I don't particularly like Senator Bob ("Clinton is an unusually good liar") Kerrey.

For his entire political career he's been a perfect representative of the warfare/welfare state. There are certainly worse examples, but the ex-Senator managed to touch all the required statist bases. Like others in the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body" he showed contempt for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and displayed the general corrupt and malign mental miasma that seems to infect the vast majority of the ruling class in Washington DC.

I don't feel comfortable branding him a war criminal. The thought that a holder of the Medal of Honor, our highest award for valor, is a base murderer is repugnant.

The shocking story in the New York Times ("One Awful Night in Thanh Phong," by Gregory L. Vistica) makes some truly horrible and sickening allegations. In 1969, as a Lieutenant (jg) in the Navy Seals, Kerrey is alleged to have led a mission in which at least 13 Vietnamese non-combatants were brutally slaughtered. If the claims of fellow Seal and team subordinate, Gerhard Klann, are to be believed, it was a mission from Hell. Klann was so disturbed by his memories he later confided in a superior officer who leaked the story to Vistica (then a reporter for Newsweek).

I don't need to go into the gruesome details of this commando raid. Click on this link to the Times story (registration required) to read them.

So, is Senator Kerrey an unpunished war criminal? Arguably yes, if the allegations are true. What is alleged to have happened is certainly as horrific as anything Nato recently bombed Serbian warriors for supposedly doing. Ah, but, but…

Consider if you will, two hoary old truisms: "War Is Hell" and "These Are the Times That Try Men's Souls." No one can better attest to the basic truth of these cliches than the young men our masters send to kill, bleed, and die for the American Imperium.

War is Hell. Nothing you can read on the printed page, nothing recounted second-hand, even the best CGI effects Hollywood has to offer, will ever compare to the awful reality of war. Hell breeds demons.

War is the time that will try a man's soul. He will live daily fearing sudden death, he will see his friends die in ways that will haunt him forever. And he will kill. He will extinguish the life of another of God's human creatures. Singly or en masse.

Take a typical young man. Train him rigorously, putting him in peak physical condition. Teach him the martial arts, all the ways of quick death. Prepare his mind as well and convince him of the evil of his enemy and the utter rightness of his cause.

Now, take that young man and place him in combat. Aren't the results predictable? Some men will be cowards, some will be heroes, and most will fall somewhere in between. But all of them will kill rather than die. And, unfortunately, some men will grow to enjoy killing. Hell breeds demons.

Was Lieutenant (jg) Kerrey a man who enjoyed killing? No one can say but him and his Creator. No matter what else he may be, Lt. Kerry was also what I call a pawn of war. A killer chess piece placed on the board of empire, by players of the great game of conquest.

However, the worst war criminals are the men who placed Lt. Kerrey in the killing fields to practice the deadly arts. The worst war criminals are the men who sat comfortably in Washington, DC, while this young man hid in the rice paddies, thousands of miles from our shores, dealing out death and undoubtedly waiting in fear for his own as well.

We know their names. Starting with genial Ike, followed by JFK and LBJ, ending with Richard Nixon, these are the men who sent hundreds of thousands of Lt. Kerreys, Sgt. Smiths, and Pfc. Browns to kill and die in Indochina. They were aided by shadowy ministers like McNamara, Kissinger and others of that ilk, corpse-counting generals in the Pentagon, and the legions of tax-eating senators and congressmen as well.

Lieutenant (jg) Robert Kerrey, USN, left Viet Nam a killer of women and children, an act for which he accepted the Bronze Star. As Senator Bob Kerrey he became a part of the corrupt political structure that sends other young men out to do the same.

Now he stares into the abyss – and the abyss stares back.

April 28, 2001

The Best of Jeff Elkins

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