Niall Ferguson: Kerry's Going and Coming on Both Iraq and Vietnam

Niall Ferguson, writing in the WSJ (Feb. 4, 2004):

In Sen. Kerry's eyes, Vietnam and Iraq are both"win-win" issues. For his courage as a Swift Boat officer in Vietnam, he was awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V and three Purple Hearts. If that doesn't make a man a war hero, what does? But his testimony before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations in 1971 also established him as one of the war's most credible opponents."We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them," he declared,"We saw America lose her sense of morality . . . . How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Sen. Kerry has been having it both ways over Iraq as well. He voted for the resolution in October 2002 that authorized the use of armed force against Saddam Hussein. But last year he voted against the $87 billion package requested by the Bush administration to finance Iraq's occupation and reconstruction. This war, too, now seems to Sen. Kerry to have been"a mistake." It's a position greatly strengthened by weapons inspector David Kay's admission that the prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMD was"all wrong."

Many pundits and, I suspect, most voters would prefer this year's election to be about domestic bread-and-butter issues. But this is a typical symptom of American imperial denial -- to believe that you can invade and occupy a sovereign state one year and then campaign about Medicare the next. The reality is that this year's debate needs to be about Iraq -- not to mention Afghanistan. Like it or not, the candidates' plans for national security matter more than their plans for Social Security.

And that's where the Vietnam factor gives Sen. Kerry an edge -- an edge that could cut deep into the support not just of Howard"Hulk" Dean but also, if Sen. Kerry wins the Democratic nomination, of George W. Bush. For the reality is that ordinary Americans live in dread of"another Vietnam." And every time an American soldier is killed in Iraq -- low though the total U.S. casualties remain, in relative terms -- the suspicion grows that this is just a sandy version of the same, horrible quagmire. If the whole operation now turns out to have been a mistake, President Bush starts to look faintly like Lyndon Johnson, waging a war that is simultaneously unwinnable and pointless. Enter Sen. Kerry. ...

This is where lessons from Vietnam are indeed apposite. But they are not the lessons learned by John Kerry.

First, fighting the war in Vietnam was not a mistake. Abandoning it was the mistake. I have just returned from a short tour of that country, which allowed me to see firsthand what three decades of Communist rule have achieved there. The very best that can be said is that they achieved nothing. The worst that can be said is that by throwing in the towel in 1973, the U.S. condemned South Vietnam to 30 years of repression, corruption and poverty. And the best proof that these were truly"lost years" for the people of Vietnam are the current frantic efforts of the country's leaders to bring back capitalism.

There is virtually nothing about Ho Chi Minh City today that differentiates it from the Saigon of 1973, except the red flags with the gold stars and the tired old socialist-realist posters. ...

Nobody would dare cast aspersions on Sen. Kerry's record as a war hero. It is his grasp of history -- and its implications for U.S. strategy today -- that looks shaky. And let's not forget: the original"band of brothers" won their war.

See also HNN blogger Timothy Burke's commentary.