I think there are more productive ways to criticize Kerry than to criticize his essentially impressive military record. Mortar? Bullet? His own mortar? These things don’t come with return addreses. Besides the only reason they’d fire a mortar at all at night, I presume, is to engage the enemy.

He didn’t decide to award himself the Purple Hearts; the military did. Just like they awarded GW an honorable discharge.

Is Mr. Roach saying the public shouldn’t know these facts about Kerry? Far more than any previous candidate, he’s made his military service the centerpiece of his candidacy and his identity, and done it in the most arrogant, self-promoting way. Yet, as with everything else about him, there are these huge contrdictions. He wants recognition as a “war hero,” even though he came back home and falsely accused his fellow members of the armed forces of systematic Nazi like war crimes, treasonous lies that he has never retracted. He wants recognition as a “war hero,” though he manipulated things to get himself out of Vietnam as fast as he could, partly on the basis of this phony Purple Heart.

And, no, the Purple Heart doesn’t just come from above. In an earlier story (I don’t have the link at the moment) the officer to whom Kerry initially applied for the Purple Heart told of how amazed he was that Kerry was asking this, but then he kind of said something like, “Sure, go ahead, put in your application,” and then some time later was shocked to find that Kerry had indeed gotten the Purple Heart.

The man is a colossal fake. If people want Bush to go down, that’s fine. I have no intention of voting for Bush. But let’s not fall into the all-too-human error of thinking, “Because I’m against Bush, I have to imagine that Kerry is better than he really is.” The truth is that Kerry is the worst. Let’s look reality in the face.

I have not seen this other report of which you speak, and I’m not sure why I would believe it even if I did.

Kerry’s military FITREPS were excellent; I have read them myself, and have checked them with people whom I trust who are veterans or presently active duty.

Purple Hearts are not just for serious wounds. They’re not just for amputees. They’re for wounds received in combat. Pretty much if you saw a corpsman and got treated and that treatment went in your file you got one.

I think it is unseemly to look to closely into the details of this or that medal he received, particularly when the persons doing the looking have not served at all (Cheney) or have served in CONUS through family help (Bush). I think Kerry’s postwar actions are far more worthy of scrutiny, as he basically defamed his fellow veterans. But just because I don’t like Kerry—and I don’t—does not mean everything he ever did was terrible and shameful. He served well and honorably in Vietnam and all of his FITREPS confirm this.

Does Mr. Roach think that everyone reading this will know what FITREPS means? When using unfamiliar acronyms, please give the full name.

I don’t agree that Kerry’s military record should be off limits. I also don’t agree that only people who have served in the military can discuss the record of someone who served in the military. Kerry has said that people who have not served in the military cannot question his voting record in the Senate on military matters! Roach’s position is not far from that. Kerry is running for president. He’s made his own, terribly contradictory, record the centerpiece of his campaign. The question of his Purple Hearts is as legitimate as any other public issue.

I think everyone even vaguely familiar with the miltiary will understand them.

I don’t know how old you are Mr. Auster or whether you served in Vietnam or in the military in any capacity. Or if any of your kinfolk did. But I know a bit about the military. I volunteered for Marine PLC in college until I was medically discharged. Both my brothers are Marine officers. I have a lot of friends in the military and I’ve read a lot about military history.

Do you have any knowledge or qualifications to question Kerry’s purple hearts or whether they were unusual in any way? Do you know what “I Corps” was in Vietnam, or what the difference is between a SWIFT Boat and a PBR? Do you know about Operation Market Garden and SEA LORDS? I wasn’t in Vietnam, but I’ve read enough to know all of that information.

I don’t agree his Senate record is off limits to discussion because his military record. Or for that matter his military record and his postwar record. But since his miltiary record is a good one—as evidenced by his Fitness Reports (FITREPS)—one should be more circumspect about questioning that. This is particularly so when so many of the questioners were less brave and have less impressive military records, if at all. And this is even more emphatically true when the questioners don’t know enough about the military to know when they’re being sold a bill of goods by an axe-grinder of some kind or another.

Mr. Roach seems to forget that we share a common society in which we are discussing public issues of public concern. His reasoning here is like that of a multiculturalist: only blacks can teach, or even have an opinion about, black culture; only Hispanics can teach, or even have an opinion about, Hispanic culture. But that’s not the way the world works. Once an issue becomes a matter of public interest, then people are going to discuss it and form opinions about it. I have no military experience. I am discussing published articles, including, in this case, the published statement by the doctor who treated Kerry for the scratch on his forearm which he treated with a band-aid and for which Kerry got the Purple Heart that enabled him to leave Vietnam eight months before his tour of duty was over.

If Kerry had not been so self-promoting about his engineered, aborted four-month tour in Vietnam, a record which he claims gives him special knowledge that makes him more qualified to be president than his opponent; if Kerry had been more quiet and modest about his military service, then these issues would not have come up and Mr. Roach wouldn’t have to be so indignant about the fact that a non-military person such as myself dares to question anything about Kerry’s service. But Kerry himself made his service an issue, and if Mr. Roach doesn’t like what’s being said about Kerry, then Mr. Roach is going to have to enter the public square and make his own arguments, which would include informing the rest of us about military matters, such as the rules under which Purple Hearts are given, that he presumably has more knowledge of than the rest of us. What is not legitimate is for Mr. Roach to try to close out the discussion by saying that only military people are permitted to engage in it.

The one thing I understand well about Vietnam is that the awarding of 3 Purple Hearts got you out of the service early. Seems to me it is fair to ask if the Senator was trolling for his 3 Hearts. We know he served less than half of his tour of duty because of the awarding of those Purple Hearts. Can’t hurt to look into this. As they say: the truth is out there.

Let me add that the fact of having served in the armed forces doesn’t provide any sure route to definitive knowledge on military matters. Take the present case. Mr. Roach opines that it makes no difference whether the scratch on Kerry’s arm came from an enemy round or from his own mortar round richocheting off a rock. But other military people I’ve read say that it does make a difference, that a Purple Heart is supposed to be for a wound received from the enemy, not for a wound resulting from an accident. Now, I don’t know which side is correct on that point, but that’s exactly what discussion is all about, to filter the various arguments and facts for ourselves and arrive at the best answer. And to engage in such discussion, it is not obligatory that one has served in the military, since, as we see in this case, military people themselves have different views on the matter.

Though I did not serve in the military myself, I do come from a family that has ample military experience. Kerry’s self-promotion of the “war-hero” label is very unusual in a person who has been through combat experience. Most combat verterans I’ve met, including my father (who won the Distinguished Flying Cross in fighting against the Nazis), are very reluctant to talk about their experiences at all. I thiink all of Kerry’s shameless self-promotion in this area is an indicator of his baisc lack of character, and makes the scrutiny of his military record fair game.

A disntinguished service in the military does not automatically give a person the ability to be an effective political leader. George McGovern’s WW II record was exemplary, but the political and moral positions he took were reprehensible, dangerous and irresponsible. Likewise, no one can dispute the service of John McCain. McCain nevertheless has no problem with allowing an invasion of his own country - even his own state.

I agree completely with your point on the politics of authenticity. Folks other than military people can discuss the military, Kerry’s record, and foreign policy.

But everyone should not talk about everything. I don’t discuss how to fix Ford automobiles, or how to insert a stent into someone’s heart, or other technical matters. I talk about foreign policy and politics and some military matters because I know about those things.

It is unwise to discuss matters on which one is completely uninformed, such as whether Kerry’s Purple Hearts are unusual in any fashion. I also think it’s unwise to do so when his FITREPS are out there and no one can say a bad thing about them. (Kerry, recall, was challenged to produce them and he did. No one’s had any intelligent criticism since).

I submit that you have no basis or knowledge with which to say anything intelligent about Kerry’s military record, Mr. Auster. Supplying a link is one thing. I often do this myself and also add when I don’t know if it’s true or reliable or believable when I can’t evaluate it. I criticized your point—and articles in that vein—because wounds received from enemy action, whether large or small—are deserving of a Purple Heart under military regulations. I can supply the military regulations, but you can google them as easily as I can. Some units, it is true, may have created a higher standard than this, but that standard has no basis in military regulations.

It took about two seconds to find this link on Google.

Purple Hearts are automatic if criteria met. I realize possibility that his wound from mortar fire may have been backblast. It may have been from the enemy too. Maybe you can yank the Purple Hearts from our boys that die in friendly fire incidents when you’re at it. Or maybe the military then and now sensibly errs on the side of granting the award.

http://www.americal.org/awards/ph.htm

And note particularly this passage from the award regulations:

(b) Individuals wounded or killed as a result of “friendly fire” in the “heat of battle” will be awarded the Purple Heart as long as the “friendly” projectile or agent was released with the full intent of inflicting damage or destroying enemy troops or equipment.

