Suzanne Fields has an outstanding column in the Washington Times that gets to the heart of the internal contradictions of John Kerry as a presidential candidate. She also has a few obvious questions for him that none of the media bigfeet has gotten around to asking:
Has anyone asked Mr. Kerry whether his views on Vietnam have changed over the years? If so, how? Has the conduct and corruption of the communists in Hanoi led him to think again? Did the plight of the boat people refine his understanding of how the hot war played out in the Cold War? Many Vietnam protesters (including me) have put away the childish naivete of youth even if we haven’t renounced our criticism of how Lyndon Johnson conducted the war. Unlike a rolling stone, we’ve gathered a little moss.
Before Mr. Kerry revived Vietnam and his several positions on the war, we were sharply focused on the fight against terrorism, facing up to the difference between the world before September 11 and the challenge after September 11. In the essay “The White Man Unburdened” in the New York Review of Books, Norman Mailer argued that the war in Iraq returned to white males a virile rejuvenation that had withered in comparison to the women’s movement and black celebrity sports heroes. The Kerry fad is about returning to the disenfranchised lefties in the Democratic Party an ego rejuvenation and a reassurance that the good ol’ days are just around the corner. It’s time to start planning to levitate the Pentagon again.
The Fields column is “The times they are a-changin’ — again.” (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)
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