This man might have been president. From this distance, it sounds a little glib. Mighty America had thrust itself into the heart of some other puny country's civil war. But inside those jungles, it was a bunch of kids thrust into the middle of chaos against a bunch of other kids. It's too easy to take shots at Bob Kerrey now.
Nobody knows the terror, and the confusion, and the madness that went on in the middle of that war.
His penalty has been living with his memories for a third of a century. Never mind talk of war crimes. The continuing lesson of Vietnam is that when nations commit young people to kill each other, war itself is the crime. Read the SunSpot.net User Agreement for our policies on copyright, reader privacy and bulletin boards. Powered by Genuity.