Tiger Force and Bill Kristol

For those who have never read it, the Toledo Blade series on “Tiger Force” describes the activities of a U.S. Army unit in Vietnam in 1967. The unit perpetrated several atrocities against Vietnamese civilians. A few years later, the Army made a lame effort to investigate the massacres, then gave up, either ignoring the behavior of officers associated with Tiger Force or allowing perpetrators to leave and thus avoid military prosecution. The affair was buried in 1975, only to be uncovered in 2003 by Blade editors and reporters. I recommend reading the report in its entirety, although it does require a strong stomach. Here are some examples:

Women and children were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers. Elderly farmers were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and executed- their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold fillings.

John Kerry has recently come under some fire for his statements during the Viet Nam War. The allegations about his lack of heroism are window dressing; his real crime was speaking out about the behavior of U.S. troops. At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, Kerry talked about some of the confessions that U.S. soldiers had made about the war at the Winter Soldier meetings earlier that year. Here’s a Salon article summarizing some of the Winter Soldier testimony.

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, is of the opinion that Kerry’s testimony in 1971 will hurt him politically. In fact, he holds this opinion so dear that he has taken the step of publishing Kerry’s entire testimony in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard. Go and read the testimony; it is harrowing, and if you are at all a sensible person, it will increase your admiration for Kerry that he gave such testimony.

Why does Bill Kristol (among others) think this will hurt Kerry? He might believe that Kerry is simply lying, or repeating lies, about U.S. activity in Vietnam, and that his credibility will be hurt. Kristol is a pretty smart guy, so I doubt that very much. What percentage of people, I wonder, really doubt that the U.S. committed atrocities in Vietnam? Maybe 20%? I think that’s pretty high. Kristol is aiming for a much larger audience; the group that believes that even if such things happened, they should never be talked about. Talking about atrocities does more than make us feel bad, according to this group; it weakens the stomach of the nation in a time of danger. Horrible things should be kept quiet, because talking about them creates doubts in us and fervor on the part of our enemies. What percentage of people hold this opinion? It’s more than just Straussians advocating “the big lie”; I would estimate around 30-40%. Recall that Fox News refused to play the worst of the Abu Ghraib pictures for precisely this reason. My old man would almost certainly fall into this category. This is the group that Kristol is really aiming at, and that he hopes will be swayed by Kerry’s testimony.

The problems with this stance are obvious. Atrocities that are hidden beget more atrocities. Without public scrutiny, the crimes are never investigated, or the investigations are quickly buried. When criminal activity goes unpunished, it multiplies, which has the effect of multiplying those who hate the United States. In this sense, Tiger Force and Abu Ghraib are closely connected; they are both part of the same disease that we have endeavoured not to treat, but to hide.

Part of the problem is that we lack a good vocabulary for talking about war crimes. If someone says, truthfully, that American soldiers committed brutal atrocities in Vietnam, she is condemned for accusing good, red blooded Americans of being degenerate murderers and rapists, which entirely misses the point. Resorting to a Hobbesian logic, in which it is necessary to kill those who are or who might become threats to survival, is insufficient because it justifies any crime at any time during a war. On the other hand, holding soldiers in Vietnam or Iraq to precisely the same moral standards that we hold accountants in Bellevue is also insufficient. It does not take into account context, and it serves to feed the desire to hide atrocities, rather than to expose them. What we need is a vocabulary that can recognize the difference between a soldier operating in hostile territory, an accountant, and a mass murderer. Until we have that, the people who would hide our atrocities will always find a gullible ear into which they can whisper doubts and platitudes.