Hitchens on Kerrey

[Carl Remick]

>>  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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