This interesting Victor Davis Hanson column on John Kerry’s military service is respectful and insightful, and Professor Hanson’s conclusion is absolutely brilliant:

So I conclude with empathy for John Kerry, whom I appreciate as a veteran who served his country ? even if I would not now vote for him. He should have been aware of the god Nemesis. Still, in a spirit of magnanimity and appreciation for his months on a boat in a very inhospitable landscape, Americans perhaps should remember the words of Pericles, as recorded by Thucydides shortly after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War: “For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country’s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual.”