Give those purple hearts back!
As the father of a St. Thomas graduate, I’m privileged to discuss military issues with the St. Thomas community. I will begin with a little history of my involvement with the military.
I joined U.S. Army on Jan. 3, 1966 at the ripe young age of 19. I attended helicopter flight school and graduated in September 1967. I then served in Vietnam from November 1967 to November 1968. Upon returning to the states, I served as a helicopter instructor pilot until my discharge from active duty in March 1970. In 1971, I joined the National Guard and served 30 years as a helicopter pilot and aviation safety officer until retiring in May 2001.
I have deep heartburn with John Kerry’s qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. My feelings are rooted in his actions 35 years ago. The recent New York Times best seller, Unfit for Command, by Swift Boat veterans, John O’Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., has helped the public understand why so many veterans doubt Kerry’s credibility.
In Unfit for Command, O’Neill and Corsi reveal that Kerry has a thirty-year history of consistently voting on the wrong side of issues essential to our security and well being as a nation. It is important for college students to understand the facts surrounding Kerry’s record and history, because they are time and again glossed over by the mainstream media.
John Kerry has consistently and almost without fail, voted against the strategic initiatives and military programs that have protected our country over the last three decades. To name just a few, he opposed F-16, F-18, F-17, B, and B-2 bombers, Tomahawk Cruise Missile Development, M-1 tanks and over 70 other military programs in current use. He resisted the Pershing Missile and the Strategic Defense Initiative, the two projects that finally broke the back and the bank of the Soviet Union.
He opposed forcing Saddam Hussein to reverse his invasion of Kuwait by voting against the Gulf War. He called for a $6 billion cut in intelligence support after he opposed funding our troops and voted for deposing Saddam Hussein. But, now, he criticizes a lack of body armor that he refused to fund.
John Kerry consistently criticizes our intelligence community and its estimates while voting to cut its budgets and shackling the ability of covert agents to perform their jobs. How ironic that Kerry is pursuing a job as Commander-in-Chief when his record over the last thirty years is one of retreat, defeatism, and an almost pathological distrust of asserting American military power to protect our citizens.
Now, let me offer a word on his Purple Hearts. It is my understanding that John Kerry came into Vietnam with one intent and goal: to get out of Vietnam as soon as possible and start his protest movement.
This summer, retired Commander, Grant Hibbard, and retired Lt. Cmder., Louis Letson, M.D., wrote a column on Lt. John Kerry in USA Today. Grant was Kerry’s commander when he requested his Purple Heart for a wound received on Dec. 3, 1968. He investigated the source of the wound and determined that it had been self-inflicted by firing an M-79 grenade launcher too close. The source of the wound was also investigated by Dr. Letson, who used tweezers to get out the small piece of shrapnel. He also concluded that the wound had been self-inflicted.
In theory, Purple Hearts are reserved for soldiers who are wounded “in an action with the enemy.” Plain and simple, you can accidentally shoot yourself in the heart and still not merit a Purple Heart. However, sometime after Cmdr. Hibbard left Vietnam, Kerry somehow got the award for the Dec. 3, 1968 wound.
Even if the Purple Hearts were not in question, give me a Commander-in-Chief who would put a Band Aid on his scratches, look his troops on the swift boat in the eyes and say, “I’m with you for eight more months, boys.” To the contrary, Kerry waved good-bye to the soldiers that he was commanding after only four months and 12 days, and headed to higher ground in the good old United States.
Kerry’s record reveals that he’s not the type of leader I’d want in my foxhole. I’d need soldiers who wouldn’t bail out on me. Give me the Army Infantry and the Marines who bravely went back to duty after receiving wounds. Give me the WWII soldiers who went AWOL (Absent Without Leave) from the hospitals in Europe to get back to their units.
Finally, what John Kerry did after he got out of the Navy, is something that will be etched in most soldiers’ minds forever. He met with the enemy and provided comforting words, threw his metals over a fence, and testified before Congress in April 1971, that American soldiers had routinely committed horrible war crimes.
I do not pretend to be naïve to the fact that the U.S. committed some war crimes (remember Lt. William Calley?). However, I can tell you from the heart and with a clear conscience, that those crimes were very much the exception, not the norm. As a helicopter gunship pilot, I had the opportunity to commit blatant, unlawful war crimes on numerous occasions, but did not take such courses of action.
The vast majority of soldiers who served in Vietam did everything they could to preserve innocent life and abide by the Geneva Convention, but not Kerry. Please, John Kerry, do not stand in front of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. – you may get wet!
Reflections on “Unfit for Command” submitted by Tom Carroll, M.D.
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