‘Powell Visit Muddles U.S. Policy’

Secretary of State Powell made erroneous statements last week that “Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation…” and “unilateral action…would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking.” [“Powell Visit Muddles U.S. Policy,” Ellen Bork, Foreign, October 28, 2004].

Taiwan’s sovereignty resides in its 23 million people. This March, Taiwan had its presidential election and showed no interest in being ruled by a repressive government.

America, under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, has treated Taiwan as any other sovereign state. In recent years, Communist China has increasingly used its political power to cut off Taiwan’s connections in the world, claiming that it is the “motherland” of all Chinese, including Taiwanese.

That government also reminds the world that it will use force against “its people” in Taiwan if a “reunification” fails to materialize.

America is fighting a war in Iraq, hoping to install a democratic society, but looks like it is abandoning Taiwan, which has developed its democracy over the past 50 years. American policy should be principled toward democracy and freedom.

The American government should not be guilty of sacrificing the Taiwanese to kowtow to the one-party communist government and undo democracy in Taiwan. Mr. Powell needs to reexamine the remarks he made.

ALICE LEE-GETMAN
Manhattan

Kerry Hunted Conservatives

Jamie Dettmer described how Senator Kerry, donned in a hunting outfit, sought to establish an image of himself in the minds of voters in the closing days of the campaign [“Kerry Hunting Conservative Votes: Guns, God and Stem-Cell Research” National, October 22,2004].

It’s actually part of an exercise by all candidates to establish simple iconographic narratives about themselves, which are easy for voters to identify with, rather than associating themselves with complicated policy positions, which are easily forgotten.

But what is so amazing in this era of supposed intense press scrutiny is the phantom biography that Mr. Kerry has successfully foisted on us about his military record. Because despite ill-informed statements (or lies) by Mr. Kerry’s surrogates, he never actually volunteered to fight in Vietnam. To the contrary, he did all he could to avoid it.

Mr. Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserves on February 16, 1966, after his fifth and final college deferment (to study in Paris) was denied. He chose the Naval Reserves to avoid being drafted into the Army and being shipped off to Vietnam. His status remained “inactive” until December 16, when the Navy and not Mr. Kerry changed his status to “active.” Mr. Kerry’s first one-year tour of duty was not in Vietnam, as his supporters keep saying: From June 1967 to June 1968, Mr. Kerry was assigned to the USS Gridley, a “blue-water” vessel cruising the Pacific from California to Australia with a brief five-week stop off the coast of Vietnam. Mr. Kerry spent his first tour working in the press office there.

On November 17, 1968, the Navy and not Mr. Kerry decided to ship him off to Vietnam. When Mr. Kerry chose to serve on Swift boats, their duty was very safe work. But that changed by the time, Mr. Kerry had completed his three-month training on them. On August 21, 2004, the Washington Post wrote: “The role of the Swift boats changed dramatically toward the end of 1968, when Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., commander of U.S. naval forces in South Vietnam, decided to use them to block Vietcong supply routes through the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of young men such as Kerry, with little combat experience, suddenly found themselves face to face with the enemy.

“When Kerry signed up to command a Swift boat in the summer of 1968, he was inspired by the example of his hero, John F. Kennedy, who had commanded PT-109 patrol boat in the Pacific in World War II. But Kerry had little expectation of seeing serious action. At the time the Swift boats, or PCFs (patrol craft fast), in Navy jargon, were largely restricted to coastal patrols. ‘I didn’t really want to get involved in the war,’ Kerry wrote in a book of war reminiscences published in 1986.” Yet he and his supporters constantly claim he volunteered to fight in Vietnam.

In that same book, he admitted that all he wanted to do was cover the war like a journalist. Mr. Kerry served only three months of his second tour of duty on the Swift boats because he took advantage of that three Purple Heart escape clause, although two of the three medals were for superficial wounds, accidentally self-inflicted.

This is a controversy that Mr. Kerry has refused to address, and the pro-Kerry press seems perfectly content that he doesn’t. The additional irony to all this is that Mr. Kerry was the one who made his service in Vietnam the central theme of his campaign. Yet he refuses to sign Standard Form 180, which would authorize the Pentagon to release all his military service files to anyone who requests them. President Bush has already done so for his service in the Texas Air National Guard.

GARY KRASNER
Hollis, N.Y.

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