Collateral Damage
ACOMMENTARY byCBSNews.com's Jarrett Murphy
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey's admission that his SEAL team killed 20 or so civilians in a 1969 raid could be taken as yet another example of what went wrong in Vietnam, the war in which America lost its innocence.
Sadly, nothing went wrong. Nothing about that night, or Vietnam in general, deviated from the reality of war. We just like to think so.
Intentional or not, what Kerrey did was terrible, but in principle it was not especially novel. In Vietnam, Americans dropped tons of explosives on villages, laced massive strips of jungle with defoliant and Napalm, propped up brutal dictators and carpet bombed third countries. But those are rarely considered war crimes in the mainstream media.
Even when they are, the people who ordered those acts have a far easier time cleansing their consciences. Robert McNamara orchestrated the war from Washington, then said sorry in a best-selling book. But Kerrey, who left part of his leg in Vietnam, now stands trial in the court of public opinion.
Events like Kerrey's raid or the My Lai massacre are treated like atrocities because they happened at close range, with victim and soldier within sight of one another. But everything happens "up close" in a civil war, fought among and by civilians, as Vietnam was.
The Vietnam War
The Korean War
The Gulf War
Indeed, Kerrey's raid may have been an exception in the sense that not every G.I. has had to carry his particular brand of guilt. But it was an exception that proves how twisted the rules of war are — and not just in Vietnam.
The treatment of Vietnam as a profound yet exceptional tragedy is now a time-honored tradition. But if events like Kerrey's raid were its tragic element, Vietnam was no exception. It was an act in a long and gory drama.
Speaking about the incident last week, Kerrey said that at the time, "America no longer sanctioned the sustained, lethal violence needed to win any war."
What that means is, Vietnam was different only because America was deeply divided over whether it was the right place and time for Americans to kill brutally and be brutally killed, which is what a war requires.
That cultural divide was the most obvious symptom of the "Vietnam Syndrome," which was allegedly cured by a war against Iraq which was won fairly quickly and with what were deemed acceptable U.S. losses.
It's said that the Gulf War "renewed America's faith in itself." Since its conclusion, other conflicts from America's past have been re-examined and Hollywood-izd. But the fact is, beneath the benign glare of nostalgia and patriotism, there was plenty of sustained, lethal violence in those conflicts as well.
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In Korea, Americans saved the south from communism, but not without civilian losses. Several vets and Koreans claim civilians were intentionally killed at No Gun Ri. The Pentagon says there was no order to kill them, but Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in January, "We have determined, however, that U.S. soldiers killed or injured an unconfirmed number of Korean refugees…"
And in the Second World War, for all the Private Ryan stories, there are also the tales of two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, obliterated by nuclear weapons. Up to 110,000 civilians died in those bombings, which were ordered to spare America the casualties a land invasion would have required.
But the atomic bomb attacks aren't usually considered atrocities the way the Kerrey raid is because they occurred from a distance. Same with the 41 days of bombing in Iraq, and the Napalming in Vietnam.
It's no wonder, then, that part of the fascination with modern "smart" bombs, unmanned fighter planes and other high-tech weapons is that they will spare American troops from the moral abyss of front-line combat, where one is forced to make ethical decisions with one's life in one's hands. In the war of the future, some think distance may save lives and souls.
But if Kerrey's case proves anything, it's that distance doesn't matter. Thirty-two years away from Thanh Pronh, he is still haunted by that dak night when he gave the order to fire that killed women and kids. And if Kerrey can't escape, neither can the public that at one point "sanctioned" the Vietnam war, and gave almost total support to other similarly cruel conflicts.
As he revealed the incident last week, Kerrey said he hoped that people would be moved by his story to debate their beliefs on armed conflict. That is a good idea. The fact that "sustained, lethal violence" is necessarily part of any war doesn't excuse Kerrey. Rather, it taints — and should compel — all of us.
By JARRETT MURPHY
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