Mr. Auster wrote: “…he came back home and falsely accused his fellow members of the armed forces of systematic Nazi like war crimes, treasonous lies that he has never retracted.”

I assume this is a reference to the Winter Soldier hearings, also known as the S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure) Hearings. James Kunen’s “S.O.P.” contains 200 pages of testimony excerpts. Whether any or all of the testimony is true is a separate question. My point is that it’s all first-person accounts. At worst, Kerry was repeating other people’s self-incriminating treasonous lies.

The purpose of the hearings was to establish that My Lai was not an isolated incident but part of a Standard Operating Procedure pattern. In this they were largely unsuccessful even by their own standards. Interestingly enough, given this week’s headlines, the bulk of the testimony they were able to collect concerned interrogation and treatment of prisoners.

Mr. Roach began this discussion completely off-base and he remains completely off-base. He writes:

“It is unwise to discuss matters on which one is completely uninformed, such as whether Kerry’s Purple Hearts are unusual in any fashion…. I submit that you have no basis or knowledge with which to say anything intelligent about Kerry’s military record, Mr. Auster.”

Now this ignores the fact that I’ve based my statements in this discussion, as I would on any issue, on what people who are more informed about it than myself are saying. In fact, I did not saying ANYTHING about this issue at first. Here, in its entirety, is my original blog entry to which Mr. Roach objected and which began this now-silly discussion:

“The doctor who treated Kerry’s first Purple Heart “wound” speaks out.”

The entry linked to an article quoting at length the military doctor who treated Kerry. That’s it. That was the entire entry that I posted. I didn’t say anything except to reference the statement by the doctor, the person who knows more about that wound than anyone in the world (i.e., the ultimate “expert” to which Mr. Roach should not object), and to put the word “wound” in scare quotes. Yet Mr. Roach’s response to that was not to offer an opposing argument, but to say, absurdly, that I should not be discussing the issue at all. Which is what he’s still saying now.

I’ve said all I have to say to Mr. Roach on this topic.

By the way, if anyone wonders why I address him as “Mr. Roach,” Roach is in fact his last name, though his online name, “roach,” would not lead one to that conclusion.

I disagree that a secondhand report from a doctor garnered long after the fact by National Review is more authoritative as to whether or not Kerry deserved his Purple Heart than the military regulations themselves.

I still find this whole line of conservative attack upon Kerry unwarranted and unwise.

Finally,you didn’t just report. You said, “He wants recognition as a “war hero,” though he manipulated things to get himself out of Vietnam as fast as he could, partly on the basis of this phony Purple Heart.” You had no basis for this statement; the doctor is simplly wrong in this regard, as he was entitled to his purple heart under military regulations.

You’re just rumor-mongering.

As for my name, the internet is full of aliases, pseudonyms, etc., just like our founding era. Roach happens to be my family name. If you hung around with normal masculine guys you’d know that we often refer to one another by our last names.

I know, btw, that you’re about 50 or so Lawrence. I remember you once noted you were alive during Kennedy assassination. I noticed you dodged the age issue. Would you care to tell us why you didn’t serve in Vietnam? Or correct my facts if I’m wrong. I think it’s especially unseemly if someone of Kerry’s generation who didn’t serve in Vietnam would question his admirable service record—perhaps the last admirable thing he has done.

In my previous comment, I was going to say that I thought Mr. Roach had a different motivation than just an abstract concern over who had the right to discuss Kerry’s record. I was going to say that you were angry at people who hadn’t served in the military, and that the Kerry issue was just the occasion for you to let loose on that, and that I was your convenient target. I chose not to say it, because I didn’t want to escalate the discussion by talking about personalities and motivations. But now you’ve come back and confirmed exactly what I suspected. Since you have been posting off and on at VFR for a while, you have to know that the kind of insulting personal attack you launched in your last comment is not going to get a hospitable welcome here. So I suggest you go cool off for a while.

You know when I showed this thread to some friends they remarked in amazement how defensive you got when I said that someone should have at least some military knowledge—not necessarily experience—to opine about military regulations regarding military awards. Look above and notice who is provoking whom (for example, your obiter dicta about my login ID).

Setting aside our little tete a tete, I think every normal person and every conservative would think it highly relevant if a draft-dodger or shirker were to have the gall to attack the military record (not mere political positions) of someone who had served honorably, in combat, and received numerous awards, including a Silver Star and several purple hearts. You can easily clear up whether you fit into this category or not Mr. Auster.

I admit one prejudice on this matter: I do look down those of the Vietnam era that did not serve when they could have who now shamelessly promote military action abroad. I should have expected you too as well, Mr. Auster.

By the way, the reason I drew attention to Mr. Roach’s name is that the simple name “roach,” without a first name to indicate that it’s a last name, and without capitalization to indicate that it’s a human name at all, appears to be the name of the insect. Because I try to maintain something like civilized discussion at this site, and because we address each other by name instead of just saying “you,” I’ve consistently encouraged posters at VFR to use names that at least sound like human names.

Also, the way guys address each other when they’re hanging out together is different from the way people address each other in the public square when they’re having a public discussion of politics.

I know this position strikes some people in our contemporary culture as bizarre and weird. But it’s part of what this website is about.

Roach,

You must be drawing some blood. Auster attacks your name when he has nothing substantive to say about your argument. It is easy for arm-chair generals to criticize Kerry. THey can talk all they want, it is part of being in the “chattering class,” but remember, Kerry went, Bush used his connections, Cheney stayed home. As Jim Rome says, “Scoreboard” to Kerry.

Mr. Roach wrote:

“Setting aside our little tete a tete, I think every normal person and every conservative would think it highly relevant if a draft-dodger or shirker were to have the gall to attack the military record (not mere political positions) of someone who had served honorably, in combat, and received numerous awards, including a Silver Star and several purple hearts. You can easily clear up whether you fit into this category or not Mr. Auster.”

One of the principles of public discussion in a free country is that people are not required to make personal statements about themselves or their beliefs or their personal history in order to establish their bona fides or to get the right to speak. Kerry violated this basic American rule a few weeks back when a man at a campaign appearance asked him a critical question, and Kerry insisted that the man identity what party he belonged to. In America, you do not have to identify what party you belong to in order to speak. Nor do you have to make any other personal statement about yourself. That’s the kind of thing you expect to see in a Communist country where the boundary between private and public is destroyed, not in America.

I’ve already said that I have not served in the military. Beyond that, this website is not about my biography. The question here is not me, the question is whether issues of public concern, namely the record and the probity of a candidate for President of the United States, can be freely and publicly discussed by citizens.

Specifically, there has been an attempt in recent years by veterans in politics to use their veteran status to place themselves above criticism and to silence critics. McCain did this in 2000. In one of the debates during the primaries, when Alan Keyes pointed out a logical contradiction in McCain’s abortion stand, McCain said: “I’ve seen enough killing in my life, a lot more than you have…and I will not listen to your lectures about how I should treat this very important issue.” In other words, McCain had served in Vietnam, and therefore Keyes couldn’t disagree with him about abortion!

Kerry has used almost exactly the same words to say that Cheney has no right to criticize his record on military matters because Cheney didn’t serve in the military. This is pure bullying, and it’s outrageous. Kerry served four months, got out as quickly as he could, and now he uses that service as a weapon to try to glorify himself and abolish any criticism of himself. He even uses the weapon against Bush, who served honorably in the National Guard for several years, and who, by the way, has led the country through two wars, slightly more significant experience than Kerry’s. So Kerry, a virtual traitor to this country, is using his brief Vietnam service to set up a moral hierarchy, in which not only people who didn’t serve in the armed forces, but apparently anyone who didn’t serve in Vietnam, is going to be intimidated if he expresses a critical opinion about Kerry’s record on military matters. This is an outrageous bullying tactic that has no place in American politics. Indeed, in some of Kerry’s statements, he seems to be saying that a president has no right to lead the nation in war if he hasn’t served in the armed forces himself. By Kerry’s logic, if America were invaded, and if the president was not a veteran, he would have to say to the nation, “Sorry, folks, we’re being invaded, but since I personally was never in the armed forces, I don’t have the right to lead our country in war, so we’ll just have to let our enemies conquer us.” This absurdity is the logical end result of a politics based on personal history instead of a politics based on the public good. And the ultimate absurdity is that Kerry, the man who is playing this super-patriotic game of “You can only speak and lead if you served in the military,” is himself an outspoken and unrepentant anti-American. That’s why I call him the biggest phony I’ve ever seen.

Unbelievable. Because there are unfair uses of people’s character and background and military record in politics, there can be no such use. Nice try.

I disagree with your notion of public/private. If you’re talking about character and patriotism and war and sacrifice, then your own character and behavior matters. Most every blogger includes some brief biography. The absence of your own is rather unique in this regard. Are you divorced, or married, or single? Are you a draft dodger? Did you go to college? We have no idea; I only know you live in NYC.

