War Criminals for Kerrey

You know a candidate field is populated by zombies when Bob Kerrey rumors excite. The insectazoid Nebraskan transplant and current president of the New School (where his only friends are trustees) is a walking flat-line whose main interest since moving here has been the destruction of nascent teacher's unions. But most New Yorkers know him from his time served on the 9/11 Commission, followed by rumors that he would run the CIA in a John Kerry administration. Since Bush's reelection took away his dreams of Langley, Kerrey has clearly been missing the spotlight, hence his calculated statements to the Times last week hinting that he was considering a run against his old buddy Mike Bloomberg. Kerrey put an end to the desired flurry of handicapping and speculation as soon as his publicity thirst was quenched. It didn't take long.

During the few days Kerrey's candidacy was in play, we couldn't help but notice that most media accounts described Kerrey as a "war hero." This was both very odd and utterly predictable. Though there are more professional historians per square block on Manhattan Island than any other in the world, the city proved incapable of remembering that only four years ago headlines around the country blasted reports of Bob Kerrey's youthful adventures in the Vietnamese village of Thanh Phong. It was there that Kerrey led a team of Navy Seals in butchering dozens of women and children in cold blood.

War criminal Kerrey gets a pass; Freddy Ferrar-who has never even been able to kill his apartment mouse-is still in the soup for rhetorically shooting himself in the foot in front of a few prickly sergeants. What's wrong with this picture?

It's true that, like the Menendez brothers, Bob Kerrey was a young man at the time of his murders, and unlike Charles Manson, he had the sanction of the United States government. Maybe Kerrey's many defenders are right in saying we should absolve the former senator, who broke 32 years of silence only when the Times was about to go public with the massacre. Maybe we should let bygones be bygones. It was the cold war, after all. Hell, in five years, Sean Carroll and the rest of the Diallo Four will be rehabilitated enough for their own runs for mayor. By then nobody will remember anything about anybody. That's what's great about this country-we never let the past weigh us down, and everyone who ever wore a uniform is a hero, forever, no matter what.