If you happen to be teaching a course on the Vietnam War and you happen to read the newspapers regularly, opportunities to connect the past to the present without undue risk of presentist violations abound. You can, for example, lead a class through a close examination of the analogies in constant play in the press. A dispatch by the New York Times reporter John Burns channeled Vietnam movies and the war dispatches of that era’s newspaper greats. All that was missing, somehow, was Iraq. The story bore the headline: “Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids.” As the Marines moved upriver (the Euphrates, not the Mekong) in Surcs (Small Unit Riverine Craft, rather than the Swift boats the enemies of John Kerry made famous. ), Burns wrote, “there were snatches of dialogue from Apocalypse Now. One marine described the landscape as “a Vietnam theme park.” The layers of connection and disconnection are striking: the Marines in Iraq talk to each other in the language of a Vietnam movie made before they were born (1979). One of them sees the country he is really in, Iraq, not so much as Vietnam (a place he has anyhow never seen) but as a theme park - a Vietnam theme park. That is to say, he apprehends - or rather fails to apprehend - his own reality through the representation of a reality he has never experienced. What he knows, his world, is to some degree comprised of video games, movies and reality TV shows -- neither history nor the present. Of course, at any minute he can die from encountering a world he cannot grasp - and at any moment, in that world, he is prepared to kill, does kill, for real.

The most common analogy made between Vietnam and Iraq is topographic: Vietnam was/Iraq is a quagmire. At a press conference in the summer of 2003, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld had a hard time with the word. He had opened with an analogy of his own, comparing the growing insurgency in Iraq to, of all things, the situation in the U.S. immediately after the American Revolution. “There was rampant inflation and no stable currency. Discontent led to uprisings, such as Shays' Rebellion, with mobs attacking courthouses and government buildings…" He added that the “transition to democracy is never easy” and seemed unaware or indifferent to the logic of his analogy which left American troops in Iraq in a rather anomalous situation. A reporter wanted to know whether the Iraqi resistance could be called a guerrilla war and whether the U.S. might not have landed itself in a quagmire. Rumsfeld flatly replied that it was not a guerrilla war. As for “Quagmire. We have had several quagmires that weren’t thus far… Why don’t I think it is one? Well, I opened my remarks today about the United States of America. Were we in a quagmire for eight years? I would think not. We were in a process. We were…evolving from a monarchy into a democracy. If you want to call that a quagmire, do it. I don’t.” So there.

The locus classicus of the term “quagmire” seems to have been David Halberstam’s 1964 book, The Making of a Quagmire and what he took quagmire to mean was that the U.S. was somehow caught in situation not of its own making, a swamp that was dragging it down to destruction and from which it could not seem to extricate itself. In his book, The End of Victory Culture, Tom Engelhardt reflected on how the word functioned in the Vietnam war. “For Americans,” Engelhardt wrote, “the benefit of the word quagmire was that it ruled out the possibility that the U.S. had committed acts of planned aggression. The image turned Vietnam into the aggressor….” If Vietnam was a quagmire; if Iraq is a quagmire, then Americans, not Vietnamese or Iraqis, are the victims of war.

A subset of the quagmire analogy is the notion that, however terrible the situation, the U.S. cannot leave. In the case of Vietnam, the prediction was that the departure of U.S. troops would lead to a bloodbath. In Iraq the language is no less sanguine. Politicians and journalists insist the U.S. must remain to set things right. Having broken Iraq, as Secretary of State Powell famously warned, the U.S. has now bought it. A class on Vietnam must examine closely exactly what the bloodbath argument entailed, its logic, its relation to the military and political situation at the time. As for Iraq, I think the British reporter Simon Jenkins put it best: "No statement about Iraq is more absurd than that 'we must stay to finish the job.' What job? A dozen more Fallujahs? The thesis that leaving Iraq would plunge it into anarchy and warlordism defies the facts on the ground.”

Along with analogies, there has been a wholesale reappearance of what one could call Vietnam-era key words and phrases: hearts and minds, friend from foe, political versus military solutions, destroying the town to save it. There are, as yet, no free-fire zones in Iraq. But there are “weapons free” zones, which does not mean what the words imply - an area in which weapons are absent - but rather one in which weapons can be used on anything that moves.

The appeal to direct combat experience continues to characterize much of the writing on Vietnam (and to tempt many men, among them mature historians, to claim Vietnam service they never performed). What, exactly, do troops on the ground experience? Chatting recently with a filmmaker and a freelance writer, two American soldiers passed around their digital pictures of dead Iraqis and commented on them: “These guys shot at some of our guys, so we lit ‘em up.” Two died and the third lived. “His buddy was crying like a baby. Just sitting there bawling with his friend’s brains and skull fragments all over his face. One of our guys came up to him and is like: Hey! No crying in baseball.” The soldiers acknowledge the humor is sick but “humor is the only way you can deal with this shit.” The reporter insists, (hopefully? defensively?) that below the humor is rage. As in Vietnam, the target of that rage is not government policy but rather the people to whose country the American soldiers have been sent.

Thomas Friedman advised his readers to “gauge Iraq” by listening to the soldiers. “Readers regularly ask me when I will throw in the towel on Iraq,” Friedman wrote. “I will be guided by the U.S. Army and Marine grunts on the ground. They see Iraq close up. Most of those you talk to are so uncynical - so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are unsure it will work. When a majority of those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives to go out and fix the sewers in Sadr City…then you can stick a fork in this one. But so far, we ain’t there yet. The troops are still pretty positive.” He seems not to have spoken with Corporal Daniel Planalp, one of many soldiers who have complained to reporters that they do not know why they are there. “This is Vietnam. I don’t even know why we’re over here fighting. We’re fighting for survival. The Iraqis don’t want us here. If they wanted us here, they’d help us.”

Let me end on another soldier’s statement, published in the New York Times on Memorial Day 2004. On March 18 of last year, Sgt. Christopher Potts, 38, of Tiverton R.I. wrote to his wife describing his journey from Kuwait into Iraq: “The first leg of the trip through the desert was really bad. There were children of all ages from God knows where begging for food and water. The dust was blowing all over them, and some had torn outgrown clothes, and some were barefoot. I looked over at my driver and we were both crying after a few miles. I said to him, You know, this is why I’m here, so that my kids won’t ever have to live like that. Then we just drove in silence for a while.” Sgt. Potts was killed on Oct. 3, 2004.

Sgt. Potts believed what the government wished him to believe - what John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Milhous Nixon all wanted the men they sent to war to believe: that somehow, by killing people over there, they would protect us, over here. How Sgt. Potts came to believe what he did and what its relation might be to the reasons his government sent him to kill and be killed is what we and our students need to understand better. This task is the more urgent in that it just may be that Sgt. Potts got it right: that the national interest as currently defined by the country’s leaders, does require Sgt. Potts to kill and to die in Iraq.

Related Links

Stephen J. Morris: We Could Have Won the Vietnam War

---

This article was published originally by Historians Against the War (HAW) and is reprinted with permission.

Related Links:

• HNN Index: Iraq Analogies: Vietnam, Algeria, etc
• Jonathan Dresner:"Attempting Analogy: Japanese Manchuria and Occupied Iraq"
• John Dower:"Is the U.S. Repeating the Mistakes of Japan in the 1930s?"
• Peter Kirstein:"Why Iraq, Like Vietnam, Is Immoral and Unnecessary"
• Robert Brent Toplin:"Why Is Opposition to the War in Iraq Seemingly So Muted (Compared with Vietnam?)"
• etc., etc.,

Les Hildering - 5/13/2005

In South Vietnam governments were not stable. The one in Iraq I guess is not stable given the civil war. So maybe the wars are kinda parallel in that the US is wanting to have a government to preside but fails to do so because the people loathe the beefeaters.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/13/2005

I meant to post the above post here:

You may be right in that we are not the best for the role, but as yet, I do not see anyone else willing to try. If Europe ever comes with some kind of continental military, they seem the most likely candidate, but who knows.

