Sen John Kerry - The Man Who Cried Wolf then Left Town

By TRB

Picture this: It is late in the afternoon. I am standing on Arlington Street back in 1989 just across the way from the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. I am on the sidewalk in front of UMass Boston's College of Public and Community Service, a college of holdouts, madmen, anarchists and burnouts.

Just a few years in the past, the entire UMass Boston campus used to occupy the Arlington Street Building. Now 90 percent had moved out onto a peninsular on the shores of Dorchester into a series of brick red buildings designed in the most boring post modern style its Cambridge architects could find in the bottom drawer labeled "shoe factories."

We at CPCS were holdouts; didn't want to go over to the so-called "Harbor Campus," figuring that schooling for city "public and community service" should take place in the city itself. I remember arguing with Senate President Billy Bulger about that one day, and he looked at me and said, "You are so full of #&%*@^%!. You just don't want to go over there because they want you to."

There it was; the Senate President had read my mind during a time of weakness. He told us we could stay in our art deco circa. 1920-30 building another semester, but after that the bets were off.

In fact, I had just returned to the school from Bulger's office and was waiting for a ride when a commotion erupted across the street in the roadway. I watched as Sen. John Kerry, screaming four-letter words into the Fall air sprang from his nondescript black Ford which I figured was his office car, his office being located just 200 yards up the street in the Transportation Building.

He was yelling at an older man who had been unfortunate enough to back out from the hotel thusly impeding the good Senator's way. I believe he had to apply his brakes to avoid an accident. He was livid. I thought he might attack the man. But suddenly he noticed all of us standing around, offered one more expletive deleted to the other driver, jumped into his car and sped away holding one finger in the air for the hapless other driver to ponder.

Ahh, John Forbes Kerry. Now there's a guy who takes some getting used to.

The first time I met John Kerry he was wearing a military-issued fatigue shirt, some bit of rag clothing a soldier might wear while working in the motor pool, or while dodging bullets in combat. He was the voice of an organization called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At the same time he was one of the heroes of that war. So he had a lot of credibility.

I can still remember shaking hands with this guy wearing the fatigue shirt and something seemed less than authentic about it. Later, I remember, it was the hair. The grubby shirt. Then the professionally sculpted hair, not one hair out of place. It was a contradiction that bothered me. It was theater.

JFK - those are Kerry's initials - had a plan. It was a plan that requied an enlisted man to operate a movie camera aimed at John Kerry in actual battle in Vietnam. What would he later use those films for - home movies? Was this a man in the act of inventing himself? It is not my intention to "swift boat" Kerry with unsubstantiated charges about his actions in Vietnam as Bush II's supporters did more than a decade ago.

Kerry is an actual war hero. There's no way to get around that. It is in his records. He won a Silver Star for an act of bravery, Which was just one act of bravery among many. He was, in fact, the real deal. But then he turned against the war. So naturally, there was a group of fellow officers who went after him.

Kerry went to congressional hearings. He opened up is mouth and suddenly Jack Kennedy was in the room.Yes, he sounded just like him. But how did he manage that? One would think that someone would have to attend some special voice graduate school to imitate Jack Kennedy's brand of Irish, Boston, Harvard, Money accent. These things don't grow on trees.

Yet here he was 40 years ago and he had silenced the room with this voice from better days and he was talking about how immoral the Vietnam war was and how the Congress should not authorize another penny for it. He was even heard to call for "investigations" into the the nature and the conduct of the government or officials who backed the war.

But that was 40 years ago. John Kerry doesn't wear fatigues anymore. But his hair is still hanging on. The Kennedyesque accent can still be heard in the corridors of the Senate. Today Kerry is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a very powerful politician.

One might ask why this former member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War didn't call on the Attorney General to investigate the obviously illegal and immoral war in Iraq. But Kerry didn't. Maybe war is alright with him now, just an extension of diplomacy as some of the wiseguys in the State department will tell you

One might also ask Kerry why he hasn't even been able to show the kind of anger he did against that driver in Boston over this farce in Afghanistan. Ten years now - Vietnam-like in its insane longevity. Vietnam-like in its ever changing mission. Vietnam like- in its indiscriminate killing of civilians. Vietnam-like because U.S. involvement in Afghanistan makes not one bit of sense.

But Kerry isn't talking about the U.S. leaving Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden isn't even there. But the U.S. military is, just as they are still in Iraq "pullling out," costing billions a week while people at home lose their jobs and watch as their houses are foreclosed.

None of Kerry's hypocrisy was lost on a group of women who shouted him down at a meeting in Northampton on Saturday night. They wanted to know what his plans were for bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Kerry actually said there were "other issues" to talk about.

I wonder if he thought of talking about "other issues" when he appeared before Congress 40 years ago?