youthful indiscretions (and treacheries)

Horsemen of the PoMo Apocalypse

The Richard Clarke Affair has done me in. I have severe politics fatigue.

But one more post before I turn to other topics for a while. Bryan Preston of JunkYardBlog was kind enough to link to my piece on John Kerry's home movie fetish. The least I can do is return the favor, as he's been posting like gangbusters in recent weeks on Kerry's rather dubious post-Vietnam conduct.

Now, 1971 was a long time ago. People do stupid things when they are young and stupid, as I know from woeful experience. But Kerry's antiwar activities are of a different order entirely.

Not convinced? Just follow the links below, especially to Bryan's much more detailed posts.

• In his 1971 Congressional testimony, Kerry charged American forces with atrocities “committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.” There were some war crimes, such as the My Lai massacre. But Kerry's statements were by his own admission based on the infamous Winter Soldier “investigation” which was little more than a fabrication of the antiwar left. It is unclear whether Kerry suspected that the Winter Soldier claims were invented at the time he gave his testimony. But what is relevant today is that he now denies ever making war crimes accusations at all, a lie that some in the press inexcusably ignore. (More here.)

• In the same testimony, Kerry admitted to meeting with representatives of the North Vietnamese government while in Paris, and went as far as to say his behavior was “on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera.” Kerry's campaign is unsurprisingly downplaying the event. The press ought to make the candidate himself describe what transpired there—but don't hold your breath.

• The antiwar veterans' group of which Kerry was a leader—called, unsurprisingly, Vietnam Veterans Against the War—became progressively more radicalized, to the point that at a meeting in November 1971 a proposal was made to assassinate US Senators who still favored continuing the war. According to historian (and Kerry supporter) Gerald Nicosia, there is overwhelming evidence that Kerry was present at this meeting, in spite of his repeated claims to have resigned from the group several months before. (This does not mean that Kerry supported the assassination proposal, however; indeed, all evidence is to the contrary.)

• Bryan also notes a TV interview with a veteran and former VVAW member who first denied Kerry's presence at the November 1971 meeting, only to claim moments later that Kerry had vociferously opposed the assassination plot when it was proposed at the same meeting. I happened to catch the same interview; Bryan's description is accurate.

• Some of the evidence Nicosia cites comes from FBI files obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Late last week a number of those files were reported stolen from Nicosia's home, in what may have been targeted operation, as other valuables in the home were untouched. It should be very interesting to see how this story develops.

The American public is willing to forgive all sorts of misdemeanors, especially ones long past. But if Kerry persists in his attempts to whitewash his antiwar activities he may find the next seven months to be very long indeed.

And now let's see how long I can avoid talking politics, shall we?

UPDATE. Not very long at all, apparently: John Fund has a long piece at WSJ's Opinion Journal that hits on many of these same topics. Well worth the time.

Now I'm really done.