Strange Adventures in Cambodia

Douglas Brinkley is a Kerry biographer and partisan, but he is also a serious professional historian with a reputation to nurture. Lying directly to help John Kerry’s Presidential campaign over a rough patch would, he must realize, be a career-ending maneuver. The academic world may tilt sharply to the Left, but there are limits to its tolerance. Therefore, I am inclined to take at face value his new version of the “Christmas in Cambodia” yarn, as reported by the Daily Telegraph:

“On Christmas Eve he was near Cambodia; he was around 50 miles from the Cambodian border. There’s no indictment of Kerry to be made, but he was mistaken about Christmas in Cambodia,” said Douglas Brinkley, who has unique access to the candidate’s wartime journals.

But Mr Brinkley rejected accusations that the senator had never been to Cambodia, insisting he was telling the truth about running undisclosed “black” missions there at the height of the war.

He said: “Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys.” The missions were not armed attacks on Cambodia, said Mr Brinkley, who did not include the clandestine missions in his wartime biography of Mr Kerry, Tour of Duty.

So it now seems to be official that Senator Kerry, well, made up the anecdote about being under fire on a Christmas Day mission inside Cambodia and being “seared” by the fact that the President of United States was simultaneously denying that any American forces were present in that country. In short, he lied. And the purpose of his lie was to convey what he believed to be discreditable information about the United States government. That fact tells us two unsettling truths:

1. The Democratic Presidential nominee was willing – not as a feckless youth just back from a war zone but as a mature member of the United States Senate – to invent falsehoods intended to be detrimental to his country's reputation. I cannot think of an extenuation or justification for such conduct.

2. We likewise have some insight into what the Senator regards as blameworthy. In 1968 North Vietnamese forces were operating freely in Cambodian territory, with the acquiescence of the Cambodian government (which couldn’t have stopped them in any event). Cambodia had thus forfeited the rights of a nonbelligerent under international law, and the United States had every legal right to enter its territory to counter the NVA. Prince Sihanouk had in fact acknowledged as much to American officials but had begged them to keep any U.S. intrusions secret. Presidents Johnson and Nixon complied with that request until Sihanouk’s ouster by the Cambodian National Assembly in 1970.

All of these facts have long been well known and uncontroversial, so I presume that a United States Senator with a personal interest in Vietnam knows them, too. Nevertheless, Senator Kerry’s Christmas stories are founded on the assumption that the United States had no right to take action against hostile forces based in Cambodia even when international law permitted us to act. If that is his view of the limits that the U.S. ought to observe in defending itself, it is fairly clear how he would conduct the War on Terror.

Now, what about the “clandestine missions” that Lt. Kerry did, according to Professor Brinkley, carry out? Tour of Duty presents itself as a detailed record of Kerry’s four months in Vietnam. It is also highly favorable, portraying its hero as sans peur et sans reproche. An account of secret “run[s] dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys” in dangerous waters would fit the narrative wonderfully, yet it is omitted. Two explanations come to mind:

1. Professor Brinkley is fibbing and will soon join Michael Bellesiles in the practicing historians’ limbo; or

2. Something connected with Lt. Kerry’s missions into Cambodia reflects badly on his courage or character, for which reason they have been excised from his life story.

I wonder whether the major media will exert any effort to find out the truth. But I don’t wonder very hard.

Addendum: Drudge is reporting that Professor Brinkley is preparing an article for The New Yorker in which he will relocate the Cambodian Christmas anecdote to January 1969.

It’s inconceivable to me that this event would have been omitted from Tour of Duty if it had really occurred at any time, particularly when one of the themes of the book is Lt. Kerry’s progressive disillusionment with the way in which the war was conducted. By his own account, his experience under fire in Cambodia was a key element in that psychological development. His biographer presumably knew about his subject’s public statements; he would surely have included corroborative detail if he could have done so truthfully.

So, if the Drudge report has any substance, I take it to be a ploy to get this issue off the table. A New Yorker piece isn’t likely to appear until conveniently after the election. Meanwhile, those who might entertain doubts about the Democratic nominee’s veracity can rest comfortably with the assurance that vindication is coming. If there ever is an article, I predict that Professor Brinkley will choose his own reputation over John Kerry’s and will explode his Cambodia story altogether, but by then the votes will have been cast.

Previous Thoughts: “A Flip-Flop Too Far”

Comments

[Willem]

You faggot.