never been sufficiently appreciative of their willingness to serve when others would not.

Kerrey's SEAL team operated, according to various news reports, out of Vung Tau, a deceptively beautiful spot on the coast where, to the consternation of Americans, off- duty South Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers sans uniforms actually shared a beach. You couldn't tell them apart without their uniforms, and it wasn't much easier when they put them back on to resume a war that, for many of them, had been raging for more than 20 years.

The Mekong Delta was incredibly dangerous in those days and it was virtually impossible to tell the good guys from the bad. Villages flew the South Vietnamese or Viet Cong flag depending on whose army was in the neighborhood. Communist guerrillas operated in all of them relying on both cooperation and terror to protect them from our troops and those of our South Vietnamese allies.

Survival in the delta required our troops to operate on the assumption that anyone encountered—in or out of uniform—was the enemy. In a "free fire zone," such as the one Kerrey and his team found themselves in that January night, that assumption was well nigh unrebuttable.

What Kerrey and those with him learned that night and in subsequent action is that war is even more hellish than its billing. What's more, it's chaotic, noisy and confusing, but they accepted all that and, unlike many of those dissecting their actions today, did their best. What's more, they survived.

The men who fight our wars see things that the rest of us can't even imagine. They are asked and trained to do things that no sane man really wants to do and they do what they are asked simply because it's their duty.

I don't find it strange that when they've done what has been asked of them, most of them want to forget what they've seen and get on with their lives. They endure their nightmares alone and most of them—whether veterans of Vietnam, Korea or World War II—rarely talk about their experiences.

These are men who sacrificed much for the rest of us and they bear scars as a result. The least we can do is respect their desire to be left alone if only because we don't have to endure those nightmares ourselves.

David Keene is the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a managing associate with the Carmen Group, a Washington, D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm.