The impact of the Vietnam war in this election is not the difference between someone who served in Vietnam and someone who served in the military at home. Much less is it about their relative attendance records or the underlying facts of their medals.
Vietnam looms over this election as the conflict between two fundamentally different mindsets that emerged from that war — a conflict still unresolved today.
One mindset viewed the war as what Ronald Reagan called a “noble effort.” The other opposed the war as the imperial overreach of an arrogant and immoral America.
The war in Vietnam was begun by a Democratic Party that first pledged to bear any burden to insure the survival of freedom (there was no oil in Vietnam); then committed the American military to prevent a Communist takeover of that country; and then, once the war became a morass, went into opposition and ultimately abandoned the country.
The “liberal hawks” of that time (such as Scoop Jackson) were replaced by the anti-war left (and its standard bearer George McGovern) — a faction of the party still in control today and the decisive force in the Democratic presidential race this year, which nominated the personification of the Vietnam anti-war left: John Kerry.
The echo of this history is eerily reflected in an article in yesterday’s ReasonOnline by Tim Cavanaugh (“Desertion in the Field: Twilight of the Liberal Hawks“).
Cavanaugh reflects on the liberal hawks — “Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Fred Kaplan, Kenneth Pollack, Fareed Zakaria, Jeff Jarvis, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Ignatieff, and many others [previously] arguing for the expenditure of American lives and treasure in Operation Iraqi Freedom:”
What unified the liberal hawks was that their support for the war was based unreservedly on what is popularly understood as the “neocon” vision, the prospect of exporting democracy to the Middle East through force of arms.
According to the “forward strategy of freedom,” a democratic Iraq with an emancipated citizenry would serve as an example and beacon to the Arab autocracies, empowering liberals in the region while undermining dictatorships; opening up avenues of freedom and self-expression for ordinary citizens in the Muslim world would in turn remove the impetus for terrorism. . . .
Cavanaugh notes that all of those “liberal hawks” have now gone into opposition:
These days, none of those luminaries can summon a kind word for the president who acted in accord with their own arguments. . . . Bush’s former supporters channel what is now the overwhelming conventional wisdom that the administration . . . failed to provide a large enough force to run the country adequately. . . .
[But] if you took seriously the idea that the United States was liberating the people of Iraq, then the Rumsfeld doctrine of minimal force was the only one that made sense. If keeping Iraq on life support meant committing a vast occupying force indefinitely, then clearly Iraq wasn’t a very good test case for the democratic experiment. .
In the event, of course, Rumsfeld’s “inadequate” force was sufficient to conquer Iraq in three weeks . . .
The war has in many respects gone better than expected, both during the three weeks and thereafter. In September 2002, Charles Paul Freund catalogued the widespread predictions of “potentially disastrous consequences:”
Iraq could fall apart under pressure from Shi’ites in the south (where much of the oil is) or Kurds in the north.
A region-wide conflict could develop, especially if Israel is attacked, that the U.S. might be unable to contain. . . .
[T]he U.S. could find itself mired in regional conflicts and problems . . .”
None of this happened, although other predicted problems did (rising oil prices, Islamic attempts at mass murder).
But, as Cavanaugh notes, it is historically remarkable in the history of war that, after a year and a half, there has been “[f]ewer than 2,000 dead, cooperation from some of the conquered country’s most respected figures, and the . . . prospect of elections . . .” If there have been setbacks, there have been setbacks in every war:
Since Iraq hawks are fond of citing analogies from World War II, let me join in the fun. American Marines were slaughtered at Tarawa because the pre-invasion bombardment of the island was woefully deficient.
Hundreds of American paratroopers were killed by American anti-aircraft fire during landings in Italy — for that matter the entire campaign up the Italian boot was an obvious waste of time, resources, and lives that prevented the western Allies from getting seriously into the war until the middle of 1944. (If anybody deserved impeachment, it was Winston Churchill, whose imperial obsession with the Mediterranean “underbelly” led to disasters in both world wars.)
In late 1944, Allied commanders failed to anticipate that the Germans would attack through Belgium despite their having done so in 1914 and 1940.
Abuse and murder of prisoners, targeting of civilians, and indiscriminate bombing all were common.
On any given week, World War II offered more fuckups and catastrophes than anything that has been seen in postwar Iraq.
So is Iraq a noble, remarkably successful effort, one worth seeing through to its conclusion, because we should bear any burden and oppose any foe, and finish a task assigned to our generation, comparable to battles of the 45-year cold and hot war against Communism?
Or is Iraq a quagmire, an immoral attempt to force our values on another country and culture, a vain (in both senses of the word) attempt to spread freedom to a culture different from our own, pursued at too great a cost in lives and money?
That question is at the heart of the referendum we hold today. This election will not be remembered as a milestone in the history of stem cell research, nor even in the makeup of the Supreme Court (since either party will filibuster any nominee that will fundamentally change the Court). It is a referendum on the lessons of Vietnam and the role of America in the world. As Brendan Miniter wrote in OpinionJournal yesterday (“What’s at Stake”):
At bottom, Mr. Kerry’s objection to the war in Iraq and the anti-Bush animus he has tapped into have nothing to do with protecting our troops, conserving resources to go after terrorists elsewhere, or even making nice with Germany and France.
The objection is over whether there are fundamental moral values worth fighting for in the world. In his 1971 Senate testimony Mr. Kerry said that such values are not universal:
“We found most people [in Vietnam] didn’t know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them.”
And he articulated a remarkably consistent view this year when he indicated democracy was optional in Iraq and perhaps imposing a strongman there was preferable.
This has not been George W. Bush’s position. First in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, he has fought two wars of liberation.
To fight these wars Mr. Bush first had to believe in the greatness of this nation; before he could export it to places that have known little more than tyranny, he had to believe the fundamental American value of liberty for all was also a universal value.
[T]his war is forcing a great re-examination in America. . . . Faced with the threat of international terrorism and a president willing to use both military force and American values to confront it . . . what’s at stake in this election is whether we will continue to confront terrorism with liberty or conclude that freedom isn’t universal after all.
Late this evening we will likely know which way the American people have decided to go: to proceed with the war whose goals united the neocons and liberal hawks, or to retreat (with assistance from the UN and our anti-war “allies”) from a conflict judged not worthy, and not worth it.
The vote will end one generation’s war, and define the current generation’s history. The whole world is watching.