One of the advantages to being nearly a half-century old is historical memory.
I recall the first time I ever saw John Kerry, the first time I ever heard him speak.
It was a long time ago – April 1971, to be precise, nearly 33 years ago.
I was impressed then. I'm not impressed any more.
After having participated in the founding of an organization called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry helped organize a rally of hundreds of Vietnam vets on the Capitol Mall in Washington. There were Viet Cong flags flying. There were clenched fists raised in the air. There were posters of Communist Party hack Angela Davis plastered on placards.
The most remarkable part of that media event was the visual image of these former soldiers throwing away their hard-won war medals – with John Kerry leading the action. News accounts reported Kerry, the decorated retired lieutenant, had thrown his own medals away.
Only many years later did we learn he kept his and threw away the medals earned by others. Kerry, it seems, according to those who knew him best, had a personal agenda that went beyond exposing the abuses of the Vietnam War. Even as a Yale undergraduate, even as he was entering the military, even as he was leading this anti-war protest and others, he was planning to run for president of the United States some day. Those medals would come in handy.
Kerry mentioned his objectives to others along the way. He pointed out he had the right initials for the job – JFK. He was an ambitious man – a man on the move.
A few days later, while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971, Kerry said U.S. soldiers had "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, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam." He said this while U.S. troops were still fighting and dying in Vietnam – while many were still imprisoned and being tortured by the North Vietnamese Communists.
One can easily forgive such youthful indiscretions. One month later, then a 16-year-old anti-war activist, I was arrested in Washington. Kerry was one of my inspirations, one of my heroes. But whereas I now see my own actions at that time in a different light, Kerry has expressed no remorse, no regrets. Many years later, he was still giving aid and comfort to the tyrannical government of Communist Vietnam.
As chairman of the Select Senate Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, he gave Hanoi a clean bill of health with regard to credible claims Vietnam was still holding U.S. prisoners of war. Kerry ensured the committee voted that no U.S. servicemen remained there, angering many families of missing servicemen.
Kerry got his reward. A year later, Hanoi announced it was awarding Colliers International, a Boston-based real estate company, an exclusive deal to develop its commercial real estate potentially worth billions. Stuart Forbes, the chief executive officer of Colliers, was Kerry's cousin.
While Kerry has made a campaign issue of his distinguished service in Vietnam, whitewashing his anti-war radicalism, it is Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich who have cultivated the reputations of hard-core anti-military Democratic candidates for president.
But it is new front-runner John Kerry who has the longest and most prominent history of involvement with anti-American, anti-military activism.
I know. I remember. I was there.