What Motivates the Kerry Smear Merchants: The Demand for Obedience, Revisited

Last week, I wrote an entry about the smear campaign directed at John Kerry, entitled"Sinking into the Filth." Unfortunately, subsequent events compel me to revisit this very unpleasant subject.

A few aspects of the general context in which this vicious campaign is taking place should be noted at the outset -- and these particular facts are those which the people engaging in the Kerry attacks would prefer that everyone forget. To begin with, it is altogether remarkable that those attacking Kerry on these particular grounds are obvious Bush partisans. That is unquestionably their right -- but when Bush himself chose not to go to Vietnam and opted instead for National Guard service, while Kerry did the opposite, it is very peculiar to pick this argument out of many other possibilities. Choosing National Guard service was perfectly honorable, of course, and I do not question Bush's choice in that regard. However, the record is clear that it was Bush's family connections that helped him avoid combat in ways not available to many others -- and many questions still remain about whether Bush fulfilled all of his infinitely safer obligations.

Another underlying theme is the following: the Bush supporters who have launched or who endorse these attacks on Kerry's war record portray themselves as great supporters of the military, and of military honor. But these attacks have given the lie to this claim, once and for all. In their zeal to smear Kerry in any way they can, it apparently never occurred to these people (who are clearly possessed of limited analytic ability) that their attacks would affect many people in addition to Kerry.

That this was the inevitable result is now made even clearer by developments this weekend:

The commander of a Navy swift boat who served alongside Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry during the Vietnam War stepped forward Saturday to dispute attacks challenging Kerry's integrity and war record.

William Rood, an editor on the Chicago Tribune's metropolitan desk, said he broke 35 years of silence about the Feb. 28, 1969, mission that resulted in Kerry's receiving a Silver Star because recent portrayals of Kerry's actions published in the best-selling book"Unfit for Command" are wrong and smear the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry.

Rood, who commanded one of three swift boats during that 1969 mission, said Kerry came under rocket and automatic weapons fire from Viet Cong forces and that Kerry devised an aggressive attack strategy that was praised by their superiors. He called allegations that Kerry's accomplishments were"overblown" untrue.

"The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there," Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in Sunday's Tribune.

Rood's recollection of what happened on that day at the southern tip of South Vietnam was backed by key military documents, including his citation for a Bronze Star he earned in the battle and a glowing after-action report written by the Navy captain who commanded his and Kerry's task force, who is now a critic of the Democratic candidate.

Rood's previously untold story and the documents shed new light on a key historical event that has taken center stage in an extraordinary political and media firestorm generated by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. ...

Rood's account also sharply contradicts the version currently put forth by the anti-Kerry veterans. Rood, 61, wrote that Kerry had personally contacted him and other crew members in recent days asking that they go public with their accounts of what happened on that day.

Rood said that, ever since the war, he had"wanted to put it all behind us—the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. … I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service—even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune."

"I can't pretend those calls [from Kerry] had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this," Rood said. "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."

Rood declined requests from a Tribune reporter to be interviewed for this article. Rood wrote that he could testify only to the February 1969 mission and not to any of the other battlefield decorations challenged by Kerry's critics—a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts—because Rood was not an eyewitness to those engagements. ...

In his eyewitness account, Rood describes coming under rocket and automatic weapons fire from Viet Cong on the riverbank during two separate ambushes of his boat and Kerry's boat.

Praise for the mission led by Kerry came from Navy commanders who far outranked Hoffmann. Rood won a Bronze Star for his actions on that day. The Bronze Star citation from the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam, singled out the tactic used by the boats and said the Viet Cong were" caught completely off guard." ...

Rood acknowledged in his first-person account that there could always be errors in recollection, especially with the passage of more than three decades. His Bronze Star citation, he said, misidentifies the river where the main action occurred.

That mistake, he said, is a" cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago—not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

"But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong," Rood wrote."While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye."