Just as we cry fowl when Sudan or Cuba would lecture us on human rights—because of their own gross deviations on the matter—we have a right to know a little bit about who would criticize someone else’s military record on an individual level.

I reject the politics of authenticity. But I also reject the notion that words do not need to be backed up by deeds; that we can live anyway we please and expect our opinions and judgments to be evaluated in the same manner as they would be when uttered by someone who is deserving of our respect and benefit of the dobut. This is the way academics amd wordsmiths think, not most people.

You’re a cypher Mr. Auster. I, and I presume most of your readers, know literally nothing about you. I often like what you have to say, but when you talk about people’s characters and their war records, I think your own behavior during that period in history comes into play. It particuarly does so if your own record is less impressive.

I think 4 months in Vietnam is impressive. Kerry volunteered for Swift boats when he did not need to. It’s in his military records. I think his postwar condemnations of his fellow veterans as war criminals is also relevant, as is his tawdry display of his war record. But if I were to question the actual details of the military portion of his life, I’d want my own to be up to snuff.

Or perhaps we should be listening to Sudan on human rights.

Oh, and this has nothing to do with your “right to speak.” You sound like the liberals that cry censorship when we conservatives say that they’re wrong, or in poor taste, or whatever. You have every right to speak; the question is how persuasive it is. And that depends upon your conformity to the standards that you enunciate.

“Likewise, no one can dispute the service of John McCain.”

Quite the contrary, McCain’s service was hotly disputed. Former POWs organized mailing lists in 2000 when McCain ran for President to get the word out and rally support AGAINST him. I found that noteworthy, because it is far more typical for former veterans, and especially former POWs, to stick together and support one another.

I won’t detour this thread into a McCain discussion, but there are really only two politicians with wartime battle experience in my lifetime who had significant number of their former comrades-in-arms organize against them: McCain and Kerry. I find that significant in both cases.

Kerry may have been “trolling” for Purple Hearts; it is a little hard to believe that he could have collected three of them without any good reason. I understand and sympathize with Mr. Auster’s interest in this issue, but I can not understand why Republicans and Bushites are so ready to cast the first stone in this matter. Bush’s non war record is, at least at first glance, far more miserable than Kerry’s. Purely from the partisan political point of view, the Bushites are crazy to attack Kerry’s war record. (Bringing up the outrageous things he said after returning home is something else.) Unless they have clear proof of something dirty about Kerry’s record, in an exchange of abuse on this issue, Bush and his followers are bound to lose in the end.

I’ve responded to Mr. Roach very fully in this thread, and his repeated efforts to personalize the discussion are insulting and out of line. Like anyone else, I reveal as much or as little of my private life in public as I choose to, for my own reasons which are not anyone else’s business. In fact, many people in Internet discussions, and many regulars at VFR who are quite outspoken, don’t even use their real names. Each person has his own situation and his own reasons for revealing as much or as little of himself to strangers as he sees fit. That is the dividing line between private and public that is an indispensable part of a free society, and which Mr. Roach apparently doesn’t understand.

Has Mr. Roach read the previous article about veterans who are disturbed by Kerry’s medal awards? It was the subject of a thread at VFR: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002223.html

Maybe we could talk about the specifics of what is said there. For example, a SWIFT boat captain who loses a crew member overboard must immediately go back for him. Otherwise, he is subject to a court martial for abandoning one of his own crew in the water. Is there any reason to doubt this claim, made by veterans? What then shall we say about Kerry receiving a Bronze Star for going back to pick up one of his crew out of the water?

By the way, I did not serve in Vietnam. I was born in 1959. The draft ended in 1973, I believe. The war ended in 1975.

Putting two and two together from the two threads about Kerry’s war record, we have a picture of someone who other veterans feel must have had a commanding officer who wanted to get Kerry lots of medals and let him leave early, as discussed in the older thread. Then we have a doctor who remembers being told by Kerry’s crew that he was going to be the next JFK from Massachusetts.

I get the same feeling as when I heard about Bill Clinton wanting to be President as a boy. Perfectly innocent; lots of little boys said that. Then we get the letter Clinton wrote his National Guard officer, where he was openly worrying about the effect on his future political plans.

I have never gotten a good feeling about any politician who was engineering his resume for the job when he was just a college kid. Every time I have witnessed such a person’s career in detail, they turn out to be the kind of shallow, phony person that Clinton was and Kerry seems to be.

Mr. Coleman’s posts are relevant to the debate I’ve been involved in. Vietnam veterans have said such and such about Kerry. This is now part of the public record. Now the question is: who has the moral authority to express an opinion about this article? Are we to have a segregation, in which only veterans (or, who knows, only Vietnam combat veterans) can discuss the meaning of this article, and everyone else must remain silent while the veterans hash it out? That is where the reasoning of some persons would lead us.

How about people that know enough to evaluate their merits. Just a wild and crazy suggestion, I know.

Or perhaps we should be concerned someone will take away our inaliable right to opine about quantum physics after reading one of those easy-to-read Stephen Hawkins books. That would be a far worse turn of events than people that know nothing about physics—as evidenced by their hostile attempts to change the subject—keeping their mouths shut.

And we can ask low income folks what they think of raising the minimum wage; and knowing that they’re on food stamps—or that their critics are millionaires—shouldn’t affect our evaluation of their opinions in the least.

Your argument is a pure strawman, Mr. Auster. It’s not a matter of authenticity, but credibility and conformity of words and deeds—a matter totally impossible to evaluate in your case.

Sen. Kerry is offering us his candidacy for the presidency. All our lives are in the hands of whoever is president. We are entitled to all the information that exists about any individual seeking this office and these powers that could conceivably show the candidate’s character and personality. If Sen. Kerry went to Viet Nam as a calculating move to further a political career modeled on that of JFK, and minimized risks to himself by taking an early out through the device of obtaining Purple Hearts for trivial injuries for which they were not normally awarded, and by means of lobbying for them, which was not normal practice, and then returned home to take up leadership of the pro-North Vietnam anti-war movement while our troops were still under fire and our POW’s were languishing in Hanoi prisons, one might reasonably conclude he was a scheming opportunist who would put his own interests ahead of the men he served with. One might conclude, as have most of those who served with him, that he is unfit to be commander in chief. I can see no rational argument that people who are not veterans or military experts should be precluded from inquiring into these facts and reaching their own conclusions.

Partly because it is true that I have not served in the military, I’ve been very tolerant of this poster, much more than I ordinarily would be. Despite his insulting comments, I’ve replied to his arguments and made my own. Yet he keeps making it personal. If he wants to continue in this vein, he’ll have to do it elsewhere.

Mr. Roach keeps making analogies to technical matters, like who is qualified to fix a Ford or talk about quantum physics. I do not see that the present discussion is all that technical.

If one lives a good many years and is well read, one will be exposed to the fact that cohesion and loyalty are major priorities in the military, even without personally serving in it. Soldiers need to trust that their fellow soldiers will do everything in their power to avoid leaving them behind on the battlefield.

Thus, when I read that a SWIFT boat commander is required to fish an overboard crewman out of the water or face court martial for leaving him there to die, it sounds plausible to me. If no one on this earth can provide any contrary evidence, then it is just shy of a fact in my mind.

Then, when I read a Vietnam veteran state that boat commanders did this as a matter of course, and he is disgusted that Kerry would get a Bronze Star for it, I am inclined to believe him. Has Kerry directly addressed this medal? Have any of his supporters directly spoken to this issue? Has anyone in the military contradicted the reasoning here, or shown that such acts commonly led to the award of a Bronze Star?

This is how those of us who lack direct experience try to make up our minds. If we are being misled by some disgruntled veteran who is grinding an axe, please convince us using specific facts rather than generalities.

Don’t understand the motivation for Mr. Roach’s obsessive and rather self-righteous insistence (unless self-righteousness is its own reward), in the face of Mr. Auster’s withering arguments, that only a soldier can criticize a soldier - and that, apparently, it is even illicit for a non-soldier to quote a soldier who has criticized a soldier.

But if Mr. Roach is in fact correct about the ethics of this matter, then I guess Mr. Auster would have no right to criticize the guards at Bergenbelsen because he never served in the Wehrmacht, nor President Bush because Mr. Auster has never been president. And I have no right to criticize Mr. Roach because I have never been Mr. Roach. So we should just shut down the whole damn web site.

Y’know, putting on the uniform of a military man does not separate one from the rest of humanity, nor guarantee noble motives. There were some real kreeps in khaki in ‘Nam. And John Kerry was one of them. (And by the way, I’m really flabbergasted that he would dare to make such a big deal out of his four months in the show when he served only 1/3rd of his sentence and it’s screamingly obvious he was whoring for Purple Hearts from the get-go so he could rush back to Boston and launch his career shouting, “I am a Vietnam Veteran!” This guy must think we’re all idiots.)

