Rasmusen Weblog

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Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 3:32 am Post subject: This is the info I was trying to find when I started this thread

I found the quote and commentary here: http://hughhewitt.com/#postid855

Now if we only had a tape of Kerry saying what is in bold below it would make an awesome ad.

Senator AIKEN. I think your answer is ahead of my question. I was going to ask you next what the attitude of the Saigon government would be if we announced that we were going to withdraw our troops, say, by October lst, and be completely out of there -- air, sea, land -- leaving them on their own. What do you think would be the attitude of the Saigon government under those circumstances?

Mr. KERRY. Well, I think if we were to replace the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime and offer these men sanctuary somewhere, which I think this Government has an obligation to do since we created that government and supported it all along. I think there would not be any problems. The number two man at the Saigon talks to Ambassador Lam was asked by the Concerned Laymen, who visited with them in Paris last month, how long they felt they could survive if the United States would pull out and his answer was 1 week. So I think clearly we do have to face this question. But I think, having done what we have done to that country, we have an obligation to offer sanctuary to the perhaps 2,000, 3,000 people who might face, and obviously they would, we understand that, might face politic al assassination or something else. But my feeling is that those 3,000 who may have to leave that country --

Senator AIKEN. I think your 3,000 estimate might be a little low because we had to help 800,000 find sanctuary from North Vietnam after the French lost at Dienbienphu. But assuming that we resettle the members of the Saigon government, who would undoubtedly be in danger, in some other area, what do you think would be the attitude, of the large, well-armed South Vietnamese army and the South Vietnamese people? Would they be happy to have us withdraw or what?

Mr. KERRY. Well, Senator, this, obviously is the most difficult question of all, but I think that at this point the United States is not really in a position to consider the happiness of those people as pertains to the army in our withdrawal. We have to consider the happiness of the people as pertains to the life which they will be able to lead in the next few years.

If we don't withdraw, if we maintain a Korean-type presence in South Vietnam, say 50,000 troops or something, with strategic bombing raids from Guam and from Japan and from Thailand dropping these 15,000 pound fragmentation bombs on them, et cetera, in the next few years, then what you will have is a people who are continually oppressed, who are continually at warfare, and whose problems will not at all be solved because they will not have any kind of representation.

The war will continue. So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America, and we can't go around -- President Kennedy said this, many times. He said that the United States simply can't right every wrong, that we can't solve the problems of the other 94 percent of mankind. We didn't go into East Pakistan; we didn't go into Czechoslovakia. Why then should we feel that we now have the power to solve the internal political struggles of this country?

We have to let them solve their problems while we solve ours and help other people in an altruistic fashion commensurate with our capability. But we have extended that capacity; we have exhausted that capacity, Senator. So I think the question is really moot."

Of course, there were at least 160,000 South Vietnamese who fled by boat --not 2,000 or 3,000-- and more than 500,000 southeast Asians became refugees. Between two and three million were murdered by Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, and hundreds of thousands went into prison camps, and the regime's human rights record remains terrible.

So there we have Mr. Kerry's judgement as a young man-- the Communists would not be nearly as bad as the Americans in Vietnam, though perhaps 3,000 people would have to flee, and stopping Communism wouldn't be worth keeping as many as 50,000 American troops in a country. I wish somebody would ask him what he has to say about his massively wrong prediction, and whether he now regrets his role in helping the communist takeover of Vietnam. If he does regret and repent, I wouldn't hold his youthful folly against him too much-- was it Joan Baez who admitted she was wrong on Vietnam?-- any more than I'd hold against him a youthful fling with Nazism or the Klan. But I'm afraid that while he'd grant he was wrong on the number of refugees and killings, he'd still say that a million gook lives aren't worth 50,000 Americans stuck in a jungle.

No wonder Vietnamese-Americans hate John Kerry!