As for Iraq being like Vietnam or Japan, I respect your posision, but I simply see very little connection to Japan. Vietnam is a better candidate, but only in specific ways.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/13/2005

You may be right in that we are not the best for the role, but as yet, I do not see anyone else willing to try. If Europe ever comes with some kind of continental military, they seem the most likely candidate, but who knows.

As for Iraq being like Vietnam or Japan, I respect your posision, but I simply see very little connection to Japan. Vietnam is a better candidate, but only in specific ways.

Les Hildering - 5/13/2005

I am glad you feel the US gets others to behave themselves. Yet some parents are not the most behaving either and maybe we are not the best for that role. But to return to our mission. I read all those article linked under the piece and
I felt they were very convincing in attempting to draw parallels between Iraq and Vietnam or even Japan.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/12/2005

I would agree in part and disagree in part. I agree, I am pro-American but I disagree that the reasons is that I “may not really see the impact of what we do elsewhere.”

The Europeans have their own agenda, with Britain supporting American hegemony and the French opposing it, not because they think that they can do a better job, but because of our own arrogance towards them.

As for Asia, neither Japan nor (contrary to popular belief) China would have it any other way. We keep both economies strong and they assume will keep North Korea at bay. To the extend that this administration is unable to do that, then perhaps the feelings will change, but right now, I cannot imagine that they would prefer a different hegemon, even if they desire different policies from this one.

Latin America, on the other hand, and the Middle East, now THEY have every reason to dislike the status quo, since for the most part, they have gained little from American interference, with the exception of the lower Gulf States like Kuwait (for obvious reasons).

My pro-American stance is not contingent on America having the best policies, they often do not. Certainly, I can think of many nationalities that would prefer an entirely different world order. However, I truly cannot think of any alternative superpower that has the resources, the military capacity, AND (and here is the important part) the will to go around making sure other nations behave themselves. Under the proper leadership, I do not see why the US could not retain this position indefinitely.

I should add that I do not believe that we are living under the proper leadership. If this administration is unable to prevent Iran and North Korea from going nuclear and if we continue to provoke intense feelings of humiliation and subjugation from so much of the world, it will only be a matter of time before we find ourselves living in an extremely unstable and chaotic world indeed.

Les Hildering - 5/12/2005

Reasonably well unless you like the terrorism now unleashed and are not a relative of the 1000s of dead Americans who have died for Paul and Don and Condoleezza.

Les Hildering - 5/12/2005

I tend to defer to the Europeans and Asians who do not share your view that the US is the best hyperpower. I think you are a tad bit proAmerican because you may not really see the impact of what we do elsewhere. Maybe I am wrong you come across as very proAmerican.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/12/2005

I wouldn't discount us just yet. After all, other nations in the world do not have the responsibility we have as the sole superpower. If we decided to remove ourselves from the role of enforcer, some other country would start to build its military capabilities to fill in the void.

I would modestly submit that the world has as good a chance under American hegemony than with any other nation up front.

Of course, I also believe that our ability to lead has never been called into question more than after the past few years, where the only thing the rest of the world sees is an unprecedented arrogance and contempt for other countries and it sure does look like many nations are expanding their weapons BECAUSE of us rather than in place of us. Ultimately, if America falls from grace, so to speak, and nuclear proliferations forces an end to American military hegemony, I believe it will result more from inept leadership and arrogance on our part than from any “natural” inclination to fall, as some predict.

Les Hildering - 5/12/2005

I wonder if the US is a good country anymore. It seems all we do is kill people right and left.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/12/2005

"One thing is true, LBJ, RMN and GWB have not been truthful about their wars and the reasons for it."

Of that, we are in complete agreement. Unfortunately, people tend to grade based on success. Had we won in Vietnam, it is unlikely that Americans would have cared about how or why we got involved, and what we did there.

Similarly, if things go well in Iraq, no one will care (if anyone does anyway) why we got involved, and Bush will be credited as a great visionary.