I’ll try to be more specific.

1) Guys in the military always question medals, especially those of officers. Officers are notoriously ambitious and want to get their awards recorded; especially if they’re merited, as in the case of Kerry’s purple hearts. This type of did-he-really-deserve-it speculating is common and should all be taken with a grain of salt, especially when the guy they’re speculating about is a liberal running for president.

2) Guys in the military hate Democrats, especially after the Clinton years. Many ascribe every possible negative characteristic to a Democrat, even when the record does not support it. I think that’s what’s going on in Kerry’s case. His FITREPS were very positive. Former Army Captain Phil Carter at the website “Intel Dump” went through them and analyzed them and noted that they were very positive, even when taking into account the “grade inflation” that often occurs in these matters. Most of the Swift Boat vets criticizing him are justifiably doing so for his postwar actions. If his record was bad at the time, it’s surprising that his FITREPS noticed that he had respect from his superiors and the loyalty of his men.

2) Rassman, whom Kerry got the Bronze Star for saving, was an Army Green Beret rescued from shore, not a crewmember. Rassman nominated Kerry for the Silver Star.

3) The sources of these analyses of Kerry’s records and medals are almost all third hand. A doctor 30 years after the fact, whose notions about “friendly mortar fire” and a “scratch” is directly contradicted by the regs. An unamed Marine who was allegedly in the Mekong delta saying Kerry’s service and rack-up of medals was unusual. (This is itself unusual, as Marines were primarily in the North of the country, in “I Corps,” whereas the Mekong was in V Corps.)

4) At least two other veterans in Kerry’s unit got 3 Purple Hearts also for minor wounds—which were common in Swift boats. http://www.countrywatch.com/cw_wire.asp?vCOUNTRY=187&UID=1070614 Neither requested early shipment home, as Navy regulations allowed.

5) I agree that one can say something intelligent and intelligible about this without having served. But one should not just repeat any random rumor, and then opine and speculate about the content of such rumors, when one has no other knowledge or qualification other than disliking Kerry. It’s no more appropraite, and it infuriated me, when Democrats did it to Bush regarding his honorable service in the National Guard.

6) Kerry’s actions to obtain the Silver Star were unorthodox. But his FITREPS noted that he was audacious and unorthodox. This notion that anything outside the normal playbook automatically leads to a court martial is simply false; Kerry’s commanders were wise enough to delegate those split-second decision to him and reward him for it.

7) I agree that Kerry’s records in general should be looked into. But I think as a matter of political tactics it’s unwise to make too much hay of his war records, as the most reasonable and best explanation is that he served honorably in spite of his mixed feelings. He went home early lawfully when he could, perhaps in part because of his mixed feelings about the war. His eventual full-bore opposition to the war is well known.

This discussion has moved way beyond whether or not Kerry deserves commendation for his military record in Vietnam. We all agree the man is anti-American. The real issues, which Mr. Auster brought forth repeatedly, have to do with absolute vs. relative truth and logical vs. ad hominem argument. Post-modernism dictates a different truth for every race, circumstance, experience etc. Liberals love this tactic. No one can say anything about another person’s belief or action if they themselves weren’t actively a participant of the same lifestyle, race, circumstance etc. The possibility of absolute truth disappears in this context. Also, reviewing the logs, the majority of Mr. Roach’s arguments almost entirely consisted of personal attacks against Mr. Auster. Not only does he impugn his character with absolutely no knowledge or basis whatsoever to do so, he ‘poisons the well’—because Mr. Auster did not serve in this war, he has nothing worth while to say about the subject. These are simple logical fallacies. Unfortunately, these types of arguments are ubiquitous in our society today. Mr. Auster deserves great praise for his clear, logical arguments and for his defense of truth and reason over relativism and emotionalism.

Mr. Roach seems to have laid off the personal attacks at long last, so we can continue with the discussion. I’ve read over the document he posted at 2:29 p.m May 5 with the rules on the Purple Heart. It certainly raises the possibility that the award was not appropriate in this case. While wounds received from friendly fire get the award, wounds received from accidents do not. According to the doctor’s account as I remember it, Kerry’s Swift boat fired artillery or mortar rounds at the shore and hit a large rock and that a tiny fragment of shell richocheting off this rock stuck onto the surface of Kerry’s arm. This does not sound like friendly fire. It may possibly count as accident.

The document also says that if the wound requires treatment, then it qualifies for the award. So if you get a scratch, and a medic puts disinfectant on it and places a band-aid over it, it would seem to count toward a Purple Heart. This is surprising. I think most people would have assumed that a Purple Heart was for at least a moderately serious injury, not for a surface stratch.

When I read about John F. Kennedy’s service in WWII, I somehow can’t imagine Kennedy putting in for a Purple Heart for a scratch such as Kerry had. But what do I know, I’m just a civilian.

Also, thanks to Mr. Coleman, Thucydides, Shrewsbury, and Sapientia for their comments.

Thanks to Mr. Coleman for bringing the issue of McCain and opposition to him by former POW’s. Like Bush, he is the scion of a wealthy East coast Republocan family who was told to go to AZ at a time when anyone wearing a Republican label could be elected easily there. I’ll retract my statement about his war record being beyond dispute. It was all very secondary to my point, of course, which was made by Shrewsbury later on very nicely. Service in the military is no guarantee of moral character, and there were (and are) no doubt dishonest and disreputable persons in the ranks alongside the honorable. Kerry no doubt is one of these, as his entire subsequent career demonstrates.

Nevertheless, I think Alan Levine’s point about the complete folly of folks like Rove and the Country Club Republicans making remarks about Kerry’s record is very much on the mark. It is politically suicidal. The Republicans didn’t receive the appellation of “studid party” without reason.

Mr. Roach’s 12:23 pm May 5th post states “…when them peopledoiing the looking (Cheney) have not served at all…”. It doesn’t matter “who” is doing the looking, but what the TRUTH is. If the truth IS that Kerry faked an injury or somehow got The Purple Heart for an injury that was NOT caused by enemy fire and did not display heroism when injured (if that is one of the requirements, such as falling on a comrade when a grenade was tossed into a circle of fellow soldiers) and that in fact it was a superficial wound the doc covered only with a band-aid and with no stitches, then perhaps the medal should be returned (or dug up?) by Mr. Kerry. Of course, that will never happen.

My apologies for the horrible typos in the above post. I meant, of course. “…when the people doing the looking…”. I need a new keyboard!

Mr. roach’s 12:42 pm May 5th post is quite defensive and really unecessarily so. While we all do not agree on every issue on this wonderful site (thank goodness), we are not all “sharks in the water” when it comes to Mr. Kerry! I am certainly not one. I call a spade a spade, and I often get hammered for it here. Fine, I accept the criticism and often learn from it. I dislike Mr. Kerry no less than I dislike any other rich, liberal Democrat or rich RINO Republican. I dislike Bill Clinton a heck of a lot more and he was cunning and very dangerous and sold this country out to Red China. But, fortunately, Bill Clinton is not running for President. Mr. Kerry is. All I care about, Mr. roach, is that the TRUTH be known. If, so many years after Vietnam, that is impossible, then we will all have to make the best of what IS known and make our own, (hopefully) intelligent decisions in November. I doubt many here are going to be voting for Mr. Kerry, but if they do, that is their right.

I have been part of this site for about four months now and I think “fairness” is one of the site’s greatest qualities. The other is the freedom to express one’s views, whether from a military background or not. Mr. Auster has bent over backwards for Mr. roach and others here who have disagreed with him. This is NOT freerepublic.com, where anyone who doesn’t spout the RINO line is “persona non gratta”!

Regarding Sen. McCain, my other half and I decided many years ago that he was a loose cannon who might have some mental issues due to what the N. Vietnamese did to him in prison. We did not “hate” Sen. McCain for his personality or his war record. We thought he was mentally “unfit” to lead the country with his fingers on the nuclear button. Later, when we found out he was a senator of the biggest illegal alien invasion state and single-handedly could have done and still could do more to halt that invasion than anyone in Congress, we realized we had been right in not supporting him. When we found out he had “pulled a Gingrich” (whom we also have lost complete respect for) by abandoning his longtime wife for a rich woman so that he would have money to run for the Senate, we knew for sure we were right! One’s personal life DOES matter and count in politics. Whatever one does in the military life or civilian life DOES matter. Again, we only want the TRUTH about Mr. Kerry, as best as we can find it.

In defense of Mr. roach, I find his 2:43 pm May 5th post remarkably informative, where he recites the Purple Heart award regulations “b). I had no idea that such was the rule.

