Kerry's Post War Conduct is a Perfect Model of American Values

 By Vivek Thuppil

Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry has enjoyed one month of favorable coverage in the media. It all started with him picking the charismatic, "Clintonian" senator from North Carolina, John Edwards, as his running mate in his bid to present George Bush a one-way ticket to Crawford, Texas. The Democratic National Convention followed soon afterwards, where Kerry formally accepted the nomination to become the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

At this convention, Kerry addressed the nation and soothed voters' concerns.

It seems to have worked. Although I personally wouldn't trust George Bush with a BB gun, before the convention, an alarming 51 percent of Americans trusted George Bush to be an able commander-in-chief of the armed forces compared with 43 percent who thought the same about Kerry. After the convention, Kerry and Bush are locked in a dead heat with 48 percent thinking that Bush is an able commander-in-chief and another 48 percent thinking the same about Kerry. Now that the convention is over, Kerry's boat is likely to sail into stormy waters.

The first hostile entity it will encounter is the new book that is to be released soon, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. In this book, some American prisoners of war during the Vietnam War allege that John Kerry's actions as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were taken advantage of by the North Vietnamese to degrade the morale of American POWs still in Vietnam.

Many former POWs certainly have no love lost for Kerry. One of them, Kenneth Cordier, an Air Force pilot who spent 2,284 days as a POW, said "[The North Vietnamese captors] were always talking about that," referring to the anti-war demonstrations, "and they picked up right on Kerry's throw-away line 'Don't be the last man to die in a lost cause, or die for a lost cause.' They repeated that incessantly."

Another critic of Kerry's actions during the war was Senator John McCain of Arizona, but he has then since changed his mind about the type of man John Kerry is. When asked to campaign for former Massachusetts Governor William Weld who was running against Kerry for a Senate seat in 1984, McCain said "I simply would not do such a thing. I couldn't do that ... I'm surprised you would ask ... Going to campaign against John Kerry is something I wouldn't consider." It would seem that is his feeling even today. It is obvious that John McCain's half-hearted "support" for the incompetent ... er ... I mean incumbent president is more out of his obligations as a member of the Republican Party than any real faith in Bush's abilities.

The feelings of these POWs are certainly understandable. I can sympathize with them. They were in a hostile enemy camp and their captors were showing them pictures of their fellow countrymen and fellow soldiers denouncing the cause they were fighting for, the cause that they were imprisoned for.

However, I firmly believe that John Kerry's actions after the Vietnam War make him a better candidate than ever before for the presidency. Unlike George Bush, who shirked his responsibility and avoided National Guard duty, John Kerry answered the call of duty and went and served his country in Vietnam faithfully, earning three purple hearts for his heroic actions during the war.

However, it isn't John Kerry's actions during the war that are most commendable. It is his actions after the war. After finishing his service and coming back to the U.S., John Kerry exercised those very rights that he had fought for in Vietnam. He exercised his constitutional rights to demand answers from the government. He demanded to know why American soldiers were fighting a war and getting killed in Vietnam. He demanded for accountability from the government, and called upon it to end a needless war. Though the war was long lost by that time, the government continued to ship out tens of thousands of troops to Vietnam; many of these soldiers would never see their loved ones again. John Kerry's actions after he came back, along with the actions of millions of other like-minded Americans, helped end the war that much sooner and bring back American POWs back home that much more quickly..

It is some of these very same POWs who mistakenly believe today that John Kerry betrayed them. John Kerry didn't betray them; their government did betray them when it knowingly sent them along with tens of thousands of others to a war it very knew that it was losing.

The situation today is not much unlike the situation in the early 1970's.

The government today also sent tens of thousands of soldiers to fight an oil-driven war on fictitious reasons. The current government has even stooped as low as to hijack the 9/11 tragedy for political gain as it has used its Orwellian politics of fear and hatred to justify its actions. And today, John Kerry finds himself in the same place he did so many decades ago. Once again, he is calling upon the government to be answerable to the people, and calling upon it to justify its unjustifiable actions. Much attention has been given in the conservative media of how he supposedly authorized the war and then denied the soldiers the funding they needed to stay alive.

Let's try the truth now. John Kerry believed the president when he said that he had indisputable evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was a "smoking gun," and an "imminent threat." In hindsight, it may have been foolish of him to take the bait, but hey, when the president of your country says something, you wouldn't think that it would be a blatant lie. When in fact it did turn out to be a blatant, bold-faced lie, he demanded to know what the president had done with the first $100 billion of taxpayers' money before handing him another generous check for $87.5 billion.

Despite all the funding, this administration's policies have been consistently anti-soldier. Not only have soldiers not gotten the armor and munitions they need, despite all the funding that the Bush administration has requested, their veterans benefits are being cut day by day. John Kerry finds himself in a very similar position to where he was more than three decades ago. The death toll in the current conflict is much lower, presently somewhere a little higher than 900. But as far as John Kerry is concerned, that is 900-something deaths too many.

Vivek Thuppil is a junior majoring in bioscience and environmental science at Drexel U.

originally published in The Triangle.