The Fog Of War

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A few weeks ago, Kerrey sent Jarding a copy of his V.M.I. speech. Should I give it? Kerrey asked. Jarding knew it wasn't a question at all. "It was something he needed to do," says Jarding. "He needed to get this off his conscience."

Confession, Kerrey told TIME late Friday afternoon, has been good for his soul, though it is hard to tell whether the glint in his bright blue eyes reflects anguish or anger. "I don't regret that it's public at all," he said. "I feel personally already better." His 32-year silence may trouble some, though Kerrey speaks for more than one generation when he says "most men in a war who have done something bad just keep it private all their lives." Many will wonder too just how voluntary the confession was, though Kerrey says he was planning to reveal the incident in a forthcoming book. His timing still smacks as much of damage control as of a desire to speak up.

While the war is never quite over for physically and psychically scarred veterans like Kerrey, these are normally private agonies, not public matters. Most Americans have long ago put Vietnam to rest; they want to move on. Though exposure of his story might help heal his wounds, it is less clear what it does for the nation's.

Yet there are still things to be learned from his aching experience. The ambiguity at the heart of the raid--did Kerrey's squad accidentally kill civilians or deliberately massacre them?--mirrors the very nature of the war. For all his talk, Kerrey does not resolve the discrepancies: "Klann's got a memory of what happened. I've got a memory of what happened. They're both vivid. They're both awful." It's not a satisfying answer, especially from a politician revered for his candor. While much of the public has sympathized with Kerrey, this week he has to weather the hard charges being broadcast on 60 Minutes II, and his heroism is likely to be forever tainted by the doubts they raise. Kerrey professes not to care, since he never wore the hero's mantle well, or to fear the impact on a political career he says he has renounced.

The message here, Kerrey told TIME, is as simple as it is sobering: "I have not been able to justify what we did militarily or morally. But it's one of the things that went on in the war." His shame is the shame of the entire war: what he did was part and parcel of how America fought Vietnam. "In a free-fire zone we had permission to do it," Kerrey says. "And we had very aggressive instructions from our commanding officer in 1969 for how to deal with people there. And anybody that wasn't aware that this was going on, in my view, is lying." Was that policy a license for atrocities? Kerrey says the few rules of war "we'd been taught were a violation of the rules of war" that he finally read for the first time last week. He knows that he could be open to court-martial if the Pentagon pursues an investigation.

Vietnam has come to define the way we ought not to fight our wars. The main lesson is to take no American casualties, to fight only if victory is assured. But Kerrey's story reminds us that there is another lesson, one far harder to follow. Nations have no business sending their young into battle without lasting moral justification, not only because it is hard to die for your country but because it is equally hard to kill for your country.