Vietnam War

I don't think the Vietnam War is a good election year topic. It's fine to go over that war, and all the other wars (e.g. the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Peloponnesian War). It might even be time to revisit that now... asking, what lessons did we learn? How can we apply them. Now we have hindsight... look what happened to Vietnam after we left... does that tell us to leave Iraq in the same evacuative way, or does it tell us the opposite? But even those better questions are not really good for this election, because they should be discussed as a national memory, not as an election issue, the answers will apply to us all, not point us toward the right man for the job of President.

But having said that and watching this long phenomenon of the SBVT/AWOL "debate"... I wonder, aren't the SBVT really motivated by Kerry's war protesting? They are bitter, perhaps understandably, about this, and it's not really his service they question. If he had not testified before the Senate and been in the VVAW they would not question his service... would they?

And of course the same is true of Bush's AWOL "scandal"... if Bush wasn't a "war president", people would not be bitter about his skirting the edges of the Vietnam War.

In both cases this is pointless... Bush then is different from Bush now, and the same is true for Kerry. Kerry is not going to withdraw from Iraq, Bush is not going to skirt the outlines of war, both men have changed and learned from their experiences. If either has learned for the better is a matter of debate, but there can be no debate that neither of these are really being criticised for their service history.

PS: There is one question more important than "Who is the best man for President?" and that is "Why isn't he running?"