The U.S. elec­tion cam­paign has many ironies, none per­haps as strange as the fights over the can­di­dates’ war records. The cur­rent Pres­i­dent George W. Bush got out of active duty in Viet­nam by using the influ­ence of his polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful fam­i­ly. While sol­diers killed and died on the Mekong Delta, he goofed off on an Alaba­ma air­field. Most of the cen­tral fig­ures of his Admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney also avoid­ed fight­ing in Vietnam.
Not that I can blame them exact­ly. If you don’t believe in fight­ing, then why not use any influ­ence and loop­hole you can? It’s more coura­geous to stand up pub­licly and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those con­sci­en­tious objec­tors who don’t share your polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. But if you’re both anti­war and a cow­ard, hey, loop­holes are great. Bush was one less Amer­i­can teenag­er shoot­ing up Viet­nam vil­lages and for that we com­mend him.
Ah, but of course George W. Bush does­n’t claim to be either anti­war or a cow­ard. Two and a half decades lat­er, he snook­ered Amer­i­can into a war on false pre­tences. Nowa­days he uses every photo-op he can to look strong and patri­ot­ic. Like most scions of aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties through­out his­to­ry, he dis­plays the worst kind of poli­cial cow­ardice: he is a leader who believes only in send­ing oth­er peo­ple’s kids to war.
Con­trast this with his Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty rival John Ker­ry. He was also the son of a politically-connected fam­i­ly. He could have pulled some strings and end­ed up in Alaba­ma. But he chose to fight in Viet­nam. He was wound­ed in bat­tle, received met­als and came back a cer­ti­fied war hero. Have fought he saw both the eter­nal hor­rors of war and the par­tic­u­lar hor­rors of the Viet­nam War. It was only after he came back that he used his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions. He used them to punc­ture the myths of the Viet­nam War and in so doing became a promi­nent anti­war activist.
Not that his anti­war activ­i­ties make him a paci­fist, then or now. As Pres­i­dent I’m sure he’d turn to mil­i­tary solu­tions that we here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org would con­demn. But we be assured that when he orders a war, he’d be think­ing of the kids that Amer­i­ca would be send­ing out to die and he’d be think­ing of the for­eign vic­tims whose lives would inevitably be tak­en in conflict.
Despite the stark con­trast of these Pres­i­den­tial biogra­phies, the pecu­liar log­ic of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is paint­ing the mil­i­tary dodger as a hero and the cer­ti­fied war hero as a cow­ard. The lat­ter cam­paign is being led by a shad­owy group called the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth. Today’s Guardian has an excel­lent arti­cle on the “Texas Repub­li­cans fund­ing the Swift Boat controversy”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1288272,00.html. The New York Times also delves the “out­right fab­ri­ca­tions of the Swift Boat TV ads”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?ex=1094018686&ei=1&en=691b4b0e81b8387f. A lot of Bush’s bud­dies and long-time Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ratchiks are behind this and its lies are trans­par­ent and easy to uncov­er. It’s a good primer on dirty pol­i­tics 2004 style.
One of the big ques­tions about this elec­tion is whether the Amer­i­can vot­ers will believe more in image or sub­stance. It goes beyond pol­i­tics, real­ly, to cul­ture and to a con­sumerism that promis­es that with the right clothes and affect­ed atti­tude, you can sim­ply buy your­self a new iden­ti­ty. Pres­i­dent Bush put on a flight jack­et and land­ed a jet on an air­craft car­ri­er a mile off the Cal­i­for­nia beach. He was the very pic­ture of a war hero and strong patri­ot. Is a pho­to all it takes anymore?