Where I Stand — Columnist Brian Greenspun: Service not paramount

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 5:33 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WEEKEND EDITION

Feb. 14 - 15, 2004

Whither goest the ghosts of Vietnam?

It has been 30 years or so since the United States -- having learned the difficult lessons that others had taught us, to no avail, in wars gone by -- ended the war in Vietnam. We declared victory which made the best out of a loss of face, stature and tens of thousands of young American lives.

When William Jefferson Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, the conventional wisdom changed about whether or not someone who didn't serve during that war could ever be elected. Try as they might, the George Bush re-election team could not sink Clinton, even though there was evidence that he did all he could to avoid service in a war he questioned. As did millions of young and old Americans ...

President Clinton's election, we all thought, ended the Vietnam cloud that hung over American heads -- those who served and those who didn't -- and forever put the past behind us. So we thought!

It is now 2004 and deja vu is happening all over again. This time, however, it is Bush the Younger who is being questioned about what he did during the war. And, much as I and many others would like to think that that part of our past was buried 12 years ago, the fact remains that the opposite is true.

Had 9-11 not happened and we weren't in the middle of the war on terrorism and if President George W. Bush hadn't landed on an aircraft carrier in full battle regalia to announce the fighting over in Iraq, it is less likely that the comparative war records of the probable presidential contenders would be at issue.

But here we are at what seems to be the beginning of a very expensive, very bitter and very much divided political season in which the President's and his opponent's war bona fides are very much in question. So, rather than having moved beyond the Vietnam War in our presidential politics, we find ourselves mired back in its mud.

It isn't important who or which side fired the first shot. What matters is that we can't, as a nation, seem to get that war behind us, especially at a time when the war we are currently in makes the Southeast Asian excursion seem like a B movie.

We need a chief executive and a commander in chief who has the ability to comprehend the complexities of this new world order we are trying to live through and who has the internal strength to lead us toward the right answers. Whether or not a person needed to serve in a war to be able to execute that assignment, though, seems to be at issue.

In the current case, there are two people who will probably run against each other, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry. One did his military duty in the Alabama National Guard and the other served honorably, bravely and with great distinction in Vietnam. We can argue forever about the quality of the service both men provided to this country but the fact is that both of them answered the call.

In my mind, the only way to finally get Vietnam behind us is to recognize the fact that the times were difficult, the dilemmas practically impossible to resolve and the reasons unrelenting in making the case whether or not to serve and, if not, how best to do that.

We all know people who did fight. We also know people who found other ways to serve without going into harm's way. And, we probably know others who took a different route away from the front lines -- perhaps Canada, perhaps jail. We all had an opinion back then which was the honorable course.

Today? Thirty years later? The facts are murkier and the arguments all seem to blur. Our hindsight may allow us to believe that those we thought were wrong, weren't. And that is OK.

This is the long way to get to this point: I don't care that George W. Bush chose to use his father's pull to get him into a National Guard unit. I remember many of my friends were looking to avoid service by getting into the Guard. I also remember they were all full while the draft was looming. Some got lucky, others went off to war. So, if young George got a few strings pulled to keep him out of the war that, by itself, does not make him a bad guy.

Likewise, the Bush campaign is trying to use some statements of John Kerry about the size, structure and mission of United States armed forces that he made as a 20-something at the end of the Vietnam War. Who cares? And why are they doing that? What are they worried about?

It is what Kerry says now, how he has acted as an adult and what principles he holds dear during his distinguished years of public service that the voters should weigh. If any of us were held to our beliefs as young people, none of us could pass the test.

And, as for the President? The only way that his National Guard record should be relevant is if he didn't serve the way he has claimed. That would not be about service but about shirking. Way different story.

As for Kerry, if the beliefs he had 30 years ago are the same he holds today, then they are relevant to examine. Otherwise, we should chalk it up to the maturity we hope reaches all young people.

There are just too many real, hard issues to deal with this election season, so spending time trying to figure out who served where during Vietnam is to fritter away our time and attention. How about jobs, how about the economy, health care, the deficit and the war on terrorism? How about bin Laden?

When we resolve these big issues then we can waste our time on what did or didn't happen more than a generation ago. In other words, can we get past Vietnam for real, this time?

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