The Prodigal Son

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Secretary of State Kerry used the last of his taxpayer-provided travel budget for a junket to communist Vietnam to work out his personal complex in respect of the war. He visited the Mekong Delta, where he said he killed an enemy soldier. He met with a former member of the Viet Cong, who had appeared in arms against Free Vietnam and America. Mr. Kerry says he’s glad the enemy soldier he met Thursday survived. (Whom, if anyone, he slew wasn’t detailed.)

The American state secretary says that after he leaves office he’ll return to communist Vietnam where, the Washington Post reports, “he is treated as a returning prodigal son.” Adds the Post: “Vietnamese officials regularly bestow big hugs on Kerry at the end of meetings, and civilians wait in the rain to watch him leave a restaurant. A local delegation that greeted him Saturday [was] ‘delighted’ that he has returned.”

None of the stories we’ve been able to find about this visit devote any substantive attention to the many thousands of Vietnam veterans who are not so thrilled about Mr. Kerry’s last trip. No doubt there are hundreds of thousands, even now. Led by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they rose up against him in 2004 and defeated his quest to become president. In our lifetime, we can’t think of a political victory more deserving than that of the Swift Vets.

It’s not surprising that they are not showing up in the stories about Mr. Kerry. After the 2004 election, we asked the leader of the Swift Vets, John O’Neill, whether he would himself seek a political career. It struck us that he could have been, say, a senator for the asking. Mr. O’Neill told us he intended to return to what he’d devoted his life to after the war, which was practicing law in Texas. And that’s what he did.

When we asked Mr. O’Neill about Mr. Kerry’s latest junket, he sent a note pointing out that just before visiting Vietnam, Mr. Kerry spoke at the United States Naval Academy (Mr. O’Neill’s alma mater). Mr. Kerry gave a whole reprise of his career in a speech that failed to mention his agitation against the war. He was asked about it during questions by a midshipman. “I didn’t protest the war until [19]71. And when I did protest it, it was the longest war in American history, and we were losing,” Mr. Kerry said.

After his latest trip to Vietnam, in any event, Mr. Kerry fetched up at Paris, where — only a few kilometers from Drancy — he participated in the conference designed to isolate Israel and hamstring the ability of the incoming Trump administration to support the Jewish state. It had to have been another sentimental stop, in that it was in Paris that Mr. Kerry long ago met with enemy diplomats during the Vietnam peace negotiations. The French love Mr. Kerry the way the Vietnamese do.

Mr. Kerry will then go to Davos, where the international set will give him one final embrace. Then he will return to the America that put paid to his bid for the presidency. We’ll see what kind of reception he gets in the Congress that spurned his Iran pact. Perhaps he will retire to one of his townhouses to work on his memoirs. Maybe he’ll now and again pull from some dusty drawer the Vietnam War medals he once said, but later denied, that he threw away. And sit by the phone line from Norway and wait — and wait.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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