US News & World Report runs with a quite insightful article called "No Truce in the Culture War." It looks at the relative unimportance of abortion and gun control in the current national debate, explains it, and then posits similar resolutions arising with the remaining "hot button" domestic issues.
What the author is not able to explain -- probably because it is too obvious for an analyst to see it -- is why the fury exists in the current campaign, given the relative peace on the traditional "hot buttons." As to that, the Belmont Club explains it:
Three stories -- all related to the war in some fashion -- are at the heart of the news. Topping the bill is the dispute between John Kerry and the Swiftvets over the legacy of Vietnam. In second place are the continued developments in Iraq...I think this is correct. At this point, even Iraq has taken a backseat to Vietnam. Iraq is about stopping a terrorist threat from forming down the road. Vietnam is about who we are now: anti-warriors, and warriors, and which side will command our destiny.
The original accusations by the Swiftvets group against John Kerry's Vietnam service claims have set off a chain reaction, which is at one level about the past, by restarting an unfinished civil war in which neither side won a decisive victory, but settled for an indefinite armistice. That truce may now be broken. Tensions began to rise in the political demilitarized zone between the two halves of America with the War on Terror, but when first Kerry and then the Swiftvets crossed the lines the battle may once again be in full swing. The story the Mainstream Media refused to acknowledge is threatening to push every other headline below the fold, a blasting cap dismissed as insignificant before everyone realized it was connected to the main charge.
The war on terror began to reawaken the old wounds of Vietnam, and the Iraq war inflamed the sinister Left (that is, literally, the "left Left"), whose current ideology was formed in the Vietnam period. The country has grown used to seeing large-scale protests in its cities again, as these teams of anarchists and other professional protestors show up at every event, supplemented by whoever they can sucker into buying their line for a time. This time, however, there is a large section of the dormant Left aroused to join them. Allah today links to a story about a group of elderly protestors, who would have been the 50-somethings in the Vietnam era, and who have come back to rage against war--not just this war, but any war, at any time. War cannot be banished as they wish; but rather than recognize this, they simply choose to put anti-war sentiment in a category with all unfixable social ills. Rather than admit that war can't be banished, they would rather pretend that all evil can be, and protest that it has not.
But we have seen an angry Left before; constantly during Reagan's terms, which were generally peaceful and easy times. If the Iraq war were all there was, though the Left would still be up in arms the majority of the nation would be calm. What turned this into the most bitter of campaigns was the awakening of the military right. The fault for that belongs to John Kerry's incessent, insistent invocation of Vietnam, added to his explosive personal role in the slanders of the antiwar movement. It has aroused fury in the majority of military men (65% registered Republicans in 2000) that so prominent a slanderer of the military should be nominated as Commander in Chief, at a time when they are being called upon to serve under conditions properly called "stretched." At a time when they are sacrificing for the good, the Democratic Party appointed as its candidate for their new commander this man:
Why is Vietnam a ''wound'' and why won't it heal? The answer: not because it was a military or strategic defeat but because it was a national trauma. And whose fault is that?This has enraged even more that majority of Vietnam Veterans who have always considered Kerry the owner of a personal affront. Both communities are dispersed throughout America, although somewhat concentrated in the South. Their wrath -- expressed in Unfit for Command, in Stolen Honor, in the Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, in bumper stickers ("Hanoi John! American TRAITOR!" read one I saw today on a car with an Armed Forces Veteran license plate), letters to the editor, and private conversations -- their wrath has raised the temperature to boiling.
Well, you can't pin it all on one person, but, if you had to, Lt. John F. Kerry would stand a better shot at taking the solo trophy than almost anyone. The ''wounds'' McCain complains of aren't from losing Vietnam, but from the manner in which it was lost. Today Sen. Kerry says he's proud of his anti-war activism, but that's not what it was. Every war has pacifists and conscientious objectors and even disenchanted veterans, but there's simply no precedent for what John Kerry did: a man who put his combat credentials to the service of smearing his country's entire armed forces as rapists, decapitators and baby killers.
As not in a generation, what BlackFive calls "America's Warrior Caste" is involved and angry. The sinister Left, meanwhile, is convinced that Iraq is not merely 'another Vietnam' -- they believe that it is Vietnam, that Iraq was an excuse for the vipers who nest in illegal secrets, CIA evils, and a military best exemplified by Abu Ghraib -- extended to include all American prison camps, and indeed all American prisons. "Free Mumia!" say signs along side those that say "No War!"
It would be difficult to further inflame the electorate. Even a terrorist attack would probably be calming, as it would likely cause us to set aside differences for a time and remember that we have crueler enemies than each other.
And the thing few seem to remember is that there is a darker future out there awaiting us. Terrorism takes advantage of the freedoms of the West, and there are still unguarded freedoms it can use to hurt us. We have only begun to be tested, and there is, finally, no hope of retreat or negotiation. Whoever wins, and whatever harm their victory does to our society, worse things wait for us. All roads darken, and the sea rises higher.
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