The concluding paragraphs above identify another issue I discussed last week. At this point in time, and with regard to legitimately disputed points (and leaving aside the most obviously prejudiced claims), there is no way to settle these questions once and for all. That doesn't mean there is not an actual version of events during that period. Of course, there is -- but given fading memories, the various agendas that almost everyone is pursuing now, and any number of other factors, determining precisely what in fact happened is next to impossible. And that is one of the major reasons which ought to lead genuinely decent people to leave questions like these alone.

The Vietnam War left permanent scars on everyone who served in it -- and it also scarred an entire generation of Americans, whether they served or not. It created bitterness on all sides, and it is a wonder that anyone would choose to reopen those wounds all these years later. And when people fling charges around, without considering their effects on the direct targets and on many others who now lead entirely private lives, the degree of intellectual and moral irresponsibility involved is profound.

And that irresponsibility is even greater when one realizes that all of this is driven only by narrow political concerns. All of those now actively engaged in this smearing of Kerry have one aim above all others: they want Bush to be reelected, and they want Kerry to be defeated. That is a legitimate aim, certainly -- but it does not make any means employed legitimate, or decent, or honorable. And when one remembers that past Bush-connected campaign efforts have smeared John McCain and Max Cleland (and with regard to Mr. Cleland, those despicable efforts have continued even more recently), the viciousness and lack of honor of all such people becomes unquestionable.

(I also note that even certain individuals once affiliated with Ayn Rand have jumped on this detestable bandwagon. One would think they might remember that Rand herself was frequently the target of vicious smear campaigns, and that those memories would give them pause. It is obvious that certain people have learned next to nothing in the course of their own lives, and are no better than those they used to criticize in the most vehement ways. Such people have no concern with truth, with honor, or with basic decency. I have no idea what actually motivates them, but for the reasons set forth here and in related entries, it is not any of those factors that they themselves claim are of concern to them.)

Finally, I want to offer some observations about one of the significant underlying dynamics at work. It is clear that one of the factors that might motivate at least some of the anti-Kerry veterans is their deep disapproval of his anti-war statements once he returned to the United States. That is certainly understandable, since they could think that such criticisms cast doubt on the honor of their own service. In that narrow sense, I have great sympathy for their concerns.

However, such concerns do not apply to those who did not serve in Vietnam themselves, a category which includes Bush himself and most of his present-day supporters. In the following, I am not concerned with arguing about what might or might not be legitimate ways to protest a war in which one's country is involved. Obviously, visiting North Vietnam while we were at war with that country was profoundly wrong (and possibly treasonous). But actions as clearly wrong as ones of that kind are not the target of most of those so angered by Kerry's anti-Vietnam War pronouncements.

As we have seen, and are still seeing, with regard to Bush's"War on Terror," both in general and more specifically in connection with the invasion of Iraq, there are those who want to shut down any dissent or disagreement with"official" policy completely, and across the board. I have sometimes referred to those who make this kind of deeply un-American argument as Ministers of Propaganda (and take a look at this brief follow-up post, which makes one key issue even clearer) -- and that is precisely what they are. This stigmatizing of dissent has a long and dishonorable history in America, and one of its most notable victims was Robert LaFollette during World War I. That particular episode is one that many hawks ought to learn or remember, and which provides many cautionary lessons.

Underlying much of the current criticism of Kerry -- and the reason it resonates today in connection with our battles with our new enemies -- is a demand arising out of a certain underlying psychology. I am not speaking here of a specific individual's psychology, but a certain mental stance that is revealed across a culture, and that is embodied in any number of people to varying degrees.

In a long series of entries here, I have been discussing the invaluable work of Alice Miller. The key dynamic that Miller identifies is this one:

[L]et me summarize my understanding of Miller's central argument. By demanding obedience above all from a child (whether by physical punishment, by psychological means, or through some combination of both), parents forbid the child from fostering an authentic sense of self. Because children are completely dependent on their parents, they dare not question their parents' goodness, or their"good intentions." As a result, when children are punished, even if they are punished for no reason or for a reason that makes no sense, they blame themselves and believe that the fault lies within them. In this way, the idealization of the authority figure is allowed to continue. In addition, the child cannot allow himself to experience fully his own pain, because that, too, might lead to questioning of his parents.

