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Jewish World Review Nov. 28, 2000 / 1 Kislev, 5761
James Lileks
And as far as most of the country seems concerned, he didn't.
and surely this galls him. We were supposed to bask in Big Bill's beloved
repertoire - the grin when he grips a peasant's hand, the bitten-lower-lip
and brimming-eye combo when he confronts a Painful Reminder of the war, the
Stateman's Nod when some humorless wannabe Ho expresses a desire for warm
relations and IMF credits. Why, the wounds of the war were healed and
sealed, and we were all off chattering about chads.
Doesn't matter. History isn't written by the victors anymore. It's
written by media hacks who can't resist facile parallels, and Clinton knows
it. He trusts the media to see the Vietnam experience reflected in his own
personal arc: The man who protested the war becomes the man who makes the
final peace, etc. etc. But it's a little more complex than that.
Some people seem to believe that Clinton was a towering force in the
anti-war movement, a strategist who sat cross-legged on a straw map amidst
clouds of reefer smoke, peering into the distance and ordering
organizational purges between enigmatic pronouncements. ("MacNamara's
greatest weakness . . . is that he has only strengths.") Not so. He was a
hanger-on, an opportunist, one gigantic wet finger ever sensitive to the
political winds. Let's name the real hard-core anti-war activists who are
now major political figures, shall we?
1. Um . . . That one guy who was in that movie Fact is, the real anti-war activists were willing to marginalize
themselves for their beliefs. Clinton hitched a ride. Even the famous
letter he wrote to avoid military service is a masterpiece of weasely
evasion, written with one eye on his political viability. People think
Clinton said he "loathed the military." He didn't. Here's the quote:
"I am writing in the hope that my telling this one story will help you
to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find
themselves still loving their country but loathing the military, to which
you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service
you could give."
Classic Bill. Wears you down with his insistent promiscuous empathy,
makes an oblique attack and fobs it off on others: Some people find
themselves loathing the military. Not necessarily him, of course, although
fine people loath it, and Bill might be considered a member of the subset
"fine people," although the subset "fine people that include Bill Clinton"
and "fine people who loath the military" do not necessarily intersect. Yet
we all know what he means. It's implausible deniability.
But it works for his fellow fine people. And who are they? Why, the
cossetted offspring of the Greatest Generation. These tender plums and
peaches, raised in the quiet groves of suburbia, simply could not believe
they might be required to die in someone else's civil war. An
understandable reaction, since the stakes seemed low compared to the
permeable nature of one's own hide. But what really sealed the deal for
Clinton's ilk was the nature of the enemy. Communism, to the new left and
its useful dupes, was not the foe. The enemy was the people who regarded
Communism as the enemy. If they opposed Uncle Ho today, well, they'd be
confiscating Doors albums tomorrow, man.
The protesters got their way. Vietnam is now a dictatorship. Vietnam has
an economy so twisted by bureaucracy and corruption that nothing ever gets
done, and it takes a year not to do it. There's no freedom of the press,
freedom of speech, freedom to choose one's leaders. Yes, the country was
occupied by foreign devils, and yes, they had every right to fight for
independence. But this is like applauding Lenin for his heroic efforts to
end the inequity of hereditary rule.
Of Clinton's opportunistic motives, the standard histories will say
little. It was enough that he protested; it was enough that he went in the
end, and that's what history will remember. As Woody Allen put it: ninety
percent of life is just showing up. The other ten percent, perhaps, is
leaving. Bill Clinton left Vietnam in a nice plane with a big TV and a wet
bar.
The guys with the names on the long black wall had less luxurious
11/17/00: Chad's the word
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