Does The “Chicken-Hawk” Invective Apply To The Bush Administration?
By Gary Krasner (06/14/04)
It’s become clear by now why Democrats chose Senator John Kerry as their nominee. They felt his military service record would look great compared to George Bush’s. The preference for Kerry could have been forecasted by anyone who perused the left-wing and Democrat websites, where the chicken-hawk epithet was commonly applied to the Bush Administration, well before Kerry even announced his candidacy.
Unfortunately for Senator Kerry, his foot-in-mouth misstatements some weeks back concerning the disposition of his military service medals had forced his campaign surrogates (and later Kerry himself)—such as Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ, on the Senate floor on 4/28/04), Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and Kerry’s wife Teresa—to divert media attention from his blunder with escalated counterattacks that the Administration is comprised of “chicken hawks”.
Recall that the prior ‘chicken hawk’ counter-attack occurred some weeks before that, after some Democrats were pressed to substantiate their allegations that Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard 30 years ago. Nevertheless, here are three reasons why the label doesn’t apply:
First, it’s empirically false. On 8/13/2003, Jerry Bowyer (techcentralstation.com) described the study by ChartWell that examined the military record of the President, VP, and cabinet level officials of the last three administrations. They discovered that “the current administration’s ratio of combat veterans at 32 percent, is higher than the proportion of veterans for Clinton’s administration at 30 percent, and is also higher than George H.W. Bush’s proportion of veterans in his cabinet, also at 30 percent.” While the differences are close, one should note that (1) the current administration is led by people with military service records in far higher ratios than exists in the general population, and (2) Clinton’s Administration was never painted with the “chicken-hawk” label when Kosovo, Somolia, Haiti, and Iraq were attacked by US forces.
Second, there are still armed bodyguards protecting judges and district attorneys many years after their involvement in the Ramsey Yosef trial and other criminal prosecutions of Islamist militants. Terrorism was a problem that Bush could have passed along to future Administrations, like past Presidents had done. Yet Bush chose an aggressive anti-terrorism policy, knowing that he, and every relative right down to his second cousins would consequently become primary targets. Terrorists will also consider every Bush administration official and their kin legitimate targets. Security risks apply to many high profile Cabinet officers too, perhaps even after they leave office. Whatever Bush was like 30 years ago, his courage and resoluteness now is more than making up for his past deficits.
Finally, Historian Victor Davis Hanson noted on the first anniversary of 9-11 (even before Iraq!) that the ‘chicken hawk’ invective “rings hollow after September 11, and sounds more like [General] McClellan’s shrillness against his civilian overseers who precipitously wanted an odious slavery ended than resonant of Patton’s audacity in charging after murderous Nazis. More Americans were destroyed at work in a single day than all those soldiers killed in enemy action since the evacuation of Vietnam nearly 30 years ago.” Hanson is saying that it’s not just the military that’s in harm’s way in this war.
KERRY’S MILITARY SERVICE
John Kerry may have more explaining to do if he continues with his “Vietnam Offensive” (i.e. placing every issue he addresses in the context of his service in Vietnam): He didn’t reach draft age in total ignorance of world affairs. He was educated in an upscale prep school and attended college. His father was in the foreign service. He was therefore well-informed of the problems with the U.S. involvement in Vietnam by 1968. Indeed, two things stand out from testimonials from numerous friends and classmates of Kerry’s before he enlisted in the Navy: John Kerry opposed the Vietnam War, and he unequivocally desired a career in politics and public service. Some of his peers even said that Kerry thought that the efficacy of joining the Navy was that it followed in President Kennedy’s career path. The only involvement with Vietnam that Kerry wanted was to report on it. That’s why he brought an expensive movie camera with him to Vietnam.
Moreover, despite ill-informed statements by Kerry surrogates, Kerry never actually volunteered for service in Vietnam. Indeed, he made no less an effort to avoid action in Vietnam than George Bush. For while Bush was flying an F-104 interceptor jet fighter in the Texas Air National Guard—and his unit could have been called up for active duty—Kerry’s actions can be arguably be seen as a draft avoider:
Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserves on February 16, 1966, only after his fifth and final college deferment (to study in Paris) was denied. He chose the Naval Reserves to avoid being drafted into the army and shipped off to Vietnam. His status remained “inactive” until December 16 when the NAVY—and NOT KERRY—changed his status to “active”. Kerry’s first tour of duty wasn’t in Vietnam as his supporters keep repeating: From June 1967 to June 1968, Kerry was assigned to the USS Gridley, a “blue-water” vessel cruising the Pacific from California to Australia with a brief 5 weeks stop off the coast of Vietnam.
