For Kerry, war dwarfs politics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/02/2004
Cynthia Tucker

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
-- John Kerry, veteran, 1971

John Kerry's campaign has suffered from a curious redefinition of patriotism and heroism -- a revisionism that glorifies armchair warriors while denigrating combat veterans. His combat medals haven't quieted the Bush campaign machine, which sends its minions out to denounce Kerry as unpatriotic and anti-military.

It is an odd thing, but it did not start here. Two years ago, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) defeated Max Cleland -- a Vietnam veteran whose service left him a triple amputee -- partly by challenging his patriotism. Chambliss doesn't want to own up to that now, but many remember his attack ads that featured photos of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and questioned Cleland's "courage." (Chambliss, by the way, avoided service in Vietnam because of what he says was a bad knee.)

This was not a smear reserved for Democrats. In the 2000 GOP presidential primary, the Bush machine did not hesitate before turning John McCain's record as a prisoner of war against him. Recognizing in McCain a military résumé with which they could not compete, Bush strategists started a whisper campaign, insisting that McCain's years in the custody of the North Vietnamese had left him "mentally unstable" and unfit for the presidency.

So it comes as no great surprise that the latest Bush tactic is to denounce Kerry for his activism against the Vietnam War. In a display of gall that can only be described as astounding, campaign strategist Karen Hughes, interviewed recently on CNN, insisted that reporters ought to prod more deeply into Kerry's activities during the Vietnam War.

Indeed, they should (as they should further explore the activities of President Bush during that same war). What they will find in Kerry's past is a young man who had the courage to say what so many were thinking and some, such as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, only belatedly admitted -- the war in Vietnam was folly, unwinnable, a quagmire.

Kerry was, as he now acknowledges, angry about the official lies, the ludicrous military strategies, the lives lost. His rhetoric, as he concedes, was over the top. But his crusade to end the war -- based on his observations as a naval officer who had come under fire after volunteering for hazardous duty -- was the very definition of patriotism.

That honorable definition may be returning to vogue as the war in Iraq grows increasingly unpopular. According to a New York Times/CBS poll, nearly half the country now questions the wisdom of the war. And nearly half -- 46 percent -- believe U.S. troops should come home as soon as possible.

Kerry doesn't agree. Like Bush, he believes the United States must stay the course. Both men have suggested more troops may be sent to Iraq to quell the insurrection and create the stability needed to allow the Iraqis to elect a government. They may be right in their refusal to leave.

But, in public at least, Bush seems almost obscenely serene about his decision to send young Americans to die by the hundreds in Iraq. Never mind that he avoided combat in the relative safety of a National Guard "champagne unit" that sheltered other sons of the wealthy and well-connected.

His vice-president, Dick Cheney, is similarly self-righteous, though he had "other priorities" during the Vietnam era. Perhaps it is mere coincidence that his wife, Lynne Cheney, gave birth to their first child exactly nine months and two days after the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting childless married men.

Kerry, by contrast, has seen the waste of war up close. After the combat death of his close friend, Dick Pershing, in 1968, he wrote a letter to the girlfriend who would become his first wife, Judy: "If I do nothing else in my life I will never stop trying to bring to people the conviction of how wasteful and asinine is a human expenditure of this kind."

He knows what it means to send other people's children off to die.
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