Robert Kerrey : Vietnam-Hero-Turned-Senator Speaks Against Iraq Policy

When a group of GOP consultants sat down for dinner recently, they decided the toughest Democratic opponent for George Bush in 1992 was a man many Americans never heard of--Sen. J. Robert Kerrey of Nebraska.

Only two years after he was elected to the Senate, Kerrey, 47, already bears the mantle of great expectations, with Democrats finding the distant reflection of John F. Kennedy’s Camelot in his sharp good looks, confident style and record of heroism in combat.

Kerrey was born in Lincoln, Neb., and as a young man his ambition carried him no farther than the University of Nebraska, where he earned a degree in pharmacy. He then enlisted in the Navy and joined the elite SEAL unit as a commando. In a March, 1969, attack on a North Vietnamese unit, a grenade blew off part of his right leg; later, the leg was amputated below the knee. Kerrey returned home shattered in body and spirit; even the Congressional Medal of Honor did little to dispel his bitterness.

Gradually, Kerrey healed, and he returned to Nebraska, where he became a successful businessman. By 1982, he was ready for a new challenge, and he stunned Nebraska political observers by first winning the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and then ousting the Republican incumbent.

In the worst farm crisis since the Depression, Kerrey was an energetic and popular governor. He even gilded the state with an unaccustomed sheen of glamour by dating actress Debra Winger. A second term seemed assured, but he again stunned the state’s political community--this time by not seeking reelection. Two years later, though, he easily won a Senate seat.

In Washington, Kerrey--divorced with two children--has emerged as one of the most vocal Democratic critics of last summer’s proposed constitutional amendment to ban flag burning and the Administration’s Persian Gulf policy. In both debates, Kerrey fashioned eloquent arguments from the mute rage of his personal loss in Vietnam--tantalizing liberals who see him as the Democrat able to withstand the traditional GOP attempt to portray the party as unpatriotic.

In conversation, Kerrey is open, though rarely effusive--the emotions that animate him seem more tangled. All the presidential talk--as intoxicating as champagne--may someday have its effect, but Kerrey does not yet seem persuaded of his own inevitability. Unlike most politicians, his life has not been a progression of expectations exceeded; his words, and often his silences, convey his understanding that the road does not always run straight to the horizon.

Question: Is there any circumstance short of Saddam Hussein invading Saudi Arabia that would put it in our national interest to go to war with Iraq?

Answer: I think it’s important to understand that, in many ways, we’re already at war--an economic war against Iraq. We’ve embargoed them, and we’ve got not only an authorization for use of force but we also are enforcing, with military means, a rather severe naval blockade. Part of the problem we’ve got as Americans is that we are in a post-containment world and we’re struggling to discover what our rationale is for action. . . .

It seems to me that what we have to try to do is not just get a victory here but try to develop some lessons upon which we can build a sound foreign policy. And one of the things in the old world order, of course, was that it’s got to be a quick military solution. . . . What I’m suggesting is that the minute you narrow the options between choosing this military option or that military option, you begin to lose the opportunity to build a policy that is less dependent upon military (action).

Q: There has been a chorus from the Administration--the President, secretary of state, secretary of defense--saying it doesn’t look as if sanctions will work.

A: It’s almost as if they’re feeling the embargo is on us. What happened to the Administration is that they improperly thought through this massive deployment of force. And then they made it worse by pumping it up to 400,000 on the mistaken assumption that Saddam Hussein was going to be terrified by the prospect of an invasion. The fact is, that’s for him the best thing to happen--that’s on his ground.

Q: Why?

A: Because what he does the best is defend against conventional attack. That’s his strength. Moreover, now we have to be able to explain why Kuwait is so strategically important that we’re going to fight to kill and hold ground--what you’d have to do to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. To restore the emir? I think you’re not going to get domestic support for that. Most important, the troops become the policy.

Q: What do you mean?

A: Let me give you an example. The Administration says we’ve got to act quickly because we’ll lose our fighting edge. That isn’t saying that the sanctions aren’t working; they’re concerned the troops are going to lose the fighting edge, and so we’ve got to (move).

An even worse one we’ve heard from the Administration is that we have to work quickly because the Arabs are going to begin to resent us. Well, what does that say? . . . If I’m explaining to a mother or father why their son died, and I have to say we invaded quickly because Saudi Arabia, who we were defending, was going to begin to resent us if we stayed longer--that’s a tough explanation.

The third thing that I hear . . . is that the international coalition may break unless we go quickly. Well, the only dispute in the international coalition is the level of the use of force. . . .

I’m not suggesting that we go in and change our negotiating strategy; nor am I suggesting that we say to Saddam Hussein that once he’s withdrawn, we aren’t going to press further to try to get rid of chemical and biological (weapons) and downsize his conventional force and put pressure upon him to provide democratic freedom. . . . The mask is off. We see he’s a threat now. That’s not going to go away because he withdraws.

Q: You were one of 12 senators who voted against sanctions in July. And your feeling then was what?

A: Well, I had a great rationalization for it--that we should not take unilateral economic action like this. I listened to the Administration, who’s arguing that we can work with Saddam Hussein. I was listening to the Administration’s arguments, but what I was really saying was, as this ol’ boy Abe Martin once said, “When a man tells you it’s not the money it’s the principle--it’s the money.” We sell to Iraq as a relatively minor item. But you’re not going to see a Nebraska politician stand up and propose that we sell wheat to Iraq for a long, long time.

Q: If we do not use those troops to fight, to drive Iraq out of Kuwait or to take down his government, how do we resolve this?