I think my point is really less dramatic than Mr. Auster and others say. It’s not a postmodernist point of “multiple truths” or authenticity. It’s really simpler, but has a few parts

One, for conservatives who don’t like Kerry, it’s all to easy to believe everything negative about him, whether about his war-record or anything else. It helps to know a little about the military to evaluate these reports, or to do some research (easy enough in the Purple Heart case). Instead, some have, like typical College Republicans or chain emailers, just posted every defamatory thing that comes down the pike. This is unfair when Democrats do it and now more fair when Republicans do. This report goes beyond questioning Kerry’s political positions but rather it attacks his character. Even in the case of a public figure, all of us should be a bit more circumspect about doing so. (As for Mr. Auster’s latest “analysis,” his lack of knowledge reveals itself again; why else, besides contact with the enemy, would Kerry be firing mortar’s at the shore at night? What else does a mortar produce, other than richocheting shrapnel?)

The second point has to do with words and deeds. In less modern times, people lived in communities and could not escape from their reputation. Whether what they said was in conformity or not with that mattered a great deal. People could not be anonymous sources of opinion and pure intellect. Mr. Auster wants to have one foot in the modern world and one foot in the past; he wants to pick and choose from the anomie of modernity, without telling us anything about his credentials. It’s not an “authenticity” point to say that a military opinion matters in proportion to the knowledge and experience of who is saying it. Sure one’s statements can be True or False, but when the official military award has been awarded the burden is on the challengers, not the recipient. It’s also a matter of common decency not to judge another man’s bravery or lack of it unless you’ve “been there and done that.”

Finally, theere is something to be said about character and politics. One can be liberal and have snobbish anti-American views and still have decency, courage, steadfastness, etc. In other words, I can disagree with you politically in almost every way, and yet you could still be a decent person. Likewise, you can be very indecent, and still be a conservative. Politics is not everything. This was one of our collective gripes with Clinton and his supporters, as I recall. Because he had poltically feminist and egalitarian views on the sexes, the feminist establishment gave him a free pass for his loutish behavior. The flipside of this error is that conservatives imagine their liberal opponents indecent and immoral both now, and apparently in the past as well. I don’t think this judgment fairly applies to Kerry’s Navy service based on all the available evidence.

John Kerry, as a young man, did a dangerous, challenging, and brave thing in joining the Navy and volunteering for riverine warfare. The Navy awarded him these medals in a way not out of line with the letter of the regulations or the practice in relation to others (See link above re 2 other triple Purple Heart recipients). Navy certainly left his post early, but in accord with Navy regulations. That wasn’t the bravest thing he ever did, but nor is it the epitome of cowardice either, especially when compared to the war record (or lack of it) of his critics.

I thought Mr. Roach had agreed to give up his personal campaign against me (which I had tolerated long past the point where I should have put a stop to it), and he had indicated to me in an e-mail that he would do so. But he’s still keeping it up.

On the ricocheting fragments, that was a logical point I raised in connection with the article on the Purple Heart award that Mr. Roach had linked. I raised possibilites, and did not come to any firm conclusion, though military men critical of Kerry have made more firm conclusions based on the same facts. The question is (and it’s not directly answered in the document on Purple Hearts): which category would firing at a rock and being hit by the fragments of shell you’ve just fired come under? If it’s friendly fire (which doesn’t seem to be the case), the Purple Heart would not be precluded. If it’s accident (which is not impossible) then the award would be precluded. This is the way the human intellect applies itself to a problem. It does not arrive at clear questions and answers by referring to the personalities of other people engaged in the discussion. This is a truth beyond Mr. Roach’s grasp.

On the question of credentials, I’ve said nothing on the basis of my authority. How absurd. It is also absurd of Mr. Roach to state that I am issuing a “military opinion.” Like anyone else following the news, I form opinions on the basis of the facts presented to me. Moreover, I give the _reasons_ for my opinions. The reasons I give for my opinions constitute my only “authority.” By Mr. Roach’s absurd (and resentment-driven) logic, non-military people should not have had the right to discuss, for example, whether the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq.

I would have had no problem with Mr. Roach’s defense of Kerry, if he had done it without the ad hominem arguments. But he’s shown himself to be unreformable. He should look for venues other than VFR to pursue his discussions of current events.

In case the point is not clear, the specific type of circumstance of the Kerry incident is not explicitly covered in the rules governing the Purple Heart. The rules say that wounds received from friendly fire qualify for the PH, wounds received as a result of accident do not. We know generally what friendly fire is. A U.S. unit fires at the enemy, but hits other U.S. personnel who are stationed between the first unit and the enemy. Or a U.S. unit reasonably mistakes another U.S. unit for the enemy and fires at it. But what about firing artillery at enemy on the shore of a river, hitting a boulder by accident, and then being hit by fragments of your own shell? That seems different from the classic instances of friendly fire that we’re familiar with. I don’t know the answer, the answer is not given in the official document (which provides various scenarios, but not that one), and that’s why I raised the question. If Mr. Roach had been oriented to conducting a discussion on this issue, he might have provided a cogent answer to my question. Instead, he reverted to his obsession about my supposed lack of credentials for even participating in such a discussion. The irony is that I, a non-military person who is interested in understanding these issues, am better able to make cogent points about them than is the military veteran Mr. Roach, whose chief pre-occupation is not the actual discussion at hand, but the credentials or lack of credentials of the people participating in it.

Mr. Auster, don’t you see something of a contradiction in asking Mr. Roach to refrain from commenting further on your site because he “personally attacked” you, while at the same time (1) questioning his motives in making his argument by calling them “resentment-driven” and (2) taking a pot-shot at his login name? How can you simultaneously chastise Mr. Roach for not using a name more obviously “human” (???) while opining that people are perfectly justified in revealing as much or as little about themselves in these types of forums as they choose?

I thought your entire point was that we can and should have substantive discussions of Kerry’s military service without reference to the backgrounds, motivations, etc. of those doing the discussing. And yet your argument against Mr. Roach devolves at least partly into an irrelevant attempt at psychoanalysis.

In my view, as someone who has NO record of military service, some of these detailed issues about whether medals are deserved and the like are difficult to sort out. It is therefore indispensable for me in evaluating such issues to know something about the person offering an opinion, so I am better able to put that opinion into context and evaluate it. It’s called credibility, and it is a critical tool in any type of discussion, both for the speaker trying to persuade and for the listener trying to understand and decide.

I consider banning Mr. Roach form this site for making a thoughtful point along these same lines and for asking questions (let’s be honest, Mr, Auster — he can’t have personally attacked you as he has no personal information about you!) to be incredibly immature and unnecessary.

Mr. Coriell commits a fallacy that is all too common today, especially among younger people: A tells B that B is making an ad hominem argument, and B replies that to accuse him of making an ad hominem argument is itself an ad hominem argument!

Or let’s put it this way. Debater A tries to conduct a discussion with other people without resort to ad hominem arguments and other violations of the rules and requirements of civil discussion. If if turns out in a given case that Debater B is set on violating those rules, then that ends the conditions for discussion. Debater A then says that he’s no longer having a discussion with B, because B is engaging in ad hominems, or is too hostile, or whatever. In declaring why the conditions for civil discussion no longer exist, Debater A of necessity must make a personal evaluation of Debater B’s conduct. That is not a violation of the rule against the use of ad hominem argument against a fellow participant in a discussion, because, in this instance, the discussion has already ended.

But Mr. Roach did not make an ad hominem argument. He “accused” Mr. Auster of nothing; he merely asked about certain background issues he considered relevant in evaluating Mr. Auster’s arguments about Kerry’s military service. Moreover, he did so only after attempting to refute Mr. Auster’s arguments on their merits.

I should add that while Mr. Auster’s explication of the “common fallacy” is correct as far as it goes, it does not apply to these facts. When Mr. Auster questioned Mr. Roach’s login name, he was not questioning Mr. Roach’s motivations for engaging in an ad hominem attack. Rather, he was engaging in an independent ad hominem attack of his own. Had Mr. Auster called Mr. Roach “uncivil,” or “rude,” or something like that, then the distinction he makes in his most recent post would hold water.

I should also add that I am a young person relative to Mr. Auster, and on the basis of Mr. Auster’s own post, that information appears to be helpful in evaluating the argument I made. I don’t see how this is all that different from Mr. Roach thinking Mr. Auster’s military service or lack thereof is relevant in evaluating his arguments about Kerry’s military service.

My basic point is that Mr. Roach and Mr. Auster were engaged in a civil conversation that Mr. Auster abruptly cut off. Mr. Roach never used an insulting term or did anything other than ask questions of Mr. Auster. I don’t understand the heightened sensitivity here. Why not continue with the intelligent discussion on the merits?

To answer Mr. Coriell’s question, one would have to recapitulate the entire thread. If Mr. Coriell cannot understand what I’ve said here and why I’ve said it, nothing further I may say is going to make any difference. So we’ll just have to let it drop.

