Fulbright Commission hearing on the Vietnam War, 1971
John Kerry of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, April 22nd, 1971:
In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits* supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but, also, we found that the Vietnamese, whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image, were hard-put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
[...] We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Vietcong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.
[... H]ow do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
[... O]ur own determination [is] to undertake one last mission: To search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war; to pacify our own hearts; to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so, when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
Illustrated audio and partial transcript at Democracy Now!
Full transcript at Winter Soldier
* Refers to Vice President Spiro Agnew's characterization of anti-war activists
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Secretary of State John Kerry, Sept. 17th, 2014:
You know, as I came in here, obviously, we had some folks who spoke out, and I would start by saying that I understand dissent. I've lived it. That's how I first testified in front of this country in 1971. I spent two years protesting a policy. So I respect the right of Code Pink to protest and to use that right.
But you know what? I also know something about Code Pink. Code Pink was started by a woman and women who were opposed to war but who also thought that the government's job was to take care of people and to give them health care and education and good jobs. And if that's what you believe in, and I believe it is, then you ought to care about fighting ISIL. Because ISIL is killing and raping and mutilating women. They believe women shouldn't have an education. They sell off girls to be sex slaves to jihadists. There is no negotiation with ISIL. There's nothing to negotiate. And they're not offering health care of any kind. You know, they're not offering education of any kind. For a whole philosophy or idea or cult, whatever you want to call it, that frankly comes out of the stone age... They're cold-blooded killers marauding across the Middle East, making a mockery of a peaceful religion.
And that's precisely why we're building a coalition to stop them from denying the women and the girls and the people of Iraq the very future that they yearned for. And, frankly, Code Pink and a lot of other people need to stop and think about how you stop them and deal with that.
Full video and approximate transcript at C-SPAN
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What an insult to the intelligence and moral integrity of the many people who oppose more war to say that we haven't thought through the consequences of the USA's options, that we aren't sufficiently opposed to ISIL, or that we don't care deeply enough about the people of Syria and Iraq. This is the ugly side of the politics of "liberal interventionism." Perhaps John Kerry of 2014 would tell John Kerry of 1971 that he wasn't sufficiently opposed to communism.
I would think that a most basic requirement of any foreign policy that takes peace at all seriously would include putting more resources into humanitarian aid than into military action, indeed making the emphasis on the former a prerequisite to even considering the latter. Instead:
Funding woes force U.N. to slash rations for Syrians: official
BY STEPHANIE NEBEHAY
GENEVA Wed Sep 17, 2014
(Reuters) - The United Nations will have to slash food rations to four million Syrians by 40 percent in October due to a shortage of funds, despite better access to areas in need, a senior U.N. aid official said on Wednesday.
U.S. Congress approves arming Syrian rebels, funding government
BY PATRICIA ZENGERLE AND DAVID LAWDER
WASHINGTON Thu Sep 18, 2014
(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress gave final approval on Thursday to President Barack Obama's plan for training and arming moderate Syrian rebels to battle Islamic State, a major part of his military campaign to "degrade and destroy" the militant group.
The Senate voted 78-22, in a rare bipartisan show of support for one of Obama's high-profile initiatives. With the House of Representatives approving the legislation on Wednesday, the measure now goes to Obama to sign into law.
Were we a more just country, might we even speak of... reparations to Iraqis? Back to 1971:
Mr. KERRY: I think we have a very definite obligation to make extensive reparations to the people of Indochina.
As for the awful circumstances of the people of Iraq and of Syria, John Kerry of 1971 might have expressed some tougher love:
Senator AIKEN: I think your 3,000 estimate might be a little low because we had to help 800,000 find sanctuary from North Vietnam after the French lost at Dienbienphu. But assuming that we resettle the members of the Saigon government, who would undoubtedly be in danger, in some other area, what do you think would be the attitude, of the large, well-armed South Vietnamese army and the South Vietnamese people? Would they be happy to have us withdraw or what?
Mr. KERRY: Well, Senator, this, obviously, is the most difficult question of all, but I think that at this point the United States is not really in a position to consider the happiness of those people as pertains to the army in our withdrawal. We have to consider the happiness of the people as pertains to the life which they will be able to lead in the next few years.
If we don't withdraw, if we maintain a Korean-type presence in South Vietnam, say 50,000 troops or something, with strategic bombing raids from Guam and from Japan and from Thailand dropping these 15,000-pound fragmentation bombs on them, et cetera, in the next few years, then what you will have is a people who are continually oppressed, who are continually at warfare, and whose problems will not at all be solved because they will not have any kind of representation.
The war will continue. So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America, and we can't go around—President Kennedy said this, many times. He said that the United States simply can't right every wrong, that we can't solve the problems of the other 94 percent of mankind. We didn't go into East Pakistan; we didn't go into Czechoslovakia. Why then should we feel that we now have the power to solve the internal political struggles of this country?
We have to let them solve their problems while we solve ours and help other people in an altruistic fashion commensurate with our capability. But we have extended that capacity; we have exhausted that capacity, Senator. So I think the question is really moot.
(Delirious non-sequitur interlude:
"The question is moot. Next question!")
[...] On the question of getting out with some semblance for peace, as a man who has fought there, I am trying to say that this policy has no chance for peace. You don't have a chance for peace when you arm the people of another country and tell them they can fight a war. That is not peace; that is fighting a war; that is continuing a war.
And what of requiring a declaration of war?
We really have a constitutional crisis in this country right now. The Constitution under test, and we are failing. We are failing clearly because the power of the executive has become exorbitant, because Congress has not wanted to exercise its own power, and so that is going to require some very fundamental changes.
So much for that.
We traded facing our problems for pablum.
One point of contention about John Kerry of 1971's famous question from the first quote is that, while the Vietnam War was a mistake for some who honestly felt duped, it was not a mistake on the part of those whose motivation was to expand and enrich American military-economic empire. (That group includes strident anti-communists, even if some of them acted blindly.) In that regard, it was quite intentional, down to the histrionics over the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
And so too was the Iraq War intentional—even more so. That's meaningful. It's one thing to own up to a mistake. It's quite another to call out the ill intent that people act under, one that drives too much of what our country does around the world.