Statement by Kerry in Congress in Q/A after Wintersoldier

[A_Possum]

text of John F. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971.

Senator Symington: Yes. Mr. Kerry, I had to leave because we are marking up the selective service bill in the Armed Services Committee. But I will read the record.

Attitude of Servicemen Toward Congressional Opposition to War The staff has a group of question here, four of which I would ask. Over the years members of this committee who spoke out in opposition to the war were often accused of stabbing our boys in the back. What, in your opinion, is the attitude of servicemen in Vietnam about congressional opposition to the war?

Mr. Kerry: If I could answer that, it is very difficult, Senator, because I just know, I don't want to get into the game of saying I represent everybody over there, but let me try to say as straightforwardly as I can, we had an advertisement, ran full page, to show you what the troops read. It ran in Playboy and the response to it within two and a half weeks from Vietnam was 1,200 members. We received initially about 50 to 80 letters a day from troops there. We now receive about 20 letters a day from troops arriving at our New York office. Some of these letters- and I wanted to bring some down, I didn't know we were going to be testifying here and I can make them available to you- are very, very moving, some of them written by hospital corpsmen on things, on casualty report sheets which say, you know, "Get us out of here." "You are the only hope we have got." "You have got to get us back; it is crazy." We received recently 80 members of the 101st Airborne signed up in one letter. Forty members from a helicopter assault squadron, crash and rescue mission signed up in another one.

I think they are expressing, some of these troops, solidarity with us, right now by wearing black arm bands and Vietnam Veterans Against the War buttons. They want to come out and I think they are looking at the people who want to try to get them out as a help.

However, I do recognize there are some men who are in the military for life. The job in the military is to fight wars. When they have a war to fight, they are just as happy in a sense, and I am sure that these men feel they are being stabbed in the back. But, at the same time, I think to most of them the realization of the emptiness, the hollowness, the absurdity of Vietnam has finally hit home, and I feel if they did come home the recrimination would certainly not come from the right, from the military. I don't think there would be that problem.

Senator Symington: Thank you.

*********

I think he makes it quite clear here, in addition to the earlier part of his testimony, that he is not claiming to represent every soldier in Vietnam.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. And from the Dick Cavett Show

MR. O'NEILL: I've just got two or three things to say. It's amazing, and it certainly is wonderful that you've finally produced someone after two months.

The second thing I have to say is the last time I came on the show, I appeared basically on a four-against-one format, and I prefer it one to one, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing him do that after the show, and I know the people of America would.

It's interesting that you happen to say that you don't claim to speak for all veterans. You said that before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, same testimony previously cited, "I'm here as one member of a group of a thousand, which is a very much – very – which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit here at this table, they would be here and have the same kind of testimony."

I'm here, John. I'm a veteran in this country. I'm here to say that's a lie.

<snip>

MR. KERRY: Well, as to my being a liar, I – in my testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I did indeed say what he said. I said I represent one of the group of one thousand, which incidentally was one thousand at any one time. There were some two thousand who came through the whole time we were in Washington. And when I referred to the very much larger group within the country, I referred to our membership of our organization. I didn't say a majority; I didn't say all veterans; I said to a very much larger group, which is the some 20,000 members that we have in the country at this particular moment. And that was my reference there.

As to this question of who speaks for the majority and all this personal vindictiveness, I really think that that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about the question of this war and why it is continuing, why – – and I really don't think it does just justice to those men who have to give up their lives or be maimed or something or are in Vietnam now to have two veterans of the war sit here and go at each other's throats. I really think we can do better justice to the issue than that, and the issue really is why can't we set a date. Mr. O'Neill has simply shrugged this off, saying that would be absurd.

I want to know why we can't set a date when we know that the prisoners will come home, when we know that people will stop being maimed for the most senseless purpose in the world, and when we know that that in fact can be a solution and release the forces of accommodation in Vietnam which will not be released as long as we are there and as long as we are helping the South Vietnamese.
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