All things considered, I don't care who gets the credit or what the fallout might be, Iraq must succeed. Unlike Vietnam, which had zero strategic value to us, an Iraq divided by civil war or cleaving off into separate countries would devastate the stability of the region and create chaos for the United States for years to come.

The real difference between the 2 conflicts is that Americans had to pay for Vietnam both in terms of human lives as well as in higher taxes and the end to Johnson’s “Great Society” ambitions. Iraq, by contrast, has been absolutely free for all but a small minority of the country. By putting the war and overall spending on credit cards (figuratively speaking) we have all been able to enjoy tax-cuts, spending increases and we don’t even have to be bothered by the conflict by the media, which have increasingly ignored it altogether. As for the national debt, our trade imbalance, and many of the other problems effecting the nation, future generations will have to worry about those things. Even social security reform is being sold to the American people as something whose costs we need not concern ourselves with.

mark safranski - 5/12/2005

The comparisons betwee Iraq and Vietnam might be better had the U.S. invaded North Vietnam, captured Ho Chi Minh and occupied Hanoi. And if the Vietnamese insurgents had lacked superpower patrons and were composed of groups that basically hated one another. And if Vietnam had a Middle-Eastern topography. And oil.And..and...and...

In other words, the comparison with Vietnam has a lot more to do with the politics of the person drawing the analogy. In this case, the wishful hope of those desperately wanting to re-live a defeat for "American imperialism" that became the touchstone of their worldview.

The U.S. has done some things well and a quite a few things wrong in Iraq. The Iraqi government, democratically elected - unlike Ho's totalitarian state or the corrupt GVN dictatorship - has a chance to stabilize the country. If they fail, civil war is a probable result. Either way, the U.S. will be in Iraq in some capacity for years.

The differences are far greater than any similarities.

http://zenpndit.blogspot.com/

Les Hildering - 5/12/2005

Yes there are parallels. But in Afghanistan, huge demonstrations are breaking out against USA. I hope they are a harbinger of similar events in USA. If they break out in Iraq, they may even more influence antiwar events here which would be another reason why Iraq may be more approximate to Iraq than the above person wishes to acknowledge. One thing is true, LBJ, RMN and GWB have not been truthful about their wars and the reasons for it.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/11/2005

Historical analogies can be useful, but at some point, all analogies break down. In the beginning of the war, administration officials and conservatives often used WWII, claiming that Iraq was like Japan: foreign, undemocratic, non-Christian, and hostile. But that analogy was a stretch from the get-go. Japan, in fact, was absolutely nothing like Iraq for many reasons, just a few mentioned in these HNN articles from the archives: http://hnn.us/articles/1225.html, and http://hnn.us/articles/1429.html

The Vietnam analogy is seductive because of the disconnect between what the administration says, and reality, as well as the strong international anti-war movement. However, although Iraq may one day be much closer to Vietnam, it is way to early now for it to be a useful comparison. The body count and the opposition is simply too low (although this was true in Vietnam at one time as well- remember, Johnson won in 1964 despite the war, just as Bush won in 2004). Also, unlike in Vietnam, Iraqis have no alternative to the US other than violence and chaos, whereas S. Vietnamese could choose between nationalistic Communism and foreign subjugation. There are other important distinctions, but I will leave it at that.

I actually think that Edward Siegler has a point about Iraq being like Afghanistan. Indeed, on 9/10, 2001, if anyone knowledgeable about the region was asked which country would be the most difficult to invade and rebuild, I cannot imagine anyone saying Iraq. Iraq was stable, had a centralized and functioning civil service, an entirely literate and well-education population, liberal women’s rights policies, and a mostly developed infrastructure. Afghanistan, by contrast, was highly decentralized, with dozens of warlords controlling much of the country, slave-like conditions for women, and no modern civil service to speak of. And of course, let’s not forget the Soviet experience in trying to crush a highly organized guerrilla movement.

So why did Afghanistan succeed where Iraq seems to be, at the time of this writing anyway, failing? This is where Bush-supporters who may have agreed with my post thus far will start to cringe.