Fair enough. But I hope that Mr. Auster is willing to engage in further discussions with Mr. Roach, who always has insightful things to say, on other matters. I hope that despite Mr. Auster’s feelings as to this thread, feelings which I freely admit not to understand, he would require something a bit more egregious in Mr. Roach’s posts before refusing to welcome him here any longer. I guess we’ll see.

Here is a piece by James Webb, company commander and Navy Cross recipient in Vietnam. This appeared in USA Today 2-19-04 and is now at Webb’s site. Webb and his friends don’t think either Kerry or Bush are desirable. They very much resent Kerry’s actions post-war, but disdain Bush and his advisers. Here is the thread:
http://www.jameswebb.com/articles/variouspubs/usatoday.htm

Also, I think it would be quite simple to answer my question without recapitulating the entire thread. A simple reference to the specific offending lines in Mr. Roach’s post would do. Other than placing the word “analysis” in scare quotes (similar to Kerry’s “wound”), I can’t for the life of me find a basis for Mr. Auster’s being so upset.

Webb’s article was most interesting. It may be slightly more hostile to Bush’s military record than he deserves (though not much.) His joining in the Guard in the Second Indochina War era was undoubtedly motivated by the desire to avoid going to Vietnam. However, it must be admitted that it WAS military service of a sort; and anyone joining the Guard was taking a long chance, for, if we had gotten into any other military involvement at that time, they almost certainly would have been sent into action. The real “out” as those who lived through the era will recall, was a phony medical exemption, not the Guard, or as is usually supposed, college deferments. As for Bush’s record in the Guard- he must have piled up plenty of flying hours to qualify in the F-102. But if morale and discipline in the Guard was anything as bad as it was in the regular forces in the early 70s, he may indeed have gone AWOL at some point in the confidence that he would not be called to account. Moreover, record keeping (if it resembled the active forces) may have been so bad at the time that it would be hard to prove if he was or was not AWOL. Whichever way it was, he is foolish to attack Kerry’s record. I may have made these points in previous threads; if so I apologize for repeating myself.

I don’t think Bush has ever attacked Kerry’s military record. He has attacked his Senate voting record on defense issues, which is atrocious.

James Webb wrote:

“Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modem memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.”

I wonder if Webb made this argument BEFORE the war. BEFORE the war all the war opponents were only attacking Bush’s supposed _motivations_ for the war: “imperialism, Israel, oil, neocons,” etc. etc. I almost never heard the war critics say, “after winning the war, we’ll be caught in a terror war in that country and won’t be able to extricate ourselves.” That thought occurred to me before the war, but the whole roaring debate was focused on the attacks on the neocons and Bush’s motivations and so on, and so that thought never got developed. I personally feel badly that I did not raise this possibility clearly enough. Certainly if it had been raised and discussed at the national level, it would have made us more realistic about the postwar problems and we might have handled the postwar situation very differently. Once again, this shows how the the very destructiveness and irresponsibility of most of the anti-war arguments prevented the country from having a more searching and serious debate about the pros and cons of the war.

On another point, Webb is simply wrong that the people around Bush engage in “vicious attacks against anyone who disagrees with his administration’s logic.” The administration was silent, month after month, as Bush was targeted by all kinds of amazing lies and was called all kinds of names. Then the administration finally starts to expose Kerry’s own record, and Webb accuses the administration of engaging in “vicious attacks against anyone who disagrees with his administration’s logic.”

I am not a supporter of this administration. But throughout the war debate, I have consistently defended it from charges that I think are wrong or dishonest, and I will continue to do so.

When the president made a joke the other day about all those foreign leaders Kerry supposedly has on his side in this election, the Kerry campaign responded by decrying Bush’d “attack on a Vietnam veteran.” Hilarious.

Yes, Webb was saying this BEFORE the war.

Wade Coriell’s point is correct. The statement heard most frequently from Kerry’s mouth is “I’m not going to stand for it,” i.e., “The people criticizing my public statements and record during my twenty year career in public office did not serve in Vietnam as I did, and I’M NOT GOING TO STAND FOR IT.” Kerry is, to the nth degree, the type of the self-worshipping left-liberal, who basically thinks that all people who are not like himself are not legitimate human beings. If he became president, the country would have to shut down, because no criticism of him would be allowed.

Mr. Auster writes:

“I wonder if Webb made this argument BEFORE the war. BEFORE the war all the war opponents were only attacking Bush’s supposed _motivations_ for the war: “imperialism, Israel, oil, neocons,” etc. etc. I almost never heard the war critics say, “after winning the war, we’ll be caught in a terror war in that country and won’t be able to extricate ourselves.”

He did in a piece dated 9/4/02 and apparently published in Wash Post:

http://www.jameswebb.com/articles/washpost/headingfortrouble.htm

Mr. Auster is right that the opposition to Bush and his policies was and is inane, by and large. What we have is an unusually secretive administration that permanently circled the wagons on one side. On another side a stupid leftist establishment media magnifies voices of Michael Moore and Howard Dean to the detriment of other voices.

Judging from my personal experience there must be millions of people who were all for punishing or removing Saddam but against occupation. Unfortunately I see no discussion at all why our PC-occupation does not work and should be do something about PC part of it.

Good. I give credit to Webb for having said this, and having said it so clearly: that if we occupied the country we would have to be there for a generation at least, and that if we occupied the country our troops would become terrorist targets. So this argument was made. But it wasn’t made nearly often enough. It got lost in the much larger debate between the anti position, “War is not necessary to contain Hussein, Bush and the neocons are war monger/imperialists,” and the pro position, “This war is necessary to protect us.” The question of the problems that we would face after the war had been won was only raised in scattered articles that had no effect on the larger debate. Just as with the “should we wage this war” debate itself, the “what happens after the war” debate was polarized, between the neocons’ pro democratic universalism agenda and the paleocons’ anti democratic universalism agenda. As a result, the _concrete problems_ of occupation were not touched on nearly as often as these ideological issues.

At the time of the war I linked a piece by Stanley Kurtz saying that the only way to change Iraq would be to occupy it for a generation and raise a new generation of Westernized Iraqi elites, somewhat as the British did in India. Kurtz wasn’t proposing that. He was saying, if we’re serious, this is what we would need to do. If we’re not willing to do that, then we have to think very carefully about what we are going to do. But not only did that careful long-term thinking not take place; even the short-term thinking about how to prevent riots and keep water and electricity going after the fall of Baghdad did not take place. As James Fallows showed in the February Atlantic, Rumsfeld and the others made a deliberate choice to suppress discussions and planning concerning the après war situation. I guess they thought that après war would be something like après ski.

James Webb’s commentary on this situation are some of the most thoughtful and insightful I’ve seen anywhere. The article from Sept. 2002 is particularly ominous in its note of the constant build-up of Beijing’s mlitary machine - something which the Neocons seem quite oblivious to, and which Bush has actually assisted through a continuation of Clinton’s treasonous technology transfers. I basically agree with Mr. Webb, this war and occupation has been a strategic blunder of monumental proportions and will only make the war on terror that much more difficult. I’m only sorry that I, like many of us, were too distracted by all of the ridiculous accusations emanating, even now, from the ant-war side, both left and right.

Y’know, I’m not sure our occupation of Iraq is either a disaster or a…a…well, whatever the opposite of disaster is. What it is, is a different situation from what obtained before the occupation. Now, every different situation has its good points and its bad points. If after all we had never invaded, that would have been a different situation also, and it would have had its good points and perhaps some very bad points. The universal either/or character of the discussion in the media really gripes me. I mean, Jiminy Cricket, of COURSE some things have turned out badly. Some things ALWAYS turn out really badly. That’s why anybody who actually DOES something is always liable to be torn to pieces by people who never do anything. As an old Anglo-Saxon poem says, “In the earth-realm, all is crossed.” Which, being interpreted, means SNAFU. We were in a bad situation to begin with before the invasion, and we’re in a bad situation now, and all we could do then, and all we can do now, is try to make the best of it. Which is what we’re doing. You just hope the good out-percentages the bad. Sixty-forty would be great. (By the way, I would be reluctant to argue with James Webb, but I’m not sure why in a war with China it would be so calamitous to have 100,000+ troops in Iraq rather than stateside. I dunno, maybe he deals with that in his article; I’m too busy to read it at the moment (though not to bloviate incoherently.))

