BACK TO VIETNAM
Glenn Reynolds.com
Everyone thinks Kerry has the nomination sewed up. They're probably right, though this amusing parody notes that they've felt this way before:
"Kerry's Inevitability Index Hits 'Deanish' Level."
Dean, of course, is looking far from inevitable now, with his former campaign manager blaming everyone from Al Gore to the Internet for Dean's collapse. (Call me crazy, but I blame Dean.)
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But although a lot of Democrats are touting Kerry's Vietnam record, I wonder if Kerry's Vietnam background will help him as much as his boosters think. So does columnist Mark Steyn, who writes:
The only relevant lesson from Vietnam is this: then, as
now, it was not possible for the enemy to achieve military
victory over the U.S.; their only hope was that America
would, in effect, defeat itself. And few men can claim as
large a role in the loss of national will that led to that
defeat as John Kerry. A brave man in Vietnam, he returned
home to appear before Congress and not merely denounce the
war but damn his "band of brothers" as a gang of rapists,
torturers and murderers led by officers happy to license
them to commit war crimes with impunity. He spent the
Seventies playing Jane Fonda and he now wants to run as
John Wayne.
Kerry may have been brave in Vietnam, but his behavior
when he got back was not so admirable, and it happened in
front of the cameras. As MSNBC's Chris Matthews observes,
Kerry has a Jane Fonda problem, and between now and the
election we'll be seeing a lot of pictures of him with her
and other antiwar activists. Expect to hear reports like
these from American P.O.W.s who are still bitter about her
calling them liars for complaining about torture at the
hands of the North Vietnamese, and for otherwise
demonstrating her solidarity with the enemy.
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Will this kill Kerry's candidacy? Maybe not. But it won't help. And it probably won't do much for Jane Fonda's career, either. |