The following areas are where I believe to be the real problem with Iraq lies:

1- International support: Afghanistan was a global effort, consisting of troops from numerous nations (French troops are stationed there still today, as are numerous Muslim and Arab countries). Iraq has almost no international support, which limits the amount of money that can be spent and also has a great effect on how Iraqis themselves view the conflict.
Even the few countries that we were able to coax into supporting us had no domestic support back home. With the exception of Israel and the US, not a single nation for which information is available had support for the Iraq war over 50%, not one, not even Britain. This means that another dimension is present in Iraq which was not in Afghanistan, and that is…

2- Politics: Afghanistan was a just war and no one cared how much it will cost and what we have to do to win. Bribe warlords with millions of our dollars? Allying ourselves with criminals and human rights abusers? Fine, this is war and we have to win. With Iraq, on the other hand, because the all justification for the initial conflict seems to have fallen apart one by one, BOTH Republicans and Democrats have transformed it from a war abroad into a political battle here (even on this very post, some Americans are accused of WANTING us to fail simply for analyzing the conflict in a negative light), with the troops and Iraqis as the ultimate victim of this game.

3- Competence: I know I will make few friends for what I am about to say, but the fact of the matter is that the administration has been totally incompetent when it comes to Iraq. Like Vietnam, military decisions were made for political reasons back home, not strategic ones. Experts knew that more troops were needed at the start to stabilize the country, and yet the administration wanted to send as few as possible for political reasons. Disbanding the Iraqi army was an act of sheer incompetence, a mistake that we are paying for even today. Our inability to protect civilians and treasures in the initial phase of the rioting and anarchy that followed victory seared an impression of the US as oil-hungry despots that has never been totally erased, and of course, our reaction to Abu Graib showed an incensed Arab world and a furious Iraq that so long as we are not as bad as Saddam, we will do as we please. I could go on but in case after case, the situation in Iraq has been made worse by incompetent judgments based on false assumptions.

In the end, Iraq will, I believe, triumph for the simple reason that the Iraqi people will not allow otherwise, and as of this writing, there are no serious impediments to stability on the horizon. However, the decision to invade was, in the while, wrong, and based on inaccurate information for which NO ONE in government has yet been called into account. There were no WMD, there were NO links discovered between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

What does remain however, are other threats far more dangerous and more severe than Iraq could ever hope to be. Iran and North Korea may soon be nuclear powers, something which our children will look back on as one of those momentous actions that changes the geopolitical environment of the regions. It is a subject for another article, but our hand would have been incalculably stronger had it not been for this conflict in Iraq.

Some food for thought: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48306-2005Mar18?language=printer

Edward Siegler - 5/11/2005

All good points, Mr. Hagedorn. The "Iraq is Vietnam" argument is not about history - it's a wish for American defeat. Those who make this phony analogy WANT Iraq to be another Vietnam. They ignore the fact that if it can be likened to any other war, it's the one in Afghanistan. The Iraq/Afghanistan analogy is studiously ignored because things are going reasonably well, all things considered, in Afghanistan. This is a great source of discomfort for the Iraq-as-Vietnam crowd.

Thomas W Hagedorn - 5/11/2005

Bush was re-elected with decent numbers. Polls showed the troops voted overwhelmingly for Bush. It appears the troops support the war. If Iraq is like Viet Nam, then it must be like 1965. But I seem to remember more opposition from some politicians even then. Deomocratic politicians railed mightily against Bush, his reasons for going to war, his conduct of the war, but WHO (significant politicians) is calling for us to withdraw our troops from Iraq? I don't think many politicians are listening to pleadings like Prof. Young's.

Edward Siegler - 5/10/2005

If there is any war that makes for an appropriate comparison to Iraq it is Afghanistan. Here is a Muslim country in which a tyrannical regime has been thrown out of power in the wake of 9/11, elections held, and with a new national army and political culture being built.