Shrewsbury makes a good point. The Anglo-Saxon saying, “In the earth-realm, all is crossed,” reminds me of a line from the book of Job (5:7), “Man is born into trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”

Kerry’s all purpose response to criticism seems to be to call it “an attack on a Viet Nam veteran.” Bizarre. We have thus far seen considerable evidence to suggest Kerry is an opportunistic liar who tries to have everything both ways, as in claiming to be both a war hero and an anti-war hero, and the stories about what he did with his medals. There was also the instance of his sending completely contradictory letters to two constituents who had written on opposite sides of the defense issue. It only emerged when a staffer apparently accidentally switched the letters. Today we have the story of how when Kerry’s suggestion to a Jewish group that he would use James Baker or Jimmy Carter as Middle East envoys backfired due to those individuals’ pro-Arab leanings, Kerry said a staffer had put the line in by mistake. However, Kerry had said that he had actually talked to men. A staffer then said, he had only talked to Carter “after noticing the line was in the speech.”

Now, however, material is emerging that suggests we may be witnessing Clinton/Gore style confabulation, that is, the often unconscious replacement in memory of fact with fantasy. Pointing to this are the alleged meetings with foreign leaders, now supposedly in a New York restaurant, and the story of his delivering the Sermon on the Mount on the Mount of Beatitudes, to a group of Jews no less, before climbing into an Israeli jet fighter to do high speed acrobatics. To break down this last business, it appears that there had been a published story of Sen. Bill Frist, traveling to Israel with a Christian group, having paused to pray there, where Frist read the verses from Matthew. One would guess Kerry saw the story, and when the occasion arose, projected himself into the scene. The idea that an Israeli pilot would take off on a flight that was unauthorized as Kerry notes, and turn the controls over to a man who had never flown anything other than 140 mph prop planes not certified for loops or rolls, and let him experiment at speeds 5 or 7 times faster than anything he had ever experienced defies the imagination. James Thurber’s Walter Mitty comes to mind. It seems more likely that Kerry, like Gore when in the presidential debate he claimed falsely to have gone to Texas during the weather emergency about which candidate Bush had just spoken, was confabulating. Filled with envy over Bush’s actual jet fighter pilot status, Kerry just put himself into that imaginary role. This is a very serious psychological symptom that bespeaks an impaired sense of reality and it should worry us all that a man like this is in the running for the presidency.

Mr. Coriell is quite mistaken in his May 6 2:01 pm post when he said “…which Mr. Auster abruptly cut off.” I believe this “back and forth” between Mr. Auster and Mssngr. roach went on all night and part of the day, right up til noon today? I doub there is anyone here at VFR who would categorize as “abrupt” the ending of a “heated marathon”!!

Mr. Coriell is right about age not necessarily being a determining factor in being “wise and educated” about life, or about politics. But, although I differ with him on some issues, I will almost always defer to Mr. Auster’s opinions based on his incredible knowledge of religious and no-religious history and his being probably one of the best read persons and most prolific writers (I have read some of his columns lately) of our time. That he happens to be older than a postee may or may not be of any relevance in any discussion—I don’t know. That he can “smell” a liberal or a neocon a mile away may not be relevant, either. I have seen him ask others to leave the discussion and I believe he gave Mr. roach substantially more time to express his views than he has given anyone here in recent memory.

I found insulting Mr. roach’s statement over and over: “If you weren’t in the military, you should not question the awarding of a medal”. I wasn’t in the military, but I was born with a brain and a sharp mind. As others here at VFR, I use common sense and simple deduction when considering an issue. If there is a question—as there seems to be—of Mr. Kerry’s third “injury”, then let’s see what happens and let the chips fall where they may. Mr. Kerry has the advatage of time with him. Very few people are going to move towards taking any of his medals away. But, we as individual citizens have the right not to vote for someone based on his record in the military—and in Congress. There is AMPLE reason not to vote for Mr. Kerry based on his post-Vietnam service behavior (he has been called “the male Jane Fonda”, giving aid and comfort to the enemy while his pals were still in mortal danger in Vietnam) as well as his voting record in the Senate.

Mr. Levin calls me “one of the best read persons and most prolific writers … of our time.”

Sadly neither statement is true, not by a long shot. If anything, the opposite is the case. However, I seem to have articulate and passionate views on a great number of topics, and that probably creates the impression that I am well-read and prolific. :-)

Mr. Auster wrote: “…if we occupied the country we would have to be there for a generation at least, and that if we occupied the country our troops would become terrorist targets. So this argument was made. But it wasn’t made nearly often enough. It got lost in the much larger debate between the anti position, “War is not necessary to contain Hussein, Bush and the neocons are war monger/imperialists,” and the pro position, “This war is necessary to protect us.””

Problem is, nobody would have listened to arguments about the cost of the war until after we’d won the argument about it being a war of choice rather than a war of necessity. If the perceived cost of *not* going to war is a mushroom cloud over New York City next Tuesday before lunch, then the cost of a long-term counter-insurgency campaign is going to seem cheap by comparison.

As I remember it, the details of preparation for guerilla war only began to come out sometime after the Webb piece, in November and December of 2002. This was when Saddam Hussein made his officers read Blackhawk Down and Peoples’ War, Peoples’ Army. The large scale weapon distribution and the arrival of foreign fighters also began around that time. By then it was too late. The Congressional Resolution was passed in October 2002 and UN Resolution 1441 in early November. Iraq was declared in material breach in mid-December and the troops were shipping out in late December.

The Army War College put out a report predicting a 5-10 year occupation in which “some Iraqi military units are operating at will and conducting guerilla attacks through out the country.” Again, this didn’t come out until December 2002, too late to make a difference.

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usacsl/publications/CSL%20Issue%20Paper%2014-02.pdf

Hey, Mr. Auster…Can’t anyone take a compliment these days?

Mr. Hechtman,

Were you aware of this Army study at the time?

Mr. Levin,

I once knew a musician who hated compliments after a performance because she felt she had been no good, so when people would tell her how good she had been she would say, “Oh, no, I wasn’t,” or something like that. She said, “I don’t know what to say when people praise me and I don’t deserve it.” I told her, “You should just say ‘thank you.’” But this time I didn’t follow my own advice.

Mr Auster asked: “Were you aware of this Army study at the time?”

Certainly before March 2003. I don’t remember who initially picked it up and distributed the link but most of what I get on the subject comes from four sources (Juan Cole, Information Clearinghouse, Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada list and Marc Azar’s Mother of All Lists) so the odds are good it came from one of those.

I remember citing it some time after March 2003 when arguing about the significance of the June 30 handover date.

Didn’t anybody remember that even in Germany and Japan, where conditions were (in hindsight) more favorable to success than Iraq, that the occupation lasted several years? The occupation of Germany ended only in 1955, of Japan in 1952. True, in each case it was extended for international political reasons, with both countries being more or less allowed to run their internal affairs from 1949, but at the lowest estimate the actual transformation of both took four years. One might also note the case of South Korea, occupied from 1945-1949, which DID NOT produce a fully functioning democracy until the 1980s…

I don’t have any desire to revive a certain unpleasant exchange from earlier in the thread, but this e-mail from a regular VFR-er is too good not to post:

“Larry, it’s a good thing Roach’s disapproval of non-military-veterans’ so much as quoting the criticisms leveled at each other by veterans isn’t widely shared, or I’d never have heard a memorable anecdote that has stayed with me since elementary school. In fifth grade, a non-military-veteran (my elderly Irish fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. O’Brien) quoted bitter criticism indeed which had been leveled by one military veteran (Gen. George Washington) against another (Gen. Benedict Arnold). If I remember correctly, until he switched sides Arnold had been one of THE top American generals and something of a hero and an icon for the American side (and happened also to have been seriously wounded in the leg at a famous and important battle—Saratoga, maybe?). With all this in mind, someone asked Washington shortly after the treachery had come to light what he’d do if Arnold were captured. Washington replied he would hang Arnold as a traitor but take the leg that had been wounded in the service of his country and bury it with full honors. (By Roach’s lights, of course, Mrs. O’Brien was wrong to have told her class this anecdote, having never served in the Army herself: ‘you mustn’t quote bitter criticism of a veteran by a veteran if you haven’t yourself served,’ according to Roach…)”

In an e-mail exchange, Chris Roach continued his personal vendetta and insults against me, despite the fact that I replied once again and tried to explain my position. When I said he had an animus against me, he admitted that he did have an animus, though he said it was a rational animus.

The lesson is that I should have closed Mr. Roach out of VFR at the first insult he directed against me in this thread. I did not do so then, nor at the second or third insult, because I felt he had legitimate concerns mixed with his anger, and I did not want it to appear that I was running from a debate. But this was a mistake. As I’ve seen over and over at VFR, once a participant in a discusion uses rancorous or insulting or bigoted language, he is indicating something about himself—something which is not going to be changed by any good-faith attempt by others to engage him in a civilized discussion.

This experience confirms me in the policy of instantly excluding commenters when they engage in unacceptable behavior at this site. The fact that they may also be making some arguable points or even valid points will not excuse them. This is the only way to maintain VFR as an environment for civil discussion.

