John Kerry, Secretary of What?

By SETH LIPSKY

Mr. Lipsky, formerly a member of the Journal’s editorial board, covered combat in Vietnam for the GI daily Pacific Stars and Stripes.

One of the curious—and admirable—things about President Obama is how he has sought to correct the narrative of Vietnam. The way Vietnam veterans were blamed for the “misdeeds of a few” GIs when “the honorable service of the many should have been praised,” the president said on the 50th anniversary of the start of the war, was “a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.”

So why in the world is Mr. Obama floating the name of John Kerry for secretary of either state or defense? It is hard to think of anyone who did more to besmirch the name of the GIs who fought in Vietnam than Sen. Kerry. He did so in 1971, in testimony before the very Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he chairs today. And he did so after meeting in Paris with envoys of our communist foe and then echoing in the debate here their calls for an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam.

For all the controversy over Ambassador Susan Rice—National Journal reports that the president is “genuinely conflicted” over the choice between Ms. Rice and Mr. Kerry—the prospect that Mr. Kerry might head state or defense is more shocking. Mr. Kerry “is well qualified to be the Secretary of Defense . . . of Cuba or Venezuela” is how the leader of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John O’Neill, reacted in an email last week. “He [is] certainly an expert on surrender and can run up a white flag with the best of them.”

Mr. O’Neill and fellow officers who served on Swift Boats in the war in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta torpedoed Mr. Kerry’s campaign for president in 2004. The Swift Vets exposed his libels against American GIs and debunked his claims to heroism in the Mekong Delta. They recalled how, when the war in Vietnam was still being fought, Mr. Kerry met in Paris with Madame Binh of the Viet Cong and later endorsed the Viet Cong’s peace proposal.

In 1971 Mr. Kerry related to the Senate accusations that he said had been made by veterans testifying before an antiwar group called the Winter Soldier Investigation. Mr. Kerry quoted them as saying they “had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”

Bloomberg NewsSenator John Kerry

The conviction of Lt. William Calley for his role in the massacre at My Lai is a reminder that our side did commit some war crimes in Vietnam. But they were, as Mr. Obama suggested, the misdeeds of a few. According to the website wintersoldier.com, which is sympathetic to Mr. O’Neill and the Swift Vets, the allegations raised by the Winter Soldier investigation were examined by the Defense Department and either did not hold up or could not be proved and no one was ever prosecuted for the allegations made by Mr. Kerry’s group. Allies of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, sponsor of the antiwar hearings at which veterans testified, dispute critics of the investigation.

Separately, in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Kerry confessed to committing war crimes himself. Crosby Noyes of the Evening Star newspaper in Washington put the question this way: “Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?” Here’s how Mr. Kerry answered:

“There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages.”

Mr. Kerry tried to blame others for what he confessed to: “All of this,” he said, “is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.”

Thirty years later, in a retrospective interview on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Kerry brushed off his remarks, saying “those were the words of an angry young man.” He has sought to position himself as a spokesman for Vietnam veterans. He has been befriended in the Senate by no less than John McCain, a Navy flier held for more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi and who condemned the attacks on Mr. Kerry by the Swift Vets.

All the more reason to open up these questions in hearings if Mr. Kerry is nominated to head either the State Department or the Pentagon. My view is that it is not, and never was, unpatriotic or dishonorable to take a dovish position on the war in Vietnam. There were millions of honorable people on both sides of the debate. But there were not many, if there are any, Navy officers who, after leaving active duty, showed up in meetings with enemy envoys in Paris or went on TV and confessed to war crimes.

So if Mr. Obama hands up Mr. Kerry for secretary of state or defense, these questions beg for answers. It may be unlikely that the Senate would reject the nomination of Mr. Kerry. The last time it turned down one of its own for such a post was President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Texas Sen. John Tower to head the Pentagon. It was a spectacularly bitter fight.

It did not, however, involve anything so serious as the questions that dog Sen. Kerry, who did so much to tarnish the reputation of American GIs and exploit the misdeeds of a few for the benefit of the antiwar movement. If Mr. Obama wants to correct the narrative of Vietnam, if the vilification of our veterans is to be finally addressed, as Mr. Obama has so eloquently sought, hearings on Mr. Kerry’s own role would be a good place to start. Absent such a hearing, what kind of message would his elevation to state or defense send?

Mr. Lipsky, formerly a member of the Journal’s editorial board, covered combat in Vietnam for the GI daily Pacific Stars and Stripes.