Sen. John Kerry, on the 35th anniversary of his impassioned speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the wrongheadedness of the Vietnam War, reiterated the same sentiments about the current war in Iraq. He apparently did so on the theory of better late than never.
Kerry, who spoke 35 years ago as a decorated combat veteran, now reaffirmed in Boston “that it was right to dissent in 1971 from a war that was wrong. And to affirm that it is both a right and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong and a war in Iraq that weakens the nation.”
Politically, Kerry would be better off today, as he contemplates a possible second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, had he made those observations in October of 2002, when on the Senate floor he sought to justify his vote for the resolution empowering President Bush to use force in Iraq.
That vote haunted Kerry throughout his failed 2004 presidential campaign, despite repeated efforts to defend it. In January 2003, when a student at Georgetown University accused him of political expediency, he said he had cast “a ?but? vote ? yes, but I want to make sure you?re going to the UN.” If Bush went into Iraq “pre-emptively without cause” and virtually alone, he told the student, he said, “I will oppose him.”
Bush did both, and Kerry did complain. But during the 2004 campaign, after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, a reporter asked him whether he would have cast the same vote “knowing what we know now.” Kerry remarkably said yes. In short order, the Republicans pounced, and he never recovered.
Obviously, in light of what we know now about the absence of WMD and what has happened in Iraq since the first flush of “victory” there in 2003, Kerry could more easily make the speech he did the other day comparing Vietnam and Iraq.
Speaking out against Bush?s blunders leading up to the Iraq invasion and his misadventures since then is politically easier, too, in the face of polls showing that a strong majority of Americans now say going into Iraq was a mistake, and the administration is on the wrong track there.
But Kerry did not need hindsight to make the case on the moral and patriotic grounds that he offered in the Boston speech. Speaking of Vietnam, he said: “I believed then, just as I believe now, that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice and disserves our people and our principles.”
In light of the Iraq fiasco, Kerry was able to add: “When brave patriots suffer and die on the altar of stubborn pride, because of the incompetence and self-deception of mere politicians, then the only patriotic choice is to reclaim the moral authority misused by those entrusted with high office.”
No doubt harkening back to his own experience in 2004 when his own military reputation drew aspersions on his Vietnam service as a swift-boat commander, Kerry declared: “Dissenters are not always right, but it is a warning sign when they are accused of unpatriotic sentiments by politicians seeking a safe harbor from debate, from accountability, or from the simple truth.”
These and other observations in the Boston speech suggest that Kerry, if he runs again, intends to offer himself as a tougher campaigner and more consistent messenger than he was in 2004. But Republican foes, and perhaps other contending Democrats as well, aren?t likely to let him put his previous ambiguous words and votes on Iraq behind him easily in 2008.
For now, at least, Kerry seems to be casting caution aside. He has called for the new Iraqi government to ratify its leadership by May 15 or face the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and in any event for them to redeploy by the end of this year. Having said 35 years ago that this country stayed too long Vietnam, he is counting on Americans to agree now that the same is true of Iraq.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
