There's an old saying that "you can't have your cake and eat it, too." Well, if there were a way to bend the space-time continuum so that one could simultaneously eat AND have a cake, Democratic frontrunner John (F!) Kerry would do that. Word is that he's got scientists working on it even as we speak.
Kerry is, for instance, possibly the world's first pro-war/anti-war senator. Back in 2002 he voted for a resolution to give President Bush authorization to go to war in Iraq and then later equivocated by saying that he didn't think that such a resolution would authorize Bush to go to war in Iraq.
By expecting us to believe such an incomprehensible dishonesty, Kerry couldn't have insulted the American people's intelligence more if he'd started waving around a giant flaming sign that said "ATTENTION AMERICA: YOU'RE ALL IDIOTS." But forget that. Kerry's equivocation on the issue illustrated how he thought he could cover himself from both sides; if the war went perfectly, then he voted for it; if not, he spoke out against it and was "tricked" into voting for it in the first place anyway.
But Kerry's worst shame has to do with his war history, and not his actual service achievements, of course - Kerry served in Vietnam with courage and honor, saving the lives of many of his fellow Americans despite several wounds, returning home a rightly decorated hero. For this alone he would deserve our respect and gratitude.
But after Kerry's tour of duty was over, the zeitgeist of the 1970s was very much against the Vietnam conflict. He joined the protest organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War and hitched his star to the likes of Jane "Why am I not in jail for treason?" Fonda, and all the other Vietnam anti-warriors who had long since transformed respectful disagreement about the war into a full-fledged hate campaign against American soldiers. For this alone he would deserve our disgust and contempt.
The height of Kerry's betrayal came when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, slanderously laying numerous atrocities at the feet of his fellow soldiers and the American policy behind them.
I'm not exaggerating. "At times they had personally 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 in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country," Kerry reported. His speech was based on demonstrably bogus "testimony" cooked up by VVAW in their infamous "Winter Soldiers Investigation" earlier that year.
When it served John Kerry, he used his war experience as pulpit to denounce his fellow soldiers. Now Kerry wants his service record to make him an unqualified saint and hero as he uses it to compare himself favorably against Bush, whose service never went further than the National Guard.
The most singularly perfect John F. Kerry story, though, is the one from back in the 1970s in Kerry's VVAW days. At an organized event in Washington, D.C., Kerry joined several other veterans as they threw their medals over a barricade in a daring display of protest. Only problem is, a reporter noticed Kerry's medals displayed in his office several years later. The senator then explained that the medals thrown over the wall hadn't really been his; they'd belonged to another veteran who had asked Kerry to throw them for him.
In other words, John "Fonda" Kerry had found a way to throw away his medals ... and keep them too.
Eric Spratling is a public relations senior. Reach him at eric.spratling@asu.edu.