Thomas Wright, who was Kerry’s superior officer in the Swift boat group, has some critical words about his performance, and also puts a new light on why Kerry left Vietnam after his third Purple Heart:

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3539

Commander Wright makes a good point in the linked article above, and highlights why I can’t stand the Purple Heart. The Purple Heart is not an award for valor, achievement or courage. It is a consolation prize for getting hit, nothing more. No disrespect intended to General Washington, who (I believe) instituted the Purple Heart, but it is a very stupid decoration. Whether it results from bravery, stupidity or just bad luck, getting wounded or killed in action is a screw-up. The actions leading to the wound may in some cases be something to honor; the mere fact of being wounded never is - and that is all the Purple Heart recognizes. The armed forces would be better off without it.

A lot of electrons have been discharged on this site lately (I’m guilty) about what ails the U.S. armed forces today. One thing that has always irritated me about today’s military is how, in our desire to acknowledge victims of a sort (the dead and wounded, prisoners of war) we perversely celebrate what are in fact reverses, failures of a sort. It cannot be healthy for a fighting force that strives to be combat-efficient to hand out medals simply for being wounded or, as we have more recently, for being taken prisoner. If one is wounded or killed in the course of actions that go beyond the call of duty, there are awards for valor to recognize those actions. If one is taken prisoner in the course of such actions, or puts up an exemplary resistance while imprisoned, the same awards recognize that conduct. That is very different from awarding someone simply for being wounded or captured. It reminds me of what the Egyptian Air Force is reputed to have done to try to take some of the sting out of devastatingly adverse kill ratios against the Israelis: hand out medals for successful ejections!

I doubt anyone has ever attempted to survey this, but I suspect that most U.S. servicemen who have been killed, wounded or captured in action were not doing anything exceptionally heroic at the moment when they were. The Purple Heart and POW medals are “Being There” medals. I believe they have contributed to the ridiculous inflation of the term hero in American usage. After September 11th, firemen and policemen are indiscriminately called heroes just for being in that line of work, while anyone in the armed forces, no matter how far from harm’s way, is definitionally a hero too - and another useful word is lost to the English language. HRS

Excellent statements by Mr. Sutherland, especially on the inflation of “hero.” Hero used to mean someone who had done something outstanding, out of the ordinary. Now, as Mr. Sutherland points out, if you show up, you’re a hero. Not only that, but the emotion that goes into lauding all our “heroes” in our present culture is stupifyingly silly. The New York Post is one of the worst offenders in this regard.

Another element in this phenomenon (which touches on the earlier controversy in this thread) is that journalists who have not served in the military tend to go overboard in calling military men heroes. Which leads to the thought that if we still had the draft, so that most men served in the armed forces at some point in their lives, instead of the current situation in which there is a complete socio-economic split between those who serve and those who don’t, we might have had a lot less grade inflation regarding heroism coming from journalists.

I was surprised once when I read that Colonel David Hackworth listed his prized medals, and he included his numerous Purple Hearts along with his two Distinguished Service Crosses and a United Nations medal for working for peace, or some such thing. This is from a man that received ten (!) Silver Stars and numerous Bronze Stars, which he did not even mention.

I tried to figure out why a non-valor medal like the Purple Heart would be so important to some veterans and not worth mentioning to other veterans who received it. The only answer I could come up with is that the Purple Heart is not a measure of valor, but it is a measure of what you have sacrificed for your country. Viewed in that light, it is a significant medal.

Of course, viewed in that light, what shall we say about a Purple Heart received for a sliver of shrapnel that was treated with a band-aid? What sacrifice for your country does it represent, regardless of whether regulations permit it being awarded in those circumstances?

The Thomas Wright article linked at 03:00 PM by Mr. Auster was interesting. I hate to play armchair psychologist, but I have to wonder when I read that Kerry was blasting everyone in sight in free-fire zones, and Wright and others disagreed with his actions. Did Kerry come back with a load of guilt that turned into anti-American attitudes? He specifically mentioned having participated in free-fire zones when the subject of “war crimes and atrocities” came up.

Speculations on the origin of the Purple Heart:

At the time it was instituted, the death or injury range of most weapons was far shorter than today. You had to be in battle, and you almost had to see the enemy, or be seen by him. In short, you pretty much had to face him. Also, in western warfare, as opposed to non-western raid/ambush warfare, there was a sometimes significant time period between seeing the enemy and engagement. Hence to have been wounded meant two or three things: you were there, you stayed in your assigned position and didn’t run, and you managed to not, er, become disabled prior to the battle.

In contrast, war today has more elements of raid/suprise, where the chivalrous face-off against the enemy doesn’t exist.

Further, it should be noted that musketeers in Washington’s time couldn’t even duck but were ordered to stand and fire. So while being injured was almost totally random, the injury was proof positive that you had, with some degree of valor, fought.

As for Hackworth, I believe he posted all the medals as some sort of refutation to a controversy. Full disclosure and all that.

Not sure how this might affect the Kerry debate.

“As for Hackworth, I believe he posted all the medals as some sort of refutation to a controversy.”

True, but posting the list of medals was not my point. He made the statement that the medals he was proudest of were …. and then he listed his Purple Hearts and did not list his Silver Stars and Bronze Stars.

Interesting points by Mr. Collins. Whether or not those considerations were explicit in the institution of the PH, it seems likely to me that they were implicit. Washington didn’t imagine today’s long distance-type warfare. He was dealing with war and wounds as he knew them. To be wounded, you had to be physically close to the enemy.

“As for Hackworth…”

Oh. Excuse me. I hadn’t checked his site in a while.

More speculation? Perhaps, like others we label heroes, Hackworth feels he can take pride in the day-to-day being there and being competent, as opposed to the few random extraordinary acts. This is sheer speculation here, because I’ve never run into a burning building or anything, but all such heroes I hear from say things like, “Well, anyone would have done it; I’m not special” —almost as if they were overtaken by some impulse and just had to perform the act as opposed to consciously planning and implementing a worthy deed.

So the Silver Stars were the result of a reaction, as opposed to what they might view as the more laudible act of getting up every day and doing your duty.

I suppose now it would be useful to track back to the discussion on heroism of a few days ago.

One more observation, though. I think artists get this too: a sort of shame over fame, like, it is not me, I just sat down and kept writing songs and eventually some of them were cool and I’m glad you like them but I’m not a genius.

Now that I think about it, however, I have sometimes done things that hint at this feeling. And how can you take credit for inspiration that seems to come from outside yourself? The Greeks might have said that would be placing yourself at the level of the Gods. All excellence is equally difficult. True heroes praise day-to-day unrewarded competence and adherence to duty because they realize (after the glorious act?), that our only guaranteed attainable role/position/stature of Man is the day-to-day. God, the Fates, or something else determines when the chances will arise for an outstanding or exceptional deed.

And now back to work.

I don’t think I agree with Mr. Collins and Mr. Auster. Long-distance artillery weapons have been used in battle for a very long time, certainly as long as the Purple Heart has been in existence.

You don’t hear much about artillery in the War of Independence. I don’t think artillery played a major role in the larger battles, such as the battle of Long Island (which was decided by British sneaking around through woods and coming up on Washington’s left flank and forcing him to retreat), or Monmouth (where Washington under conditions of disorder regrouped his forces along a road and the two armies then had it out), or that battle in the Carolinas (I forget the name) that was portrayed in “The Patriot.” These battles seemed to have been battles between lines of men firing muskets. There was artillery (I think Henry Knox, later the first Secretary of War, was Washington’s artillery commander), it’s just that offhand I don’t remember it being referred to very much in accounts of Revolutionary battles I’ve read. In any case, the artillery that was used would still have had a range limited to the immediate battle field.

I’m not speaking from detailed knowledge but from general memory of past reading.

Artillery played a critical role at the end, in the Siege of Yorktown which, when it came to blows, was largely an artillery duel. Perhaps we don’t hear so much about Revolutionary artillery because the decisive guns at Yorktown - including all heavy artillery on the Continental side - were (sacré bleu, horreur, watch the Neocons grit their teeth)… French.

By the late 18th c., and this had been true for some time, sophisticated European artillery (and those cheese-eating surrender-monkey French were the best) was very capable of breaking up attacks and preventing direct infantry engagements. There is more to French history than being “bailed out by the Yanks” (in itself a gross oversimplification) in 1918 and 1944!

Nevertheless, in battles where the Continental side consisted of Americans only, artillery was less important, and at Cowpens and Kings Mountain - as Mr. Auster notes - almost entirely absent from the Continental force, which was essentially militia. HRS

I believe the Purple Heart was allowed to lapse after the Revolution and was only reinstituted in the 1930s. I don’t think it is a stupid medal, but obviously it is not in a class with the rest.
The importance of artillery has increased almost throughout modern history — the American Civil War is almost the only exception or gap that I can think of, because at that time, the development of the rifle had temporarily overtaken the improvement of field artillery.