Iraq is beset by a much stronger attempt by its former rulers to regain power. It will fail because the 80% of the country composed of Shiites and Kurds won't allow it. Unfortunately they are unable to prevent a lunatic fringe of suicidal fanatics from committing murder. The insurgency has nothing to offer the country but continued bloodshed, and Iraqis of all stripes know this. The insurgency has no nationalist ideology of the type that gave the communists in Vietnam some appeal. It is a nihilistic last-ditch attempt by a small minority to regain what it sees as its righful ownership of the country. They will lose, and Iraq will win.

Peter N. Kirstein - 5/10/2005

As the quagmire deepens and the body count grows higher, parallels between the two conflicts grow. It is no longer the left using comparative history as antiwar agenda, it is the facts on the ground a conventional war is transformed into a guerrilla insurgency growing stronger by the hour.

James Spence - 5/10/2005

The Swift Boat Veterans were strongly grounded in factual arguments? That’s a tedious and unfruitful road to go down.

Mr. Lederer’s bag of facts and ideas in total on his post are simplistic and no more convincing than Mr. Lembcke’s post. To be fair, anytime Kerry is mentioned in this matter one should also bring in Bush’s record during the Vietnam war. The failures of both men on this subject should be fairly discussed. Failure of a man’s character and his actions always seem to materialize when it suits either party. Otherwise the subject should be closed. It was my impression that Bush’s political machine managed to make his entry in the Air Force National Guard seem slightly more heroic than Kerry’s Vietnam service. Of course, like Bush, it is my opinion that Kerry, or his people, put his Vietnam service a bit too much up front . It was a gambol and he lost and provided an opening for the creation of those wonderfully objective Swift Boat veterans, a boon to the Republicans at the time. As Mr. Moshe says, it was brilliant marketing. During an election war candidates tend to exaggerate about character and personality issues while the real issues of the campaign are buried.

Marc "Adam Moshe" Bacharach - 5/9/2005

1) “My impression of the convention and Kerry's "reporting for duty" while being portrayed as a hero was a touch of the demagogue.”

I would agree with that assessment.

2) “The Swift Vets though certainly making an emotional appeal had their case strongly grounded in factual arguments. It was the failure of the Kerry campaign to convincingly engage them on the factual issues that made them so effective.”

I must disagree.

At the risk of re-opening this can of worms, I will say only that the following is simply my own opinion, and the election is over in any event, so here goes:

Many of the SBVFT claims had been refuted or called into question long ago, as seen below:
http://factcheck.org/article244.html
http://factcheck.org/article231.html

The ads were tremendously successful because the charge was so damning. Seeing elderly war Veterans launch such attacks against someone was brilliant marketing (I particularly give credit to the one commercial showing a large group of veterans talking about how they felt betrayed). Kerry’s response to the SBVFT did himself in, no question, but the reality is that while the group did have some success in identifying certain areas of exaggeration or even direct contradictions in Kerry’s statements, from a factual standpoint, those examples are relatively trivial, certainly compared to those of other national politicians (including Kerry’s opponent).

I would also agree with your “reasonable conclusion” being that the records contain “something embarrassing,” however I find it unlikely that the embarrassment had anything to with the SBVFT claim.

Liberals made similar arguments against Bush when he refused to release his records in 2000, and then again in 2004. When Bush finally did release some of them in February (and only after several prominent Democrats and his opponent made it a major campaign issue), they tended to support his position. Why not release them earlier and get it out of the way? The WH says it was not aware of their existence but to be frank, I find this unlikely. The more likely reason is that they feared even confirmatory records could be used by clever pundits to spin it their way and why bring it more attention by releasing them (that is my guess, anyway).

In any event, Kerry released all of the military records that are relevant to the debate, including all of the citations for the medals in question. I tend to believe that many pundits wanted more simply because it was the only target left.

In conclusion, I do believe that the SBVFT ads were a textbook example of demagoguery and emotion-laden accusations. In fairness however, aren’t all political campaign ads just as “bad”? The SBVFT can be blamed for many things, but I think they probably won Bush the election more than any other single variable. Nevertheless, one can hardly blame an organization simply for being successful. I could cite numerous organizations on both sides who did the same thing, though with far less success.

