Was John Kerry a Radical War Protester?

Todd Purdum, in the NYT (Feb. 28, 2004):

On April 22, 1971, John Kerry , a decorated 27-year-old Navy veteran of two tours in Vietnam, electrified the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with his passionate testimony against the war, and with tales from fellow veterans about"the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do" in Southeast Asia.

Summarizing the accounts of American soldiers he had heard at an antiwar conference in Detroit weeks earlier, Mr. Kerry said the men told how"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 a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

As both a veteran and anguished opponent of the Vietnam War, Mr. Kerry has spent years working to square the circle of a conflict that divided his generation, and the nation. Now, his old words have come back to haunt his presidential campaign, as conservative backers of President Bush question whether Mr. Kerry is"a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester," as National Review Online recently asked.

The full picture is complex. In 1970 and 1971, Mr. Kerry was among the most prominent spokesmen for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, whose major patrons included the actress Jane Fonda, and which later staged takeovers of public buildings and walkouts from Veterans Administration hospitals. But when Mr. Kerry was involved, contemporaries recount, he often took steps to moderate the group's actions, believing it was better — for it, and him — to work within the political system that he ultimately sought to join. When he organized the mass march on Washington that resulted in his Senate testimony, Ms. Fonda was nowhere to be seen.

"I think Kerry made a big effort not to have me invited to participate in that," Ms. Fonda said in a telephone interview this week."Because I think he wanted the organization to distance itself from me, that I was too radical or something." She added:"I went to North Vietnam in July of 1972, so it was not even `Hanoi Jane' yet, but I was still considered a lightning rod and radical. He knew that they had to get the attention of Congress, and he didn't want any unnecessary baggage to come with them."

Asked for comment, Mr. Kerry replied through his campaign spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, that he had made an effort to limit the protest to veterans.

For many Democrats, part of Mr. Kerry's appeal lies in the very fact that he both served in, then opposed the war, giving him the cachet of gallant warrior and principled dissident.

But many critics see Mr. Kerry's words as impugning the honor of all who served in Vietnam, and in recent weeks, they have circulated a picture of him seated a few rows behind Ms. Fonda at an antiwar rally in Valley Forge, Pa., and taken pains to note that she helped sponsor the"Winter Soldier Investigation" in Detroit, to which Mr. Kerry referred in his Senate testimony.

Official Republican spokesmen have largely refrained from attacking Mr. Kerry's antiwar activities, focusing instead on what they say is his failure to adequately support national security programs over the years."I have not highlighted it, but it is public testimony," the Republican National chairman, Ed Gillespie, said this week."People have talked about it."

Mr. Kerry was so concerned that the April 1971 protest in Washington be nonviolent and legal that he faced criticism from fellow members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who were growing more radical. He opposed the group's plan to sue President Richard M. Nixon to end the war, and in November 1971, he left it, citing"personality conflicts and differences in political philosophy."

In January 1972, after the group's protesters took over the Statue of Liberty, Mr. Kerry said in an interview with The New York Times that he had left to work on"electoral politics" and that the departure of moderates like himself had contributed to the organization's shift toward militancy. While the organization claimed 20,000 members, he said, it actually had fewer than 1,000 active participants.

Later in 1972, when protesters from the group including Ron Kovic, the disabled veteran later played by Tom Cruise in"Born on the Fourth of July," disrupted the Republican Convention, Mr. Kerry watched them on television.

"There was a lot of resentment against John because he wasn't more radical," recalled Bobby Muller, a friend from those days who now heads the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, recalled.