On November 17 1968, the NAVY—and NOT KERRY—then decided to ship John Kerry off to Vietnam. When Kerry chose to sign on to serve on Swift Boats, their duty was fairly safe work at the time. But that changed by the time Kerry completed his 3 month training on them. On August 21, the Washington Post wrote:
“The role of the Swift boats changed dramatically toward the end of 1968, when Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., commander of U.S. naval forces in South Vietnam, decided to use them to block Vietcong supply routes through the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of young men such as Kerry, with little combat experience, suddenly found themselves face to face with the enemy.”
“When Kerry signed up to command a Swift boat in the summer of 1968, he was inspired by the example of his hero, John F. Kennedy, who had commanded the PT-109 patrol boat in the Pacific in World War II. But Kerry had little expectation of seeing serious action. At the time the Swift boats—or PCFs (patrol craft fast), in Navy jargon—were largely restricted to coastal patrols. “I didn’t really want to get involved in the war,” Kerry wrote in a book of war reminiscences published in 1986.”
Thus, Kerry states straight out, “I didn’t really want to get involved in the war”, yet he and his supporters constantly claim he volunteered to fight in Vietnam. One wonders where the press and media are when it comes to conflicting statements by Democrats running for President?! The additional irony to all this was that Kerry is the one—not Bush—who’s made his service in Vietnam a central theme of his campaign, yet he’s the one who refuses to sign the Pentagon’s Standard Form 180 that would authorize the Pentagon to release ALL his military service files to anyone who requests them. Bush has already done so for his service in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG). And in August, National Review columnist Byron York documented how Bush had met and exceeded his commitment to TANG.
National Review columnist Deroy Murdock has been on Kerry’s case about Kerry’s records. On Aug. 25, he wrote: “John Kerry’s signature on a National Archives Standard Form 180 would release these and possibly other Navy documents that could answer many of the questions buzzing around Kerry like wasps.”
The most likely reason that Kerry wants to keep his military records from public scrutiny is to suppress any further discoveries of inconsistencies and outright contradictions between what Kerry has said or written about his war record, and what actually too place.
For example, on August 26, 2004, Brit Hume on Fox News quoted Kerry speaking at a Martin Luther King Day celebration in Virginia last year, saying, “I remember well April 1968, I was serving in Vietnam, a place of violence, when the news reports brought home to me and my crewmates the violence back home, and the tragic news that one of the bullets flying that terrible spring took the life of [Dr. King].” Mr. Hume then pointed out that King was shot on April 4th, 1968, yet “according to Kerry’s own Website, it was not until November 17, 1968, that Kerry reported for duty in Vietnam.”
In a news segment that appeared in May 2004, NBC’s Lisa Meyers contrasted Kerry’s shifting statements on the Vietnam War: In 1971, Kerry was asked on the “Dick Cavett Show” why he agreed to go to Vietnam in the first place? Kerry responded: “Because in 1965, voicing an objection, as I would have liked to have, at that point, would have been futile.” Meyers then showed Kerry saying on “Meet the Press” in 2001: “I believe it was a noble effort to begin with, I signed up. I volunteered. I wanted to go over and I wanted to win.”
In the Meyers news segment, Historian—and Kerry biographer—Douglass Brinkley opined that there is a difference between those two statements, and that it’s not his understanding that John Kerry “ever thought Vietnam per se was a noble effort.” Brinkley also commented that Kerry filmed his experiences [using his own camera] in Vietnam in order to bolster his case against the Vietnam War.
Much of Kerry’s claims are dubious, justy based on logic. Despite opposition to the war, Kerry enlisted to “fight for this country”? (quote from his convention speech.) Questions that are never asked of Kerry is, “How much of your advocacy against the Vietnam war was actually based upon your combat experience (all 4 months-worth) as you portrayed it, and how much of it was based upon a preconceived (albeit sincere and legitimate) political opposition to the war”? And, “Did you feel that service in Vietnam would be considered mandatory for a viable political career that you aspired to?”
