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An Atheist Out of His Foxhole?

Ever since the Club for Growth ran advertisements against Howard Dean in Iowa, the Democratic Party seems to be baited, all too assiduously, by conservative-oriented interest groups. Most successful have been the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Their original ad was very well received by veterans, who (analysts like Frank Lutz would tell us) began to defect in support for Kerry. The ad was only run in Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania. There is a particular electoral calculus to this. Michigan and Pennsylvania were “blue” states in 2000, while Ohio was “red”. The hope of Bush campaign czar Karl Rove being that Pennsylvania and Ohio would be enough to cement Bush’s victory in 2004. All three states though have been beset by major losses in manufacturing jobs. Now even Ohio polls for Kerry. But then on August 20, 2004, word leaked out that a new “Swift Vets” ad was about to be released and that it had been even more effective on veteran test audiences. Why were the pundits so sure?
Unlike the Club for Growth ad against Dean, there are no “code words” or “talking points”. Instead, a key part of Kerry’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of 1971. However the sentence used in the commercial is abridged and certain parts are left out.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
But who is “they” that John Kerry refers to reciting the “stories”. It refers to the “Winter Soldier Investigation” where Vietnam Veterans Against the War (a group which Kerry was a member) staged a mock trial of their superiors in Detroit, Michigan from January 31, 1971 to February 2. VVAW attempted to get Congressional oversight involved, but Kerry did not imagine the “stories”…members of his groups testified, however truthfully.
And this is precisely why it works so well against veteran audiences. In a war where nearly half a million men served simultaneously, no one has a complete picture of the entire conflict. So the presumption that Kerry is speaking like Jane Fonda, accusing all parties of war crimes is exactly how the Swift Boat Veterans react as if hearing the testimony for the first time. Still, that is not true; Kerry is stating what other members of his conference admitted to in Detroit. The Swift Boat veterans know this, but they still evoke emotion because Kerry’s words with no context sound like a blanket criticism of all parties. So what is so significant about the words chosen?
In the order they appear in the ad:
“they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads: While rape seemingly is a horrific crime, Kerry mentions the “cutting off ears” as a sign of early, premodern warfare and the taking of prizes (teeth, ears, noses) as a sign of dominance. The idea with this is to demonstrate that Kerry believed US military treatment of the Vietnamese was to consider them a sub-human race. Considering that African-Americans would often serve alongside whites but with blacks barely having received equal rights at home.
“randomly shot at civilians” : This is designed to say in no uncertain terms a violation of the Geneva Conventions. It also echoes the behavior Lieutenant Calley was court-martialed for.
“cut off limbs, blown up bodies”: Showing little or no remorse for burial laws, or killing with discrimination.
“razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan”: the classic reference to a historical barbarian. Khan was nomadic, but his culture was seen as barbarian solely because the Chinese Empire considered it so.
“crimes committed on a day to day basis”: this is not part of the same sentence, the sentence taken actually was:
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
This sentence comes before any of the other descriptions, and if anything sums up the misunderstanding. Kerry is not saying he believes war crimes were ordered on down, he is saying others told him this was a deliberate policy. But there’s one more pearl.
“ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam”: Again this is a serious bow to history and shows you the parallels Kerry sought to draw. South Vietnam was an ally, and before the invention of the railroad, supply lines were sporadically effective. Often it was the case the presence of the army required the locals to supply their own army with provisions. Kerry is effectively calling the US Army an operation more in place from the 18th century than the 20th. Nevertheless, a country that had fought so hard against the Nazi regime could not bear to think it had committed acts just as depraved. During World War II Americans had been welcome liberators, how could it be now they were the oppressors?
But the most important thing that the Swift Vet ad demonstrates is Kerry’s purported cynicism. That is exactly the contrast Bush wants, traditional, prideful, moral, and optimistic America with him, and the doubters with the Democrats.

posted by Thomas at 9:55 PM 0 comments