Posted on 05/13/2004 6:27:49 AM PDT by Remember_Salamis
May 13, 2004, 8:56 a.m. Bush’s Youthquake September 11 is this generation’s Vietnam.
By Jamie M. Fly
Thirty-three years ago last month, an earnest 27-year-old John Kerry testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. With a poise belying his age, Kerry, citing an investigation by an antiwar veterans group, accused the U.S. military of war crimes "committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
Kerry's claims were striking. He testified that soldiers had "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." Many of Kerry's accusations were later shown to have been fabricated by antiwar activists who never served in Vietnam.
It is not clear whether Kerry realized that large portions of his testimony was false, but with Senator Kerry now campaigning to assume the mantle of wartime president, questions remain. The youthful Kerry of 1971 is in many ways representative of his generation of Democratic leaders. Haunted by Vietnam, constrained by their interpretation of its lessons, Democrats have long wavered between foolish pacifism and half-hearted idealism.
Ever since Vietnam, American leaders have been reluctant to use military force owing to their feat of becoming bogged down in "another Vietnam." As Eliot Cohen notes in his book, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, "The legacy of bitterness and suspicion resulting from that war persists in America today, even as the generation of young men whose lives were most touched by it have come to maturity and beyond."
If John Kerry represents this scarred Vietnam generation, then who are the John Kerrys of today? As a 26-year-old, this question intrigues me. Vietnam defined John Kerry's worldview. For Americans my age, September 11, 2001, is the prism through which we view the world.
The media fracas over Iraq, the Bush administration's unilateralism, and the 9/11 Commission, have overshadowed the transformation taking place in the ranks of young Americans. A surprisingly large number have embraced President Bush's worldview, often described by foreign policy commentators as "neoconservative," so highlighting its departure from cold, calculating realpolitik.
This shift coincides with a surge in the number of active young conservatives. Membership of the College Republicans has tripled in the past three years, while a study by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that two-thirds of American college students supported the war in Iraq. Liberal college professors bemoan the conservatism of their students, many of whom participated in pro-war patriotic rallies to counter the traditional anti-war protests on most college campuses. All this activity amounts to what The Economist has called a youthquake for President Bush.
In short, for thousands of future conservative leaders, September 11 was a watershed event, this generation's Vietnam. Fortunately, the lessons of Vietnam and September 11 could not be more different. The lessons of September 11 are threefold.
First, our traditional alliances, particularly the transatlantic relationship, are no longer adequate to meet new threats. As Robert Kagan posits, "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world." If our allies join us, so be it. But if they are not up to the task, the United States will have to act alone. There is no point in the Clintonite approach of playing rhetorical games at the United Nations as terrorists and rogue states plot to destroy our way of life.
Second, radical Islamism is at the root of our current dilemma and the United States needs to work throughout the world to fight it in the madrassas and mosques where it flourishes. This involves an extensive public diplomacy effort in the Arab world and an end to support for dictatorial regimes that refuse to grant their citizens the most basic and fundamental human rights and freedoms.
Thirdly and most importantly, the new neoconservatives believe that military force can and should be used to achieve moral ends. The freedom of Afghans and Iraqis and the capture of a tyrannical mass murderer are the fruits of American military power. Gone are the days when isolationists on the Hill held sway, refusing even to support intervention in the Balkans. This generation will ensure that the isolationists do not return to power in the Republican Party and that American leaders no longer feel constrained by the "lessons of Vietnam."
The new neoconservatives are the intellectual heirs of Ronald Reagan. They grew up under a vibrant, powerful president who was willing to take a stand for democracy, free markets, and individual liberties. In a speech at the University of Oxford twelve years ago, President Reagan challenged this and future generations:
My young friends . . . I hope that you will each make your presence felt in the world. And that you will collectively make your contribution to the age-old battle for individual freedom and human dignity. Do not forget those who suffer under tyranny and violence. Do not abandon them to the evils of totalitarian rule or democratic neglect. For the freedom we celebrate is not the freedom to starve, or the freedom to languish in a long, starless night of the soul . . . Your cause awaits. President Bush has taken up Reagan's challenge. In the aftermath of September 11, young conservatives are joining President Bush and taking up this cause. We witnessed three thousand of our countrymen die owing to decades of inaction and pandering to the "international community." Today's young conservatives want to make our contribution to the battle for individual freedom and human dignity.
In contrast, John Kerry and an entire generation of Americans have been reluctant to use American power to make a difference. Those of us born after the Vietnam War don't view the world through the same lens as the generation of 1968. As the September 11 generation ages, this will change. This change cannot come too soon, for the terrorist challenge will not rest while our leaders overcome their historical hang-ups.
Voters will be presented with a stark choice this November — the lessons of Vietnam or September 11. For the sake of our future, let's hope that they make the correct choice.
— Jamie M. Fly is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations working on European and national-security issues. The views expressed here are his own.
"My young friends . . . I hope that you will each make your presence felt in the world. And that you will collectively make your contribution to the age-old battle for individual freedom and human dignity. Do not forget those who suffer under tyranny and violence. Do not abandon them to the evils of totalitarian rule or democratic neglect. For the freedom we celebrate is not the freedom to starve, or the freedom to languish in a long, starless night of the soul . . . Your cause awaits."
Almost all the people my age that I know are either conservative/right-of-center or apolitical.
This was in the heyday of the Democratic Party's hedgemony over Congress; there was no conservative voice to speak of in the hearing.
Fine with me. I would've joined the Army as a member of the Vietnam generation, and as a representative of my generation I refuse to turn against Iraqi Freedom regardless of the time or costs involved.
If I am to buy into any theory which labels Iraqi Freedom as the new Vietnam, then I must preface my acceptance of this notion with my own insistence that I am, in this drama, the new General Giap. I don't care if it takes a year, a decade, or a century to defeat the enemy. And, though I mourn every American we lose, it has no bearing on my determination.
The cast of rogues -- in Iraq and around the world -- that we now number as our enemies must and will be defeated, one way or another, no matter how many of us have to die in the process. At times the costs are almost too horrible to bear, but the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
Yes, if it's the "L" style, but we can use lots more of the "l" type. I for one, don't want a choice between left-statism and right-statism.
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