In this manner, the child is prevented from developing a genuine, authentic sense of self. As he grows older, this deadening of his soul desensitizes the child to the pain of others. Eventually, the maturing adult will seek to express his repressed anger on external targets, since he has never been allowed to experience and express it in ways that would not be destructive. By such means, the cycle of violence is continued into another generation (using"violence" in the broadest sense). One of the additional consequences is that the adult, who has never developed an authentic self, can easily transfer his idealization of his parents to a new authority figure. As Miller says:

"This perfect adaptation to society's norms--in other words, to what is called"healthy normality"--carries with it the danger that such a person can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss of autonomy that occurs here, because this autonomy never existed, but a switching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway for the person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience. He has never gone beyond the stage of idealizing his parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; this idealization can easily be transferred to a Fuhrer or to an ideology.

Well,"idiocy" [Sullivan's term] apparently comes from sources that Secret Agent Sullivan would be all too happy to embrace if he agreed with their conclusions -- but since this study would threaten his denial mechanism, he will simply ignore it. In these kinds of ways, the mechanism of denial and obedience is left intact. And the primary commandment survives, in all its lethality: the authority must not, under any circumstances, be questioned. Just as with Vietnam, the authority in this case is the United States government, and the U.S. military. As to Sullivan's final lie -- the statement that"only we can choose to lose" this war, with its implication that if we lose, it would be a failure of"national will" -- I dealt with that vicious slab of mendacity here.

With no effort at all, you could multiply examples such as these a thousandfold, every single day. In this manner, defenders of our current foreign policy wipe out of existence all the facts, all the costs, all the deaths, and anything else that might bring into question what is an absolute of their faith: the United States is right, what we have done and are doing in Iraq is right, our military is right, we are inherently unable to make mistakes, and the authorities must not be questioned.

These are the victims described by Miller -- now grown into adulthood, continuing their denial, with additional authority figures added to the ones they first had. Besides the original parent, they now revere our government and our military and, beyond a certain point, nothing they do is to be challenged. As I discussed in Part III, to do so would bring into question these individuals' entire false sense of self, it would undermine their worldview completely, and it represents a threat that cannot be allowed to come too close. As always, what is dispensable in all this are facts, untold national wealth, reputation and prestige, and above all, the lives of human beings.

As I have said before, it is in this manner that horrors are unleashed upon the world. And if this mentality is carried far enough, you will finally end up with the kind of thinking, and the kind of psychology, that lies behind the journal entry from World War II (written by a German soldier) that I quoted in the previous part of this essay:

"On a roundabout way to have lunch I witnessed the public shooting of twenty-eight Poles on the edge of a playing field. Thousands line the streets and the river. A ghastly pile of corpses, all in all horrifying and ugly and yet a sight that leaves me altogether cold. The men who were shot had ambushed two soldiers and a German civilian and killed them. An exemplary modern folk-drama. (1/27/44)"

If you never allowed your authentic self to develop (or your parents never allowed you to develop one), if you denied and continue to deny the reality of your own pain, then you will deny the pain of others, even as the corpses pile up -- and you will be prepared to believe anything.

And the horrors continue, beyond all human reckoning -- and without end.

But the anti-Kerry smears come from the same roots -- and in time and under the right circumstances, they could lead to horrors of the kind mankind has too frequently only barely managed to survive in the past. Given the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe, we might not always survive them in the future. And as long as many people refuse to acknowledge or address the underlying causes which lead to such horrors, the likelihood grows that one day, we will not survive.

The motives and goals that lead many to fling unsubstantiated, cruel, and irrelevant charges in an effort to gain momentary political advantage are the same ones that also have led, and can lead again, to internment camps, world war, and mass slaughter. Perhaps one day, enough people will begin to look at the underlying causes, and they will finally have enough.

But that day is far from where our world finds itself today, as daily events continue to make tragically clear. And our future thus remains in great danger, along with our lives -- and along with the value of human life itself.

(Cross-posted at The Light of Reason.)