What Americans Think About the Vietnam War
It is surely a mistake for the Kerry campaign to take legal action to try to prevent the "Swift Vets" book from circulating. Of all the nasty, attacking books that have sold well, sometimes with smears if not libels, this one has to be stopped? What about free speech? (Link via The Corner).
Meanwhile Bush says he would agree to dissociate himself from this book--perhaps even to join in the effort to suppress it--as long as Kerry agreed to a general crack down on the "527" organizations which have grown in importance as a way to raise and spend money outside the limits of the McCain-Feingold legislation (BCRA?). (Of course the Republicans don't speak of reforming the "501(c)" organizations, which are used more often to raise money for them. See here. I'm going to have to read up on this for my course this fall). Bush's comments seem even crazier than Kerry's action, as both his defenders and critics can agree.
What is more interesting for now, however, is that the Swift Vets business might be working--hurting Kerry. I was among those who thought every reference to Vietnam could only help Kerry against Bush. But if we look more deeply, a different picture may emerge.
Kerry has obviously been hoping that "decorated veteran of a controversial war, not personally responsible for any known atrocities" is a sure winner, with no negative echoes or ramifications, only positive ones. Even more, however, he has been trying to make his Vietnam experience answer a lot of different questions about him: toughness, leadership, character. As many people have observed, Kerry would rather not talk about his twenty years in the Senate, or even his career as a prosecutor. (How big a backlog did he reduce again?)
Some of what the Swift Vets are throwing, I suspect, is a judicious mixture of mud and shit. Some of these poor stiffs who have signed affidavits are contradicting their public statements, over many years, in support of Kerry. Now that they are under the hot lights, they go back and forth, or disappear. The Republican operatives and money people presumably don't know or care which statements are true.
Yet some anti-Kerry nuggets emerge. No one seems to believe any more that Kerry was in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968--yet Kerry stated that he was, more than once, very publicly and emphatically. Lots of people question what happened around the rescue of Rassmann. Thurlow is impressively sticking to his guns: he did not know that his own citation for an award cited enemy fire; he does not believe, and never did believe, that they were under enemy fire; and Kerry's boat was the only one that left the scene, before eventually coming back. Even Kerry's defenders are not sure whether there was enemy fire.
More of this detail by detail stuff will be coming, I'm sure. But let's say for the sake of argument that a somewhat different Kerry emerges--one who saw military service as helpful, on the whole, to his ambitions; who memorized all the rules about how awards were given, how many were needed to get out of combat early, etc.; and who cut at least some corners to make himself look as good as possible, while avoiding at least some dangerous situations that his colleagues were exposed to. The question for some voters will be: is this a whole lot--or any--better than Bush? "Tom Sawyer goes to War" is a narrative that Clinton could probably pull off extremely well, but it may not work for Kerry. Part of the problem is that he has given very little positive impression of himself--other than the Vietnam image--so there is room for his opponents to cram in some negatives.
Then there is the post-War anti-War activist, and the Congressional testimony. Obviously what really angers many vets is this stage of Kerry's career, not some question about what he did in combat. He gave the impression that atrocities were common--indeed that U.S. servicemen in general were somehow guilty of acting like Genghis Khan. Since he had to rely mainly on his own experience, the impression was left that we was referring to the men he had served with.
This I think gets to what Americans want to think about the Vietnam War. A noble, decorated veteran they can live with. Stories about self-inflicted wounds, even it is a matter of carelessness, may be less impressive. The atrocities, as far as I can tell, they don't want to hear about at all. What's more, if they get enough reminders that the war was kind of horrible and dishonest, along with suggestions that Kerry was part of these bad aspects of the war, Bush won't look so bad after all.
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