Send In The Memes

Ted Kennedy is grabbing the Vietnam era memes like it is last call. So far, after announcing that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam", he has seized both "credibility gap" and "quagmire", and he encroached on "Peace with Honor" when he told Larry King that "we can bring Americans home with honor".

The "Tet offensive" was picked up last weekend by Chris Wallace at Fox News; Tom Friedman has claimed "silent majority". "Secret plan", the phrase appareently never uttered by Richard Nixon, may still be available, although the NY Times may apply it to Kerry, and soon.

But the Big Kahuna, still up for grabs (and waiting to be slapped onto Ted Kennedy) is "nattering nabobs of negativsm".

OK, let's talk about Ted Kennedy for a moment. Mark Kleiman attempts to defend Kennedy's use of the Vietnam analogy. Yes, and the crew tried to save the Titanic, too. Mark's thrust - Kennedy's opponents are twisting his metaphor and taking it out of context; Kennedy didn't mean "quagmire and defeat" when he said "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam; he meant, quoting Mark, "... that, like Vietnam, Iraq is a war which has been so dishonestly presented to the American people and the world community that the President leading it has lost all credibility and become damaged goods."

I am broadly sympathetic to this argument - quite often, especially in the presence of Red Sox fans, I allude to (" 'Effing") Bucky Dent's home run. Many of these often-disappointed fans think I am referring to decades of Red Sox futility and near-misses. But NO! To me, the Bucky Dent metaphor is about looking up into a blue sky on a beautiful fall afternoon, enjoying a moment with friends. I am SOOOO misunderstood.

Kennedy, however, is not misunderstood. Larry King asked him that night about his speech, giving us this:

KING: We're back with Senator Kennedy.

You said today that Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president. Vietnam was started under a Democratic administration.

How do you compare the two?

KENNEDY: We're facing a quagmire in Iraq, just as we faced a quagmire in Vietnam. We didn't understand what we were getting ourselves into in Vietnam. We didn't understand what we were doing in -- in Iraq. We had misrepresentations about what we were able to do militarily in Vietnam. I think we are finding that out in Iraq, as well.

That is basically the -- the similarity. And we have to find new leadership in order to -- to be able to resolve this with a sense of dignity and with a sense of respect, which is going to make sure that we're going to see an independent Iraq, that Americans are brought home with dignity.

I think critics might very well characterize "quagmire" as defeatist.

My problem (which I am hiding down here until I get a real post up) - we clearly have a serious situation in Iraq. (Folks who don't think so can contemplate Phil Carter or James Risen). Now, Kennedy is making himself the issue, giving Administration supporters an easy target, and distracting us from what ought to be a serious debate about WTF do we do now.

Kennedy is closely associated with the Kerry campaign, since he picked John up and carried him on his back through Iowa and New Hampshire. And Kerry has not spoken clearly on this subject. So we drift towards a phony debate about the wrong questions - Dems whining that their patriotism is being attacked, Reps looking for signs of defeatism, and the serious questions sidestepped.

MORE: James Lileks tries to square the current Kenedy with the Kennedy from September 2002. Shorter Lileks - Kennedy lied, people died. (Oh, if you didn't like that, you are going to hate "Kennedy drank, the car sank"). And let's put this in the mix, for Kennedy fans.

MORE: "Kerry's The One" is still out there; and since Ted Kennedy is attempting to apply the Faster Failure Thesis and compress both Vietnam and Watergate into six months, we are racing towards "what did the President know, and when did he know it?" (And no, my lefty comrades, "not much" and "not lately" are not the answers we are looking for).

MORE: Mickey endorses this David Ignatius columns as a sensible way forward.

Comments

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Let's not forget that we actually won the Vietnam War. Until Democrats (and Ted Kennedy specifically) took advantage of Richard Nixon's Watergate problems to undercut South Vietnam's ability to defend itself:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110004251

-----------quote------------
The success of these programs [Nixon's Vietnamization] was tested by the Easter Offensive of 1972. Some 200,000 North Vietnamese troops attacked on three fronts. U.S. ground troop withdrawals continued as scheduled, but President Nixon ordered heavy air and naval retaliation, including the mining of North Vietnamese ports. With this air support, the South Vietnamese army repelled the invasion. The North Vietnamese lost half of their attacking force and half of their tanks and artillery. The legendary Vo Nguyen Giap was quietly removed from command of the Northern armies.

