I've found this thread very amusing, also. And I have to say your high standards are very impressive, but I guess we should have high standards when it comes to our so-called lefty mini-celebrities. Same with our political leaders. You seem to be finding Kerrey guilty until proven innocent. The fact of the matter is that the witness who came forward is said to have a beef against Kerrey. However, given what went on in Vietnam 30 years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
I don't know about you, but one reason I like to read conservative writers every now and then is for stuff like the following.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/30/opinion/30SAFI.html New York Times Op-Ed April 30, 2001 Syndrome Returns by William Safire
WASHINGTON Medal of Honor winner and former Senator Bob Kerrey, joined by five members of the Navy Seal team sent into a free-fire zone in South Vietnam for the purpose of killing Vietcong Communist leaders, asserts that they were returning enemy fire on that dark night 32 years ago. To their lifelong dismay, their blazing response killed civilians of all ages.
One member of the team disagrees, claiming that Kerrey ordered deliberate murder. That lone account is supported by the wife of a Vietcong fighter, speaking with the approval of Vietnamese officials, whose story has already changed from what she said she "saw" to what she now tells reporters she "heard."
In our system of justice, the burden of proof is on the accuser and a presumption of innocence belongs to the accused. No hard evidence is offered to support this grave allegation. That is why the denial by the anguished Kerrey and his fellow veterans deserves respect. They have long been burdened by guilt at the mistaken wartime killings, but they are not murderers.
This story is another manifestation of the self-flagellation that led to the Vietnam Syndrome — that revulsion at the use of military power that afflicted our national psyche for decades after our defeat.
It is the pacifist position that holds Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon morally culpable to have helped the South Vietnamese defend their nation from Communist invaders from the north. The American elites that ducked the draft were right to refuse to get involved in somebody else's civil war, goes this voice. Many of those too poor or patriotic to arrange deferments to avoid service were shunned as killers on their return.
The national affliction called the Vietnam Syndrome carried this message: because war means killing, and because killing brutalizes and dehumanizes those charged with doing it, we should never again become involved in such a messy endeavor. Honoring commitments to allies? An excuse for imperialism. Containing the spread of Communist tyranny? One day the democratic and Communist systems would peacefully converge, we were assured; therefore, never hesitate to accommodate.
In commentary that followed the accusation of Kerrey and his men, the point was hammered home that never again must Americans be turned into savage brutes. Time magazine puts it this way: "Nations have no business sending their young into battle without lasting moral justification . . ."
In the 1960's, the majority of Americans agreed with three presidents and most in Congress that resisting the spread of Communism was morally justified. We saw a vast difference between free nations, with all their faults, and tyrannous regimes determined to gain control of their neighbors. Some of us, in our simplistic Manichaean way, saw democratic freedom as good and Communist despotism as evil.
That was America's moral justification for sending our troops to defend Europe in the cold war against a Soviet Union determined to dominate the world. That was why it was right to send troops to South Korea to defend it against Communist aggression from the north and later to send troops to South Vietnam to do the same.
We won two out of those three. Because America was ready to fight, Europe is free. Because Americans were united and limited war was successful in South Korea, that nation is free. But because we were divided and limited war failed in Vietnam, the people there now are unfree.
Ah, but the Syndrome's requirement is "lasting moral justification." If the justification does not last — that is, if we lose, or if real or imagined horrors surface decades later — then ex post facto morality kicks in and it becomes wrong to have sent our young into battle.
Partly to avoid late-hitting charges of individual brutalization and atrocity, military planners are banishing close combat in favor of long-range missiles and smart bombs from 15,000 feet. War by remote control means that more civilians may die but less guilt will be felt.
Some Vietnam heroes in the Senate condemn that conflict even as they forgive Kerrey and his team any possible transgression in the fog of war. Are there no voices left, after that costly loss of human life, to reject the Syndrome's humiliating accusation of national arrogance — and to recall a noble motive? [end]
>>You're playing dirty pool. I never compared the two. I was just pointing
out
>>that the "brave" Vidal has a very high opinion of Hitchens and would take
>>him over you - who he probably hasn't even heard of - any day of the week.
>
>Getting a little pissy, aren't you, pal?
>
>Rakesh
Yes I was. Sorry.