A: The new objective ought to be much larger than just Saddam Hussein. . . . We ought not to lose sight of the fact that we now see that any possession of biological or chemical capability can be very, very dangerous.

The short-term objective--which to me is not necessarily within our own election cycle--is to get a withdrawal from Kuwait and to get Iraq to recognize that their aggression is illegal and their obliteration of the government and brutality toward Kuwait demands restitution. . . .

I think you’ve got plenty of capability without 400,000 ground troops to get that done. . . . We should downsize the force so that you’ve got the force there to protect whatever Arab forces are needed. . . . We ought to have troops there that will enable us to enforce the naval blockade as well and for the possibility of short-term defensive action if Iraq were to break out and attempt an attack.

Q: At what point do we consider using any kind of force?

A: I don’t think it would have been out of line at all to use it without necessarily getting the United Nations resolution that we’ve just got. The fear that I find is that the attack will be broad; it will be a major air, Navy, ground attack. I think it would have been quite appropriate for allied forces to have used force inside of Iraq . . . almost at any point during this entire encounter. Certainly after the 15th of January. Secretary Baker’s message to Saddam Hussein ought to be not that we’re going to threaten to invade you . . . but we can make you suffer severely and we may do it in increasing fashion.

Q: Let me ask you about some of the domestic implications of this crisis.

A: What the Administration has done that I really strongly object to is show an unwillingness to come to the American people in the early days and simply say, “We made a terrible mistake and it almost cost us a great deal.” . . .

What they did was, they came with this nonsense and said, “Gee, our way of life is threatened here.” Our way of life wasn’t threatened. We’re discovering that life goes on here in the United States without a great deal of disruption; 20 cents a gallon and maybe it’s contributing a bit to the downturn in the economy. But if we’re asking more than 400,000 guys potentially to die over there, it’s a relatively small price for us to pay. There’s been some economic disruption, but not a colossal disruption.

Q. You said the President has declared this vital to our way of life. Do you feel any hesitation, as a freshman senator, saying, “Mr. President, I think you’re wrong?”

A: None. . . . The one thing that I feel in such a visceral way that I don’t care what the consequences are is the need for political leaders to be as fearless as we’re asking our soldiers to be. And I react with outrage when (Henry) Kissinger gets up, as he did, and says we’re going to lose face. Well, we put another 20,000 American lives down the drain while we spent four years, from ’69 to ‘73, trying to figure out how to accomplish peace with honor. It was not honor for the troops that stayed there for their four years, it was an honor for the politicians. The politicians’ honor ought to be secondary at this point to the honor of those who are going to be asked to potentially pay the ultimate price.

Q: That by itself represents something of a generational change from the period before Vietnam, when there would have been reluctance in the Senate to say to the President you’re wrong on a fundamental matter of foreign affairs.

A: I think there is a sea-change and a generational difference. President Bush doesn’t have a memory of having gone to a war where your politicians lied to you. I have a memory of having gone to a war where the politicians lied and the consequence was the people received me not as a hero but as somebody who had done something they didn’t want him to do.

Q: Even with the Congressional Medal of Honor on your neck?

A: Even with the Congressional Medal of Honor. Absolutely. It was somewhat easier, but I must tell you that even in my case there was no parade. . . . Nobody wanted their picture taken with the Medal of Honor recipient in 1970. The only congratulatory letter I got was from a guy running in a gubernatorial primary.

I’m not trying to load all sorts of personal angst on myself, but I have a memory of that. And I understand as a policy-maker that I make the decision. So if somebody says, well, our troops seem to be enthusiastic. Well, hell, I was enthusiastic. I didn’t go to Vietnam as a policy-maker; I went there as a soldier . . . because a politician said war was necessary--and that’s my role now. It’s not (Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman) Gen. Powell’s decision that war is necessary; it’s the politician’s decision to say we think war is necessary. It’s (Defense Secretary) Dick Cheney’s decision. It’s George Bush’s decision.

Q: We are heading into the season when people are wondering who among the Democrats would like to take on George Bush in 1992. Do you think someone knows when or if they’re ready to be President?

A: I think you’ve got two categories of politicians at the federal level. . . . Category No. 1 is people who have decided they want to be President. Category No. 2 is people who sort of think if I was President, this is what I would do. I’m not in category No. 1.

Q: Are you in category No. 2?

A: Occasionally . . . (because) it’s very often the attitude that you have to be in when you criticize the policy. I criticize the President’s policy in the Persian Gulf and people say what would you do? So I’ve got to present an alternative. This is getting off into a discussion of the nature of being President, but it is so much different in 1990 that I think Americans need to understand that we’re asking our President to pay an increasing price to be President.

Q: In what sense?

A: The risk is there now for somebody not to just lose an election but they can be destroyed. You can have your whole reputation trashed in the examination process. That’s the first order of business.

The second order of business is that you take on almost god-like qualities and you get this immense security detail that isolates you from the public--and it’s a monumental change. It’s a much different set of circumstances to be a modern-day President than it is to be a modern-day senator or modern-day governor.

Q: There are people who would like you to run in 1992 or ’96. What do you say?

A: I say that I’m not running, and I don’t want to be President. If they ask me why don’t you run, I’d say if I wanted to be President, maybe I’d run. Then I have to think about raising money and all that sort of thing. . . .

Q: Is there a Democratic case against Bush in 1992?

A: I think he’s missing a tremendous opportunity with the change in international events not to use his knowledge and his personal relationships with international leaders to change the agenda from one of trying to match in an arms- race fashion to one of trying to build your own economy. . . . Right now, we’re in a very weak position. I feel great domestic danger. I genuinely do. The clock is ticking.