His only combat experience as skipper on a Swift Boat, and may have been curtailed to just 4 months (the shortest on record) by his aggressively seeking Purple Hearts for superficial wounds he received—lobbying efforts that many corpsmen and doctors reported as not uncommon by those seeking to get themselves out of combat before they completed their one year tour.
KERRY’S MEDALS AND CITATIONS
John O’Neal and the Swift Boat Vets for Truth have well covered the issue over whether Kerry deserved his medals. I’ll just mention a few things about the Bay Hap River incident of March 13, 1969, from which Kerry received the Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart. This was the first and most oft-mentioned incident by Kerry and his campaign to portray his heroism. But while the Swiftvets point out (on their website) that Kerry has described three different versions of the incident, for whichever version one chooses, there’s an objective paradox with Kerry’s story, and one in which O’Neal and his cohorts have tried to point out from time to time:
After initially fleeing the area, Kerry’s boat later turned around and came back, where Kerry claims he was wounded by enemy fire while trying to rescue James Rassman, who fell off Kerry’s boat when it sped away from there. Kerry’s crew has been kept away from press inquiries ever since the Swiftvet story broke in August. But the crews on the other 4 boats said that there wasn’t any enemy gunfire whatsoever. And the physical evidence supports this: Swift boats stood several feet high on the surface of the water. These 5 boats were sitting in a river 75-yards wide for 90 minutes, engaged in a rescue operation of the crew of the sinking PCF3 boat, followed by the slow towing of the crippled boat back down the river.
And yet the NY Times on August 20, 2004 uncritically passed along Kerry’s claims that during this time, there was “intense enemy machine gun fire from both sides of the river”, and that only ONE of the 5 boats sustained 3 bullet holes! Even assuming that the boat didn’t incur the damage the day before (as some claimed), and even assuming that these boats somehow and miraculously avoided getting shot to pieces from the intense crossfire from automatic weapons, how is it that there wasn’t an after-action report filed, particularly when medals were applied for and awarded? Or why would Kerry turn around and return his boat to the site of an ongoing ambush from which he just escaped? Or as political commentator Ann Coulter noted: “How come none of those guys [from the other 3 boats] got Bronze Stars? Did they pull men [from the sinking PCF3 boat] out of the water in a less heroic way [than Kerry did]?”
There’s no question that these and other incidents that O’Neal documents makes Kerry look like a fraud—a phantom war “hero”. There should be no wonder why Kerry stopped having press conferences when the Swiftvet stories were hot in August and September, and why his campaign is hiding the handful of his crew from reporters, and why Kerry refuses to sign the Pentagon’s Standard Form 180.
KERRY’S ANTI-WAR ACTIVITIES
Kerry opposed the war in Vietnam. There were many honorable opponents of the war who articulated their views without alleging U.S. atrocities. But not Kerry. On April 22, 1971, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicting the U.S. war effort based on horrendous war crimes. Without any evidence, he echoed the charges of the “Winter Soldier Investigation”—an antiwar gathering a few months earlier in which Vietnam veterans (many later shown to be frauds) described atrocities they claimed to have committed.
TODAY, Kerry downplays the degree and prevalence of the crimes he alleged. But THEN, he testified that they were “not isolated incidents”, but rather “but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”
TODAY, Kerry explains that he was merely conveying the testimonials of other soldiers. But THEN, he testified that he actually took part in war crimes:
“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 calibre 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.”
To summarize, Kerry’s anti-war sentiment in the 1970s may have been sincere. I don’t know. But it was also politically popular to be opposing the war in Massachusetts, and it proved instrumental in helping Kerry gain public prominence. He alleged war atrocities though hearsay, and not from direct experience. And if it were the latter, why didn’t he report the crimes when they occurred? Why did he argue in his testimony and press statements that attrocities committed by U.S. forces were the rule rather than the exception?
He tried to avoid combat in Vietnam like most men did, yet he realized that military service was a requisite item on a resume for a career in politics. And in the subsequent years, depending on the political climate, “candidate Kerry” had alternately touted his opposition to the Vietnam war, or cynically embraced his “Band of Brothers” from Vietnam, and citing pride in his service towards a mission that he disparaged.
If Senator Kerry wants his military service to be the centerpiece of his campaign, then let’s have a good look at the whole picture.
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