John H. Lederer - 5/9/2005

Curious use of "demagoguery".

Generally a demagogue is one who attempts to gain or augment leadership position by appealing to emotion rather than facts.

My impression of the convention and Kerry's "reporting for duty" while being portrayed as a hero was a touch of the demagogue.

The Swift Vets though certainly making an emotional appeal had their case strongly grounded in factual arguments. It was the failure of the Kerry campaign to convincingly engage them on the factual issues that made them so effective.

None of them, with the possible exception of one, seemed to me to be seeking a leadership position. Indeed their absence of ambition is part of what strengthened their argument. Combined with at least a few incidents, such as Christmas in Cambodia, where they were clearly correct and Kerry clearly had been lying, they undoubtedly hurt his campaign badly. I say "lying" rather than "forgetting" because of Kerry's emphatic assertion that the event was "burned" into his memory.

Kerry's failure to disclose continues. Some 90+ days ago he promised in an interview on national TV to sign a form that would allow public inspection of all his military records. He has not done so. Similarly during the campaign he would claim that his records were released. When taxed with the fact that not all were released, he would promise to releaase what was kept back. It never happened.

A reasonable conclusion is that the records contain something embarassing.

John H. Lederer - 5/9/2005

Curious use of "demagoguery".

Generally a demagogue is one who attempts to gain or augment leadership position by appealing to emotion rather than facts.

My impression of the convention and Kerry's "reporting for duty" while being portrayed as a hero was a touch of the demagogue.

The Swift Vets though certainly making an emotional appeal had their case strongly grounded in factual arguments. It was the failure of the Kerry campaign to convincingly engage them on the factual issues that made them so effective.

None of them, with the possible exception of one, seemed to me to be seeking a leadership position. Indeed their absence of ambition is part of what strengthened their argument. Combined with at least a few incidents, such as Christmas in Cambodia, where they were clearly correct and Kerry clearly had been lying, they undoubtedly hurt his campaign badly. I say "lying" rather than "forgetting" because of Kerry's emphatic assertion that the event was "burned" into his memory.

Kerry's failure to disclose continues. Some 90+ days ago he promised in an interview on national TV to sign a form that would allow public inspection of all his military records. He has not done so. Similarly during the campaign he would claim that his records were released. When taxed with the fact that not all were released, he would promise to releaase what was kept back. It never happened.

A reasonable conclusion is that the records contain something embarassing.

Robert KC Johnson - 5/9/2005

I've responded to this posting at Cliopatria; its comparisons seem unconvincing.
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/11805.html

Ken Slinde - 5/9/2005

Way, way too early to begin talking about Iraq as though it were the mess that VN became. First of all the Iraq War was won in a matter of weeks. Though few, if any battles in VN were lost the war was never won for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was flawed battle plan (never going near Hanoi, fighting to attrit the enemy.) In VN there never was any potential of leadership for a free country, today there appears to be a start in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When Iraqi police or army recruits are killed, others are stepping in to fill the void. In VN, American GIs did most of the fighting.

While a great agrument can be made that the US is putting our Guard and Reserve troops into a situation that is not what they imagined, they still are all volunteers. During VN, most of the low level troops were conscripts.

Jerry Lembcke Lembcke - 5/9/2005

Thanks for this terrific piece. The most general legacy of the war in Vietnam is the betrayal narrative it wrote into American political culture. The idea that we could have won the war had it not been for betrayal on the home front has sustained the idea that more wars like it can be won if only we unite behind the administration’s policy. Thus, the “support the troops” rallies marking the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and the onset of the Gulf war in 1990) almost invariably invoked images of spat-upon Vietnam veterans to dissuade opposition to the war.
That same legacy played a powerful role in the election of 2004 when the Swift Boat faction in the Republican Party used it to leverage a campaign of demagoguery against John Kerry, a campaign, the subtext of which, was also against the anti-war movement.

Jerry Lembcke