Anti-war image overshadows war heroism

By HELEN TUNNAH

More than 1000 Americans have died in the war in Iraq, yet the anti-war movement in the United States remains all but invisible.

For their next President, Americans can choose between a self-declared Vietnam War hero or a man who probably skipped even Home Guard Service, arranged by his family connections.

Yet it is the latter, President George W. Bush, who is the favourite to win the US presidential elections because his strategists have depicted him as more patriotic than his rival.

John Kerry, the Democrat and decorated soldier, is being hammered for his post-Vietnam activities and it is hurting his campaign badly.

While critical state polls indicate the race between Bush and Kerry remains close, popular polls have Bush comfortably ahead.

And that is simply because Kerry, who tried to use his Vietnam service as an election asset, cannot shake the image of having fought against war while his country remained at war and while his fellow soldiers were dying.

With voters constantly reminded that the US wakes up every day now at war, with blurred boundaries about whether it is against terror or Iraq, it matters less if Kerry was right about Vietnam.

The wounds of that divisive war remain too severe for too many people, and the Democrat campaign strategists appear to have underestimated that.

Take last week's new attack advertisement from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who also served in the US Navy in Vietnam and who reportedly have links to the Republicans.

Their first advertisements, which screened only in five marginal states and fell outside political advertising and campaign spending laws, suggested he had exaggerated his war record.

That was weakly fought with the release, too late, of official Defence documents supporting what Kerry had said about himself.

Last Thursday, the Swift Boat Veterans' new US$1.3 million advertising campaign accused Kerry of secretly consorting with the "enemy during the war, while his fellow Americans were being killed". It screens extracts quoting Kerry's 1971 testimony to a Senate committee, in which he suggests American soldiers in Vietnam raped and mutilated enemies' bodies.

Democrats, their backs against the wall, have viewed the campaign with despair. They know voters will be repelled by talk of American soldiers cutting off ears and other body parts in a war that ended three decades ago.

In the battleground states, middle-aged, conservative white men might have voted on economic issues such as job losses.

But with many likely to be Vietnam veterans themselves, and possibly knowing or fathering soldiers in Iraq now, any questioning of a candidate's patriotism will be critical and could be fatal.

Coinciding with the Swift boat advertisements was a new Republican attack, a gimmicky ad showing Kerry being slamdunked off his windsurfer as he catches each windshift, a referral to his flip-flopping positions on Iraq.

Kerry's people responded with their own advertisement within four hours, but theirs was weak in comparison.

Vice-President Dick Cheney's extraordinary claims that the people simply would not be safe under Kerry are sticking to the subtext that Americans would be more likely to die if Kerry was President.

Outrageous, cry the Democrats, but too many Americans appear uncomfortable about an anti-war debate while their soldiers are under siege in Iraq.

And there is little political shift yet. Because the Republicans continue to successfully link the Iraqi conflict with the September 11 terrorist attacks, their supporters have remained loyal to Bush and his decision to go to war.


Unless he can resurrect his campaign by beating Bush in this week's televised debate about Iraq and national security, his bid for the White House may fail.

It seems the public has already answered what the Democrats had thought was a rhetorical question.

How can the courage of a man who had the guts to go to war in Vietnam, then had the guts to come home and say it was wrong, be questioned against the courage of a draft dodger?

* Helen Tunnah's visit to the US was paid by the State Department.