Kerry war letters show his conflictsPage 3 of 4 -- But when asked to deliver the class oration at his graduation, Kerry discarded a pedestrian first draft and penned a more provocative speech questioning the US mission in Vietnam: "What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism." Then, in a sentence that helps explain his 2002 vote for the Iraq war resolution, Kerry said: "This Vietnam War has found our policy makers forcing Americans into a strange corner . . . that if victory escapes us, it would not be the fault of those who lead, but of the doubters who stabbed them in the back."
For Kerry, the only logical path to take in Vietnam was to serve, qualms and all. "We had this very naive belief that the only way to understand what was going on in Vietnam was to go there, which is the naive view of a 19-year-old," Barbiero said. "We'll go there, we'll see." Barbiero said this reflects one of Kerry's traits, a passion for examining an issue from every angle. "He definitely is a man who studies a question six ways to Sunday," Barbiero said. "He was always that way. He was that way in prep school and college. If he would write a speech, I would have to read it 26 times. He would focus on it ad infinitum but once he makes a decision on it, he is absolutely very direct. I think in Vietnam he learned that the war close up was not a good thing, so when he came back he acted on that." As Barbiero tells it, Kerry's positions have remained constant since he first met Kerry at St. Paul's School. "John's views on our role in the world, in terms of our engaging in foreign policy, these are ideas that John had when he was 16 or 17 and I met him way back in prep school," Barbiero said. "His concept of America's role in the world was always that we would engage with other countries, not isolationist." A '60s crossroadsThe year 1968 was a turning point not only in the country's history but also in Kerry's political development. His best friend, Richard Pershing, the son of World War I General John Joseph (Black Jack) Pershing, was killed trying to locate a fellow soldier in a rice paddy. Months before his death, Pershing had written a letter that Dalby said was also reflective of Kerry's evolving views about service in Vietnam: "The ethics of the war are no longer my concern," Pershing wrote to Dalby in July of 1967. "My main concern is and must be the safety of my men and myself. In this apparently inevitable impending test, I'll be far too busy keeping alive to juggle colored balls of moral sophistry." Continued... |
