MartiniPundit

Thursday, October 28, 2004

This Horse Will Get Us Across

John Kerry wants to be commander-in-chief, and it is on the question of who is better equipped to lead the war on global terrorism that the choice between President Bush and Senator Kerry should be made. Here we should consult the men and women who will be responding to the orders of that C-in-C.

Polls of the military show a decisive advantage for President Bush. Superb essays on the qualities necessary in a commander-in-chief are available from a retired Navy SEAL blogging at Froggy Ruminations, and by an active duty soldier now stationed in Iraq and blogging at Mudville Gazette. Indeed, only the most partisan of Kerry supporters would assert that active and retired military prefer Kerry over Bush. Such a preference is only a factor in considering a vote, but it’s one that should weigh more heavily in wartime.

THIS ELECTION has had a Greek Chorus--the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the POWs who testified in Stolen Honor. The mainstream media did not want to hear this chorus, even when the first volley aimed at Kerry successfully exposed his fabricated tale of a secret mission to Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968--an episode Kerry asserted on the floor of the Senate was “seared, seared” into his memory. The mainstream media has refused to question Kerry on his other accounts of incredible adventures transporting CIA men up river and running guns to anti-communist Cambodians, afraid perhaps to pull on a thread that might leave the candidate exposed as a serial fabulist. Despite the hostility, the chorus has kept chanting, this week even, pointing to meetings Kerry held in Paris with the North Vietnamese.

I am grateful for their work, especially this week as Kerry lashes out again at the men and women in uniform. Many times over his long political career Kerry has taken credit for missions he did not undertake and successes in war he did not achieve. What a sharp contrast with his attempt this week to deny credit to active duty soldiers for missions that really did occur and which really did succeed.

The left genuinely hates these veterans of that long ago war: for refusing to shut up and sit down; for questioning the pose struck by Kerry long ago; for rekindling memories of a war that, once lost, resulted in the death of millions.

Therein lies the key. America has lost but one war - Vietnam. America has changed horses in mid-stream while the country was at war but once - 1968 in the midst of Vietnam which the Left likes to think of as Nixon’s war. Although largely squirreled away down the memory hole, the anti-war Democrats brought down Lyndon Johnson. They hated Johnson because of the war. They thought they would replace him with Robert Kennedy - and they might have but for Sirhan Sirhan. And then John Kerry came home and testified before Congress. Nixon tried vainly to win something that would allow the US to exit with some shred of dignity, but he failed. The Left likes to tell us that Vietnam was illegal, immoral, and that we never should have been there in the first place. What they don’t like to tell you is that it wasn’t the North Vietnamese but the Left with John Kerry in the front rank holding aloft the bloody shirt of war crimes who defeated America.

They’d like a second crack at it too. I say, let’s deny them this time.

Update

It’s been pointed out by an alert reader that we changed horses in mid-stream over Korea. I hadn’t counted that partly because Korea ended right after the election, although Eisenhower did say he would do that. The other reason is that while it could be argued that Truman, like LBJ, did not run for reelection because of Korea, I prefer to accept Truman’s own reasons not to run in 1952 regarding the “lure of power.”

Posted by Matt on 10/28 at 09:39 AM
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