Michael Tomasky takes a look at another piece of the Republican/FoxWorld mythology about the Vietnam War: Michael Tomasky, "Long Division", The American Prospect October 2004.
In particular, he's looking at the idea that the US population is somehow more-or-less equally divided still over the Vietnam War, and that division is mostly the fault of evil antiwar types like John Kerry. Like so much in the Oxycontin fog of the Foxists, that one doesn't correspond very well to reality:
The Gallup Organization has taken care to track American public opinion on this question every few years since the Vietnam War ended. The results are beyond dispute. By overwhelming margins, Americans have always believed -- and continue to believe -- that the Vietnamese conflict was wrong. Gallup has asked two questions over the years. First, did the United States make “a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam, or not”? Second, was the war (and were other wars in U.S. history) “just” or “unjust”? In both cases, the pro-war position comes up very short. Gallup began asking a version of the “mistake” question in 1965. The first majority calling the war a mistake appeared in August 1968, after the Tet Offensive and Walter Cronkite’s famous anti-war editorial at the end of his newscast on the night of February 27 of that year. After the war’s 1975 conclusion, Gallup has asked the question five times, in 1985, 1990, 1993, 1995, and 2000. And all five times -- over that 15-year period that saw vast social change, the raging of the culture wars, and dramatic shifts to the right in American public opinion on several issues -- respondents were consistent in calling the war a mistake by a margin of more than 2 to 1: by 74 percent to 22 percent in 1990, for example, and by 69 percent to 24 percent in 2000.
Similarly, vast majorities continue to call the war “unjust.” While substantial majorities retrospectively support World War II (90 percent), the Korean War (61 percent), and the Gulf War (66 percent), fully 68 percent of Gallup respondents in 1990 considered the Vietnam War unjust, and 25 percent thought it just. Four years later, the numbers were 71 percent to 23 percent. Only in 2004 -- after September 11, with American soldiers engaged in combat on two fronts, and with martial rhetoric from the incumbent administration a daily feature of national life -- did the numbers change. But even then, they changed just a little: 62 percent still consider Vietnam unjust, while 33 percent defend it. ...
Another 1995 Gallup question even found a majority of 52 percent agreeing with the assertion that the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” as opposed to the 43 percent who called it a “well-intentioned mistake.”
In the language of rightwing talk radio, that means that 69% of Americans hate America, 62% really hate America, and 52% really, really, really hate America.
Tomasky also takes a look at the thin argument that Kerry brought the Swift Boat Liars for Bush attacks on himself by highlighting his military service at the Democratic convention. The rightwingers were already trashing his antiwar activities long before that. And, besides, no matter what Kerry brought up about his service record, it didn't give anyone the right to just make up and spread falsehoods about him the way the Swift Boat Liars did.
Tomasky argues that returning to images from the Vietnam War era is something Karl Rove and the Halliburton Republicans need to do because, as he puts it, "Conservatives must divide the country to win elections."
He also argues that the Swift Boat Liars attacks on Kerry were effective in reducing public support for him, a position that echoes the conventional wisdom. The polling analyses that I've seen don't lead me to believe that that is the case.
But I think Tomasky has a very good point in talking about how the Republican right keep harping on their version of "the 1960s." (For those who think all this Vietnam talk is hopeless retro nostalgai, "the 1960s" as a cultural concept is usually taken to extend to 1973 or so.) I've written more than once here about the myth claiming that antiwar protesters in those days were hostile to veterans, when in fact the antiwar movement had many veterans, often like John Kerry in leadership roles, and made a point to reach out to veterans and soldiers. For Republicans, "the 1960s" may have been a more defining period than for Democrats. And this point of Tomasky's is well taken:
And, emotionally, theentire assault draws its energy from one of the central missions that contemporary conservatism assigns itself: keeping the country divided over the legacy of the 1960s. That the country is not, in fact, divided over that legacy, at least with regard to the Vietnam War, would seem at first blush to be a relevant fact. But facts (especially when the media don’t bother to take note of them) are no match for well-financed propaganda (especially when the media give the propaganda extensive coverage). We’ve fought over Vietnam -- fights always instigated by the right -- in most of our recent presidential elections, and we’ll keep fighting over Vietnam for as long as the media are willing to let the right get away with it.
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