Back to School: John Kerry's 1971 Senate Testimony

The school year has begun. Will it be business as usual?

The current bruhaha in the media regarding John Kerry's Vietnam war experience actually began in the primaries, when Pres. Bush attacked Kerry's protesting of the war in Vietnam, implying that Kerry's protesting was dishonorable and cowardly. This caused people to look for facts on whether Senator Kerry was a coward, and the material was then brought forth about his service record. The record speaks for itself, but our national fixation with the war-service question seems to obscure the reality that beyond the simple courage of behaving well in battle, the greater courage came later, in trying to change the course of a country.

Any of us can read the transcript of the Senate Hearing in 1971 in which John Kerry spoke as a representative of Veterans Against the War to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. A portion of this is available on video from MoveOn.org.

The video takes us back to the 70's, when we were very different people. I was in college then, too. Yet, amazingly, we were facing similar problems. You realize that when you read Kerry's speech, (which by the way, is 9 pages of clear thinking expressing the will of the 1000 veterans he represented), and the subsequent Q&A session (a significant stack of paper--Kerry's very coherent answers to the questions of the committee). This 27-year-old person obviously has a strong grasp of the nuance and the breadth of a very difficult subject, and with clarity of expression, he helps to turn the course of a nation that needed to be turned.

There are several things we can take from this wealth of information. One is the depth of conflict and responsiblity inherent in war. In our current time, when sound bites, such as "Dead or Alive," and "staying the course," and "protecting Freedom" are taken as rationalizations for our nation's behavior, we can compare the thinking expressed in this document from the past.

In 1971, Kerry speaks of the veterans' anger at finding out that the rationale for the war was phony, realizing that the South Vietnamese just wanted to be free to grow their rice and live, and that the Americans were often seen as the oppressors.

He spoke of veterans' anger that "money from American taxes was used to support a corrupt dictatorial regime" and that in battle, the "blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties." He spoke of an America that "accepted very cooly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum."

Kerry speaks of the anger of the veterans who feel betrayed having to fight for a mistake, then called "misfits" when they try to speak out. He identifies the great threat to the United States. "...the crimes we (Americans) are committing (in Vietnam) threaten (our country), and we have to speak out."

He asks, "How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

This is a speech from a young person to all people.

In the Q&A session, Kerry shows leadership, for example, when Senator Fulbright explains that Congress cannot actually stop the war, merely make recommendation to the President. Kerry returns with two specific ways that Congress CAN be effective within its power: namely to vote to cut off funding for the war, and to pass a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of it.

Later, still off-the-cuff, Kerry tackles the thorny questions of tangled responsibilities: to the South Vietnamese government members whom the U.S. supported (created); to the people of South Vietnam, to the U.S. soldiers, to the international community.

I hope that this fall, the young people in our colleges and gathering places are reading the 9/11 Commission Report. I hope they are reading the full text of this speech of the young John Kerry. I hope they are reading the platforms of the the Democratic, Republican, and Green parties. I hope that they are looking for documents and other information sources with deep meaning, and that this school year, they claim the vigor that youth of other generations have shown, becoming leaders in the positive, progressive work of guiding the world.

The alternative is to be mired in group-think. America really can do better. It's more than a slogan, and we have to work to keep it that way.