Vietnam surprise?

Geez, I'm posting a lot today. (I posted earlier but I think there's some sort of problem because it never made it here.) Making up for lost time.

Michael Tackett writes:

It is not surprising that this presidential campaign is consumed by a raging debate over a war. It is stunning that the war in question ended in Vietnam 30 years ago. (from "War of credibility in White House bid," Newsday, August 24)

Why the surprise? Conservatives still defend the war. Liberals still deride it. History has never put it to bed. And looking at the Vietnam vets paraded across the modern political scene (Kerry, McCain, Cleland, and the entire cast and crew of Swift Boats: The Musical), what's surprising? Modern American national politics is the story of grudges, money, and slander.

Well, it's surprised me how few of these vets in the public sphere applied the lessons of that war leading up to this one. And it should be even more surprising that Kerry, from the beginning, has been taking the emphasis off of his postwar protest (what got him into office in the first place) and putting it on his combat decorations. Kerry clearly has the ability to learn from his mistakes, or at least did as a young man -- meanwhile, he defends his vote granting presidential authority to Bush to begin the Iraq war.

I don't think Kerry is flip-flopping on this; he thinks the lead-up, war, and aftermath has been executed poorly. He thinks if he were president, he'd want that same authority (as William Saletan pointed out), that if he were president, we wouldn't be in the situation. These things aren't contradictory, and I'm confident most voters can handle the "nuance," but something tells me that people who now believe the war was a mistake aren't wishing that someone had done it right, they're wishing we hadn't gotten involved at all. Kerry points to his vote giving the president the authority to screw things up, then accepting no blame for the current situation. (If he didn't trust Bush to do it right, he shouldn't have voted yes, he should've erred on the side of caution and said that any president could potentially misuse that power. But he didn't, either because he believed in Bush against all evidence or because his views on separation of powers was wrong, either of which makes the vote a mistake. Just come out and say it, John, I'll respect you more.) His future plans sound remarkably like the Bush's, but still he insists that he's the guy to lead us back in the correct direction.

There's a huge problem with Kerry's logic: he wasn't running for president in 2000. He wasn't a choice because Democrats weren't concerned about running a guy with military credentials then, because nobody had wrongfully led us into war yet. Even aside from the unverifiability of what he claims, his whole point is moot. But it does call my mind to this question: Why did a guy who denigrated the leaders who were "sending the last man to die for a lie" 30 years ago vote to give the president the authority to go to war, even just as leverage (as he claims)? One of the lessons you'd expect a Yankee liberal Vietnam vet to understand is that there were very good reasons that Congress alone holds the power to go to war. The posturing that went on was amazing to watch, and whether he approves of the outcome or not, Kerry's vote was unquestionably a vote for that game.

Kerry's biggest problem, which he shares with Bush, is lack of foresight. Bush's tunnel vision seems to see about 4 years into the future, sometimes less when convenient. In some ways, Kerry hasn't even shown that much yet. This is the appeal of Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and David Cobb. I don't even think you need to put up an out-and-out liberal to win stronger support from independents and non-voters, you've just got to have some long-term visions. The issues that many unaffected by the sway of the two-party song and dance worry about are things like safety, the environment, health, prosperity... The question is not, "Are you better off now than four years ago?" It's, "What's going to happen for the next 30 years?" And there's little beyond rhetoric from either Bush or Kerry there right now.