Why is it possible that the Vietnam War could make the difference of who wins and loses the 2004 American presidential campaign? Next April, it will be 30 years since the United States painfully and ignominiously withdrew from Saigon, losing its fourteen-year struggle against the North and the Viet Cong. By all accounts, Senator John Kerry was a hero in that war winning three purple hearts for wounds and Silver and Bronze Stars for valor aboard his Swift Boat. President George W. Bush served honorably if not heroically in the Air National Guard, fulfilling his legal requirement as many others have done before and since. Why the furor?
The simple answer is that the Vietnam War has become a referendum on which candidate will be seen by voters as the better commander in chief. If Kerry can be discredited, no matter how brave he was in battle, Bush is helped. Bush runs not on his time in the Air National Guard but in winning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hence, the advantage seems to be Bush’s.
In 1991, after the redounding coalition victory against Saddam Hussein in which his army was driven from Kuwait in 100 hours, President George Herbert Walker Bush and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General (and now Secretary of State) Colin Powell believed that this brief war and Operation Desert Storm had finally put to rest the nightmares of Vietnam. They were wrong. Why?
Vietnam was a soul-wrenching experience for that generation, a defining political and cultural moment that still has powerful consequence. Those years were a time that the American government under both Democratic and Republican administrations systematically distorted, withheld and invented the truth about the war. The casus belli were purported attacks by North Vietnamese gunboats against U.S. Navy destroyers in the international waters of the Tonkin Gulf in August 1964. The second set of attacks never happened. The first was undertaken by a local commander and may never actually have put the American ships in danger. But these were used by President Lyndon Johnson to exact the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, a de facto declaration of war.
During President Richard Nixon’s administration there were “secret” wars in Laos and Cambodia. These were no secret to the North Vietnamese. They were to the American people. Finally, after 58,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were killed, Congress had enough and refused to fund the war, causing the United States under President Gerald Ford (Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate Scandals) to exit from South East Asia.
The excesses by government at home in spying on Americans suspected of anti-war activities, the killing of rioting students at Kent State University by untrained soldiers of the Ohio National Guard who panicked and other outrages split America over the war. Intensity and bitterness had only been exceeded during the Civil War a century before.
Returning from Vietnam in 1970, Senator Kerry founded a group called Vietnam Veterans against the War. Kerry peacefully protested and in 1971 testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, DC. In that testimony, Kerry quoted some 150 Vietnam veterans from a rally in Detroit who claimed that American servicemen routinely committed atrocities and war crimes. Immediately, Kerry became a lightening rod for servicemen who understandably resented being called war criminals. Kerry also threw away his “ribbons,” not his medals in protest. There is a big difference---ribbons can be purchased; medals are only awarded by the government. This too offended many and still does.
During that war, George Bush entered the Air National Guard for duty inside the United States. He trained as a fighter pilot and flew some 350 hours. But he was accused of using family influence to gain a place in the Guard, as its numbers were limited and thus avoid combat duty in Vietnam. This surfaced in the 2000 election along with allegations that Bush was also often absent from duty.
A combination of old hatreds, bizarre election laws and presidential politics has produced a witch’s brew of ghosts and nightmares. A former naval officer named John O’Neill, a Kerry adversary since 1971, published a best selling book on Kerry called “Unfit for Command.” That book challenged Kerry’s first Purple Heart and Bronze Star. It also accused Kerry of leaving his comrades in Vietnam who still had months to serve. The book became the basis for highly negative television advertisements run by a group called Swift Boat Veteran’s for Truth that presented these accusations as a means of discrediting Kerry’s integrity and credibility.
The anti-Kerry Swift Boaters, many of whom supported Kerry in 1996 when he ran for the Senate against the then governor of Massachusetts Republican William Weld, asserted that a biography of Kerry published last year detailed heroic deeds on the senator’s part that they claim were invented. Kerry was supported by his crew and by people who were in proximity to him during these actions. While the bulk of evidence supports Kerry, his statement that he spent Christmas Eve in Cambodia in 1968 was clearly mistaken.
These groups have raised money to air television ads attacking Kerry. Named “527” for the provision in the US Tax Code that authorizes them, these ads have severely damaged Kerry by questioning his integrity and forcing him to respond rather than to campaign on other issues of interest to voters. Democrats have responded in kind.
As this column goes to press “Texans for the Truth” are now running ads alleging that President Bush used his influence in the Air National Guard to secure preferred duty and then regularly missed his flying assignments. The fact is that this is old news. However, Bush and Kerry are discredited by these attacks. In an era of negative ads and attack politics, this is seen as “fair game.” And issues of free speech loom large. Who can legally challenge the right of groups to be heard exercising free speech?
The reality is that Vietnam casts a long shadow on this election. Whether its ghosts and nightmares will change the outcome will soon be known. But, if one had to guess, the irony is that the real war hero will be badly wounded again and the candidate who stayed clear of battle will be largely uninjured.
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