Vietnam Memories: Vietnam War Still Smoldering

War won't go away. Preparations to try to avoid or to enter war will not go away. The Vietnam war won't go away. Right now the past is present and the present is ever so complex.

The April revelations about the killings carried out by Sen. Bob Kerrey's combat unit in Vietnam coexist with more recent memories of the high altitude bombing of Serbia and Kosovo when no American troops were on the ground in the bombing zones. And contemporaneous with the memories and moral arguments over those circumstances are the current plans to radically revise Pentagon strategy in order to include the development of some version of a missile defense system.

It is always time and never too early to weigh these matters on the scales of justice. When is it just to enter war and what are just means of engaging in war? Part of the American tragedy is that relatively little thinking and argument takes place at this level, even among Christians. Far too many of us think only of keeping America strong or of protecting our interests and pride, and, if necessary, at all costs.

That is the root of the tragedy in Vietnam and if nothing changes in the minds and hearts of Americans, this same failure will mark future tragedies. We may not be able to make a final judgment about whether Bob Kerrey and his squad committed war crimes. It is clear, however, that during the recent weeks of focus on his guilt or innocence, relatively little attention was given to the justice or injustice of the way the war was being directed by the highest officials.

Kerrey recently told former Marine, Gary Solis ("The Law of War," Washington Post, 4/30/01), that he does want "to know what the law of war is and whether he might have violated it." The fact that the law was not written indelibly in Kerrey's mind before he went to Vietnam, however, does not surprise Solis, who writes that many military personnel "vaguely recall being 'taught' for an hour on the topic by a hapless lieutenant. But few of us had a clear understanding of the subject. We knew that noncombatants could not be purposely targeted, but that rule, so easily stated in a rear-area tent, wasn't as easily practiced . . . ."

In the New York Times Magazine article by Gregory L. Vistica ("What Happened in Thanh Phong," 4/29/01), which drew so much attention, Vistica quotes the instructions from the Army Field Manual about noncombatant immunity. That manual, and those of the other services, builds on classic Just War doctrine. If such doctrine and instruction are taken seriously, then decisions to stop the fighting in Vietnam, or to stop the use of certain methods of fighting, would have been made much earlier than they were. Vistica says that Kerrey's superior, Capt. Roy Hoffmann, had asked his own superiors for "looser rules" in order to fight the elusive Vietcong."Previously, Hoffmann said, military personnel had not been permitted to fire unless they were fired upon. Under the new rules, he said, they could attack if they felt threatened. 'I told them you not only have authority, I damned well expect action,' Hoffmann recalled. 'If there were men there and they didn't kill them or capture them, you'd hear from me.'"

Kerrey said in 1998, as Vistica quotes him, "'Under the unwritten rules of Vietnam, we would have been justified [in firing] had we not been fired upon. . . . You were authorized to kill if you thought that it would be better. . . .' This month [April, 2001] Kerrey said flatly, 'We were instructed not to take prisoners.'"

There were many instances in Vietnam where the U.S. military did punish its servicemen for unlawful acts. Regardless of the pressure Kerrey and others felt from their superiors to kill enemies, they should have known and abided by the rules of just warfare. Yet, it is not enough to focus only on individual acts. The larger question is whether the highest Pentagon officials and presidents of the United States were loosening or ignoring the rules of war for reasons of pride and other national idolatries. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), when discussing the Kerrey affair on CNN (4/29/01), at least had the courage to ask why higher officials during the Vietnam war were not saying anything in April 2001 about the Kerrey affair and the Vietnam war generally.

Not every American can be expected to care about Just War teaching. Politicians will indeed feel pressure from constituents who 'don't want to lose,' or who want a war to continue or to end for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. But that should not be the case for Christians who should insist that all means of war fighting, all judgments about entering a war, and every kind of preparation made for defensive or offensive military purposes should be weighed on the scales of justice.

Back in the 1980s, there was considerable debate about the justice of the strategy of nuclear deterrence known as MAD—mutual assured destruction. Catholics and Protestants alike uncovered the teaching about just and unjust wars that goes back to Augustine. Those discussions and debates should never have ended. Given the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapidly shifting political alignments throughout the world, the massive military power of the United States, and exceedingly rapid technological developments, there has never been a time when the need for careful judgment about just and unjust warfare is more urgent.

—The Editor