Jeffrey Buckley criticizes John Kerry’s actions and opinions after returning from battle in Vietnam (“Kerry not fit to be a wartime president,” Sept. 29). In fact, Buckley is so angry about Kerry’s opinions that he is urging everyone to vote against Kerry.
I admire John Kerry for standing up in the face of public opinion at the time. Thirty-odd years ago the public believed in “My country, right or wrong” just as we believed we could trust presidents without scrutinizing them or their cabinets. We learned the hard way that neither our presidents nor their administrations can be trusted to always look out for the interests of Americans. LBJ, Nixon and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara proved themselves liars who let U.S. military and Vietnamese die for nothing while we Americans trusted them to know what’s best for us and how we should fight a war by unquestioningly “staying the course” because “the enemy must be defeated” and “we are winning.” Yeah, right.
Does Mr. Buckley think we could have won democracy for Vietnam if we had stayed the course without a total re-evaluation of why we were there, what the Vietnamese wanted, and how we were being commanded from Washington? Kerry didn’t think so after serving. Nor does Kerry believe events in Bush’s “war on terror” in Iraq have shown Bush understands the causes or how to effectively fight such a war.
John Kerry believed in his president and military, believed it was proper to serve in the war. Then his war experiences changed his opinions. And he said so when he came home. All Americans should give consideration to candidates who believe in an issue, take a stand on that issue but are open-minded enough to change positions when new evidence shows the position was mistaken.
Paul Heckel
Snohomish
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