Thane Peterson in Business Week Online makes a very good point:
The next time the nation gets into a war, why would any American with an interest in national service show up to fight? When did the U.S. come to blithely accept the tarring for political gain of honorably discharged combat veterans? Obviously, I'm talking about the attacks on John Kerry by a bunch of angry, Bush-backing Vietnam-war vets who claim the Democratic candidate doesn't deserve all of the medals, which include Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts, that he won in combat in Vietnam.
But I'm also talking about the attacks on Republican Senator and former prisoner of war John McCain -- a genuine hero by anyone's definition -- during his South Carolina primary battle against George W. Bush for the 2000 Presidential nomination. And the relentless assaults on the patriotism of Democrat Max Cleland by Republican Saxby Chambliss, who defeated Cleland for one of Georgia's Senate seats in 2002. If you want proof of Cleland's patriotism, all you need to know is that he lost three limbs in Vietnam.
It's time for Bush in particular -- and Americans in general -- to get on the right side of this issue once and for all. No moral equivalency exists between Kerry and Bush on the issue of service in Vietnam. Kerry served in combat. He was shot at. Not Bush. If you don't think it's important for a President to have served in combat, fine, make your choice on other grounds. But if you do, Kerry is your man, at least on this one issue.
Peterson is dead-on right on this one. If you feel that Bush's dubious National Guard history does not warrant scrutiny and it should not bear on his ability to lead the largest army in the world, that's your privilege. Just about anyone who could get out of serving in Vietnam did -- however they could. Obviously the sons of the well-connected and those with college deferments had an easier time than those without those advantages. But to denigrate John Kerry's service with the notion that Larry Thurlow has put forward, that Kerry had some kind of plan for a run for the presidency later on, and that he signed up with this plan in mind, served with this plan in mind, inflicted his own injuries with such a plan in mind, and then came home and tried to talk sense into the government with this plan in mind is just plain and simply rubbish. And if you believe this crap you should be as ashamed of yourself as they should be.
There is this Republican meme that Democrats are "weak on national security," at the same time as they talk about "Democrat wars." Bush is running as a war president, for all that he talks about wanting to be a peace president. Essentially what the Republicans mean is that Democrats are pussies. A man who jumps off a boat in a war zone to save another man's life is not a pussy. A man who volunteers for active duty in a war zone is not a pussy. A man who uses his father's connections to get into a cushy National Guard unit may or may not be a pussy; he may just have been like hundreds of thousands of other young American men who wanted no part of the Vietnam conflict. The difference is that he was perfectly willing for OTHER young American men to put their lives on the line -- and he still is; whereas John Kerry came home and gave an impassioned speech in front of Congress, recounting WHAT OTHER SOLDIERS TOLD HIM ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE ASKED TO DO, because he wanted to prevent any more senseless waste of American lives. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" he asked them in 1971; a question just as relevant today.
The difference between John Kerry and George W. Bush is that the latter would reply, "First of all, I don't make mistakes because God talks through me, and second of all, because I said so."
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