Three years later the North had recovered sufficient strength to repeat the offensive. But by then the Paris peace accords had been signed, with U.S. prisoners returned at the cost of allowing Hanoi to infiltrate military units in the south. With Watergate, Congress had passed the Case-Church Amendment forbidding military involvement in Southeast Asia. Sen. Edward Kennedy passed a $266 million cut in supplemental spending for Vietnam, and funds were slashed for the coming year. Counter-insurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson remarked, "perhaps the major lesson of the Vietnam War is: do not rely on the United States as an ally."

This time the South Vietnamese got no assistance from the U.S. and fell before an assault by 20 tank-led divisions. Some million refugees took to the seas as "the boat people." After the loss of Iran and some trying times in Europe, the U.S. elected Ronald Reagan, who revived the American military and faced the Communists down at Reykjavik. The Communist empire fell after all, and Vietnam goes down as a lost battle in a successful campaign.
------------endquote-------------

For Teddy, it's deja vu all over again.

[bushgirlsgonewild]

WE WON THE VIETNAM WAR!!! YAHOO! God, it took 32 years but we did it! Thank goodness Patrick R. Sullivan was on our side. And that Teddy Kennedy, defeating that bastion of democracy, South Vietnam, all by himself...he should be ashamed.

[capt joe]

yeah, bggw, ted kennedy should be ashamed for having killed millions of vietnamese, cambodians and any other people who did not fit in his race for political orifice.

yep, shame, shame

[TM Lutas]

Moving right along to the question of WTF do we do now, the DoD has been working on this stuff for years. The two major scenarios out there are "The Arc of Instability" which is a sort of conventional battlefield that stretches across the globe and mostly translates to knock the rag heads on their behind whenever they get out of line and the Gap/Core analysis pioneered by Thomas Barnett (his book's coming out later this month, preorder now). The Gap/Core vision has a dividing line based on connectivity and the goal isn't to keep anybody in line, it's to increase connectivity so Gap nations (disconnected, unstable, full of problems of various types) become New Core nations (growing stability, economic growth, a state that can control terrorists and other Gap style problems).

Gap/Core is the only serious theory out there that gives a strategic framework for not only fighting a War on Terror but what winning would look like and how much better the world would be after the victory. There might not be a great public debate over it but that's mostly because it's the only serious game in town.

[Ken Hahn]

Kennedy's assault is political genius. He plants the idea of Iraq equals Vietnam. We all hated Vietnam, supporters of the war as well as opponents. It was a disaster for American morale and prestige, either because it was a mistake or because we abandoned the war when we were winning. No matter where you stand, Vietnam is painful.

Kerry both served in Vietnam and later opposed the war. He has been presented as representative of the solution to that conflict. Kerry's Vietnam service is endlessly promoted as patriotism and defense-favorable. His later protest is trotted out as coming to wisdom. Tough love patriotism. Kerry can be presented as the solution to Vietnam. If Iraq is Vietnam, Kerry is the solution there too.

Kennedy takes the heat and pushes his limousine liberal clone into the White House. If that's not political genius, I don't know what is.

[dadmanly]

Genius, only insofar as it is more creative than more conventional approaches that might involve, say, fact, reason or integrity. If measured by result -- which we shall see -- then I'd characterize it more as delusion.

Blinded by their failed ideology -- not unlike their more radical kin, communists -- post-relevance "Liberals" like Kennedy fail to note that the old anti-military and anti-U.S. tripwires illicit more scorn and derision than change in the public imagination.

[TM]

As to "Genius" - Nixon was the solution to Johnson. And Kerry is roughly that charismatic, I guess.

But I am struggling with the notion of Kerry boldly uniting and leading a divided Democratic Party (let alone a nation). Still, first time for everything.