Following Up

More on George Melloan...

Here is the quote that I was referring to in my last post:

"[At stake] is not just whether Mr. Bush will be re-elected, but whether the war on terror itself will fizzle out like the Vietnam War did 30 years ago. Indeed, some of the characters are involved. John Kerry, who gave Hanoi aid and comfort after his return from the war, is now running for President. Seymour M. Hersh, the reporter who has just revived his career with his Abu Ghraib story in The New Yorker, 35 years ago broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. His work then helped turn Americans against that war."

I thought that more needed to be said about the say-anything culture that appears to be pervading the halls of conversativism.

First, there's the charge that Kerry committed treason when he protested the war he had fought in (see my previous post for details).

Second, there's the verbal gymnastics that Melloan engages in. For example, there's the comparison between the war on terror and the Vietnam War. While he's at it, Melloan might want to compare the war on terror to eating cantaloupe. Why? Because the comparison would be just as apt.

-- The Vietnam War was a war waged against the government of a sovereign nation, while the "war on terror" is a battle against a tactic.

-- Vietnam had defined zones of combat (Vietnam and certain "spillover" areas, such as Laos and Cambodia, but only to the extent that they were aiding the Hanoi government). The war on terror has no defined field of battle; indeed, the Bush Administration has taken the position that the battle field is all around us, everywhere.

-- Vietnam was a proxy war between so-called "great powers" and had very little to do with Vietnam's military, industrial or strategic importance (it had virtually none to the US, USSR or PRC). By contrast, terrorism isn't a proxy for anyone in particular against anyone in particular; as the attacks in Saudi Arabia, Damascus and Indonesia (all Muslim countries) demonstrate, terrorists don't discriminate based on geopolitics. And when you throw in terrorist attacks in Chechnya, Northern Ireland, Spain, India and Pakistan (to name just a few that are not linked to al Qaeda, but rather to indigeneous ethnic separatism), it's hard to say that terrorism is even a single unified force.

To suggest that despite these very large differences, the war on terror and the Vietnam War are the same is, to me, disingenuous, and can only be calculated to tar opponents of the war in Iraq with the same brush that was used on Vietnam opponents -- that somehow, they're less patriotic. [As an aside, ask yourselves which is more patriotic: serving in combat but then protesting that you were asked to do things that were immoral or illegal; or using privilege to avoid combat, failing to show up for the non-combat assignment, and having proxies challenge the validity of awards bestowed on the man who served in combat for his heroic actions?]

Melloan's other misleading verbal stretch is the notion that Seymour Hersh's reporting of My Lai was responsible for turning Americans against the Vietnam War. I don't think I'd be out on a limb if I said that Lt. William Calley's command decisions in My Lai, and the actions by US troops, had something to do with the public revulsion that My Lai engendered. Sure, Hersh's reporting "helped" because without it people might not have known about My Lai, but Melloan purposely allides the reporter and the story, then blames the reporter.

These are just some of the tactics that Melloan uses as part of a larger Republican counter-offensive to change the subject by mustering "outrage at the outrage", to paraphrase Senator Inhofe. Still, it seems to me that Melloan's tactics do a disservice to the legitimate call for perspective in the Abu Ghraib mess, and that responsible Republicans ought to be more strident in saying so.