Vietnam Makes a Last Call <br>On American Voters

Could it be that the election of 2016 will be the last call of the Vietnam generation on the long-suffering American voter? The backlash against Donald Trump for denying Senator McCain’s war heroism certainly puts that question into sharp relief.It has provoked ridicule and outrage on both the left and right. Long before Mr. McCain was a senator, after all, he was officially a war hero. He was decorated with a Silver Star for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” for his performance as a POW.That’s just the top medal. He also holds a Legion of Merit with the Combat “V,” a Distinguished Flying Cross “for heroism” and at least three Bronze Stars with Combat V. Whatever he lacks for, heroism isn’t it.Yet it wasn’t just the factual error by Trump that provoked such outrage. It’s also that America is still sorting how that war is going to be dealt with by history. And no automatic clarity comes from having appeared in arms.Feature Secretary of State Kerry. He might have been president but for the fact that he fell away from the American cause in Vietnam — in which he had served for four months — and, in 1971, testified before the Senate against his fellow GIs.His presidential campaign ignited an election-year uprising by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who deemed him “unfit for command.” Now Mr. Kerry is suggesting that the Iran nuclear deal is the culmination of what he learned in Vietnam.This occurred in an under-reported episode after the Iran pact was signed in Vienna. In the final session, according to CNSNews.com quoting state undersecretary Wendy Sherman, the ministers spoke of what the pact meant to them.Mrs. Sherman found it moving, particularly when Mr. Kerry spoke about Vietnam. “When I was 22, I went to war,” Mr. Kerry said, before choking up. “He couldn’t get the words out,” Mrs. Sherman said. “And everybody was completely spellbound.”“I went to war,” Mr. Kerry finally continued, “and it became clear to me that I never wanted to go to war again. That’s what this was all about. Trying to settle these matters through diplomacy and peaceful means.” Secretary Sherman called it “such a moving moment that everybody in that small room applauded — including the Iranian delegation.”No doubt one reason the Iranians were clapping was that Mr. Kerry neglected to mention the role of diplomacy in the Vietnam tragedy. It was not our military that delivered free Indochina to the Communists. Our military won the war on the ground.It was diplomacy that gave us the accord that was supposed to bring peace with honor, like the accord that Mr. Kerry has just inked in Vienna. Instead, the Communists broke the agreement the minute it was signed, and conquered Vietnam with arms.Overlooking that detail took some gall. Not that it’s my purpose here to suggest that the doves of Vietnam are without patriotism. There were millions of patriotic doves as there were hawks, and voters make their own decisions.We learned this during the 1992 Democratic primary in Georgia. A young Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, who’d dodged the Vietnam draft, was challenged by Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.Mr. Kerrey was conferred the Medal of Honor for his service in the Mekong Delta. Yet the American people concluded that unalloyed military heroism did not, in and of itself, trump the policy debate in an election contest.Years later, even Bob Kerrey came under attack by the New York Times and CBS for an engagement in which his squad allegedly killed unarmed Vietnamese. It was a harrowing episode that the Times summed up in an editorial indicting the entire war.“Then, as now,” the Times declared, the Vietnam War “seemed to lack any rationale except the wrecking of as many lives as possible on both sides.” Never mind that John F. Kennedy warned that Vietnam was the “keystone in the arch” of free Southeast Asia.One post-war politician to really “get” Vietnam was Ronald Reagan. In his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1980, he spoke of the nobility of our cause. He warned against entering wars in which we’re not determined to prevail.It’s hard to tell which is more outrageous — Trump’s mockery of McCain’s valor or John Kerry’s invocation of Vietnam to justify another retreat. The 2016 election, in any event, may be the last chance for the Vietnam generation to get it right.

Vietnam Makes a Last Call <br>On American Voters

Vietnam Makes a Last Call <br>On American Voters

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