John Kerry Rejoins the Iran Fray

As the Trump administration scrambles for a peace deal with Iran, the interview to which we turned was Stephen Colbert’s with John Kerry. It aired last month. It was Mr. Kerry who led the Obama administration’s quest for what became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. One of the few actions it begat was to become an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, in which the voters elected, in Donald Trump, the candidate who opposed the pact.Whatever one can say of America’s voters, they’re not dumb. They understood that the Obama-Kerry pact was a road to an Iranian A-bomb. Mr. Trump had promised to withdraw from the pact. He did as promised, pulling out of the deal in 2018. Some eight years later the former secretary of state has emerged to try to palm off to Mr. Colbert the notion that his pact from 2015 was better than what Mr. Trump is seeking. Then Mr. Kerry brought up Vietnam.“The greatest duty of the president of the United States is,” Mr. Kerry averred, “to be able to look into the eyes of parents of young people you’re going to send off to fight in this war and to make that sure you have made it clear to them there’s a purpose, there’s a clarity, and you know exactly what the goals are and you know what you’re asking people to sacrifice for.” In other words, the hawks in Vietnam were all liars.Quoth Mr. Kerry: “Speaking as a veteran of the Vietnam war, where, you know, decisions like that were so critical, we were lied to about what that war was about, and the lesson of that war and of Iraq is don’t lie to the American people and then ask them to send their sons and daughters to fight.” So the Democrats forced a pullout from Vietnam, cut off supplying arms, and abandoned, to a Communist conquest, our Vietnamese ally.By the end, it was the Democrats and their liberal backers who emerged as the liars in Vietnam. When Mr. Kerry ran for president in 2004, the GIs who fought in Swift Boats in the Mekong Delta came out against the future secretary of state. They exposed him as “unfit for command.” It was an astonishing move. Their credibility helped to swing the vote in 2004 to President George W. Bush and to defeat Mr. Kerry.We don’t yet know what’s in the deal on which President Trump is working with Iran. Our point is to beware when Mr. Kerry enters this fray claiming to be the truth-teller on Vietnam or Iran. He didn’t have heel spurs, but he went to Paris during the negotiations for a Vietnam peace pact. There he met with our enemies. He came back to recite talking points supplied by our foes. That’s the truth to remember as we wait for the particulars on Mr. Trump’s plan.

John Kerry Rejoins the Iran Fray

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