Hitchens on Kerrey

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Fri May 4 19:55:34 PDT 2001



>> HITCHENS: Of Bob Kerrey? Well, he's my president, in fact,
>> since I teach at the New School, and I think he wouldn't --
>> he wouldn't have made that bad a president. I know him
>> slightly. I like him very much. I -- I think he probably
>> would have done well to decide whether he was going to all
>> three things, and there's a little confusion.
>>
>> But look, none of the people he killed were raped. None of
>> them were dismembered. None of them were tortured. None of
>> them were mutilated, had their ears cut off. He never
>> referred to them as gooks or slopes or afterwards. So it --
>> con -- for one day's work in a free-fire zone in the Mekong....
>
>Can anyone parse this? Is this some sort of irony?
>
>Doug

No, just the usual kaleidoscopic culpability that made everything about the Vietnam War and the debate over that war so vertiginous. Never has there been so much attenuation, extenuation and equivocation about war crimes and remorse -- a complete hall of mirrors. I like William Saletan's comment about Kerrey in a Slate piece, "Fog of War Stories," today: "So here's Kerrey's position: He's haunted by the massacre of women and children in Thanh Phong, and he didn't slaughter them deliberately or without provocation, but he had good reason to do so. And if that answer doesn't satisfy your curiosity or your conscience, welcome to Vietnam."

Carl

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