KERREY   (CONT)

But it is a mistake to view When I Was a Young Man solely through the prism of Vietnam. In a preface, presumably written after September 11, Kerrey explains that he wanted to tell his story "because of the powerful needs that oppose remembering the bad with the good when we Americans rev up our patriotic engines." At a time when many liberals (neo- and otherwise) have been seduced by the notion of a preventative war against Iraq, it is worth recalling that sending young soldiers into combat is not always as risk free as the Gulf War or Afghanistan. That reality cannot simply be dismissed as an unfortunate residue of the Vietnam Syndrome. War can foster heroes, even ambivalent ones like Kerrey who almost refused his Congressional Medal of Honor. But it can also create burning flesh and ghastly wounds, as Kerrey underlines in a moving account of his convalescence after losing part of his right leg on his second and last mission in Vietnam. When I Was a Young Man tells the story of a patriotic era when Americans grew up believing that they could do no wrong because their hearts were pure. A patriotic era dangerously similar to today.

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