An Open Letter to Senator John Kerry

Dear Senator Kerry:

I write you now because of the recent comment which you made before the news media in which it is reported, and which I heard from your mouth personally (via television), the following words:

"You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

I would like you to know that you have made a terrible mistake in having said the above words, that you have slandered and insulted hundreds of thousands of servicemen, and have deeply offended millions of those servicemen’s’ wives, children, parents, family, and friends. Further, the longer that you postpone the inevitable acknowledgement of and apology for this slander, insult, and offense, the greater the injury will be to your honor, and ultimately, to your electability. Far worse, the greater the injury it will be to your own party.

You have insulted the thousands of servicemen who have degrees and a good education, who have volunteered for what I entirely agree to be an honorable but mistaken war. I have several friends in this category, one of whom has a masters’ degree in mathematics, and who volunteered for special service in Afghanistan.

Further, you have insulted the many thousands of servicemen who have volunteered, either in defense of this country, or in their own interest in order to gain that education. This includes the thousands of working class Americans who have studied hard, who wish to get ahead, and whose only choice in these days of expensive university or college tuition is to join the Armed Forces for the educational benefits which they would receive as veterans. I have a large number of friends in this category, including a family of eight whose father is a plasterer, and whose children have all gone into the Army, the Navy, and the Coast Guard, in order to have the means to that education.

In addition to insulting or offending these hundreds of thousands of servicemen and their extended friends and families, you have given the rather strong impression that you either do not know about or do not care about the fact that many bright people have volunteered for the armed forces in order to obtain an education. This in turn gives the impression that you have no concern for working class people, the people whom you claim to represent. Those working class people have a term for people who act as you appear to have acted: they call them “limousine liberals”.

It does not strike me as an intelligent act to so alienate a great number of the people who voted you into office. In the event that you seek to gain the Presidency in a later election, it would seem to me to be suicidally foolish to alienate the constituency whose support you may seek at such an election. Finally, it appears to me to be damnably foolish for you to endanger the upcoming elections of your fellow Democrats.

For all of these reasons, I think that the wisest counsel you could take would be to call a press conference, to acknowledge the offense which you unintentionally have given to servicemen and their friends and families, to distance yourself from the impression you have given that you have no interest in or care for the many who have enlisted in order to better themselves, and from there to go on to repeat your call for a policy in which those enlisted men may be safely and effectively withdrawn from Iraq.

I have been a Republican for most of my voting life, and if I were a partisan Republican, and actually viewed you as an enemy, I would not be writing this letter now. I would simply keep silent, and allow you to drown, while recounting to myself Napoleon’s maxim: “Never interrupt an enemy who is in the process of making a mistake.”

But I am not a partisan Republican. I am one who believes that, as a result of an over-bureaucratized and ineffectual intelligence network, and through wishful thinking, we have become involved in a futile effort to “democratize” a people who do not wish to have a democracy.

I think that a wiser policy, and one which would prevent the need for another Vietnam-like pullout, but would reduce the need for our occupancy, would be the partition of Iraq into a northern Kurdistan, a central Sunnistan, and a southern Shiastan (which in fact it had been before World War I). I also think that by supporting the Kurds, and by ceding the oil-bearing land to Kuwait in reparation for Iraq’s First Gulf War, we could stabilize the region, and prevent a situation in which Iraq’s oil-bearing land ultimately ends up in the hands of Iran.

Regardless of the above estimate as regards Iraq, if you fail to distance yourself effectively from your “botched joke”, both you and your party will ultimately be reduced in your ability to make policy as regards Iraq, whatever that policy may be. Please consider this.

Very truly yours,

Bernard Brandt

Note: For those who wish to write to Senator Kerry, one may do by going here.