Bob Kerrey’s War Record Fuels Debate in Vietnam on His Role at New University
By RICHARD C. PADDOCKJUNE 2, 2016
Former Senator Bob Kerrey, board chairman of the new Fulbright University Vietnam, being presented with the school’s license during a ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, last month. Credit United States State Department
BANGKOK — The appointment of former Senator
Bob Kerrey to lead a new American-backed university in
Vietnam has set off a sharp debate among Vietnamese over whether he should be disqualified because of his part in killing women and children as a
Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War.
“While the Vietnamese are willing to let bygones be bygones,” Ton Nu Thi Ninh, Vietnam’s former ambassador to the European Union, said by email, “the decision to appoint Bob Kerrey to be chairman of the board of the first American-style university in Vietnam strikes me as insensitive to the Vietnamese at best, and taking us for granted at worst.”
The university, Fulbright University Vietnam, the first independent, private university in Vietnam, made news after
President Obama announced its opening during a visit to Vietnam last week.
Mr. Kerrey admitted 15 years ago that he and the team of commandos he led in the Mekong Delta in 1969 killed innocent women and children during a midnight raid in the village of Thanh Phong.
Survivors of the attack said 20 civilians were killed, including 13 children and a pregnant woman. Mr. Kerrey was awarded a Bronze Star after his squad falsely reported that it had killed 21 Viet Cong guerrillas.
Mr. Kerrey was silent about the slaughter for more than three decades until The New York Times and CBS News were on the verge of publishing
a joint investigation in 2001.
“It was not a military victory,” Mr. Kerrey acknowledged in speech then. “It was a tragedy, and I had ordered it.”
“I have been haunted by it for 32 years,” he said.
The discussion of Mr. Kerrey’s war history — which has bubbled up in posts on Facebook and in articles at online news portals — threatens to reopen old wounds from what is known in Vietnam as the American War. About three million people died in the war, including more than 58,000 Americans.
Bob Kerrey during Navy SEAL training before combat in Vietnam.
Mr. Kerrey was later wounded on another mission and lost part of a leg. He and his raiders were never held to account for the killings.
Kerrey served as Nebraska’s governor and senator, ran for president in 1992, and retired from elective office in 2000. He served as president of the New School, a university in New York City, from 2001 to 2010.
Bao Anh Thai, a lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City, said that leading a university was not the proper place for a man with Mr. Kerrey’s war record.
“Please tell me the name of any prestigious university in this world, where a killer in cold blood of women and children — he admitted it and he is not charged for it — could be the president,” he wrote on Facebook.
“It is not about the Vietnam War, it is not about reconciliation between the two countries, it is a common sense of education. Would you send your children to a university like that?”
Nguyen Duc Hien, a journalist at a legal newspaper in Ho Chi Minh City, noted that Mr. Kerrey kept quiet about the atrocities for more than 30 years and only spoke publicly about them when journalists forced his hand.
“After killing and lying, he should not represent knowledge and contributing the values of America in Vietnam!” Mr. Hien wrote on Facebook.
“I welcome Fulbright, but America has no shortage of people to choose as a representative for America.”
Others were more willing to let Mr. Kerrey atone for his actions by helping the country.
“Give him a chance to correct his mistake by doing something useful for the Vietnamese people with his new job,” said Thao Dan, a literature teacher in Haiphong.
But Nguyen Van Tho, a writer and a veteran of the war, said there was a difference between forgiving and forgetting.
“If I had a chance to meet Bob Kerrey, I would still welcome him,” he said on Facebook. “I want to forgive and forget all the pain of war. People can forgive soldier Bob Kerrey but people are not allowed to forget all the killing of innocent civilians. That is a crime the world should condemn forever.”