"My job tonight is an easy one: to present
to you one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s
best-known
and greatest leaders—and a good friend.
... [Sen.] John [Kerry] has worked to strengthen our military. "
—Sen. Zell Miller,
D-Ga., March 1, 2001.
Evidently, I don’t understand my country anymore.
In the America I knew,
those fools wearing Purple Heart Band-Aids during
last week’s Republican
convention wouldn’t simply have damaged their
candidate’s election
chances, they’d have been lucky not to have some
veteran wipe the smirks
off their faces while the cops stood studiously
by." They jest at scars,
"wrote Shakespeare," that never felt a wound.
"But the Band-Aid bunch,
see, belonged to the TV Patriot Party, formerly
known as the GOP, whose
leaders hold that televised symbolism trumps
reality every time. I doubt
anybody wore Band-Aids outside Madison Square
Garden. Party leaders
ordered them removed. Even so, they struck me
as symptomatic of the
Kerry campaign’s poor response to the elaborately
financed Republican
propaganda machine. Will they ever quit acting
surprised?
In the world of facts, the misnamed Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth smear
failed its first contact with reality. Never
mind their ties to Texas
Republicans who have made false charges against
Bush family opponents
in past campaigns. Most questioning Sen. John
Kerry’s valor never served
with him at all; many never met him. Among the
few who had, most no
longer speak with reporters, some because Navy
records document that
they, too, earned medals in firefights they claim
never happened; others
because they’d publicly endorsed Kerry in 1996;
and still others
seemingly because veterans of the same engagements
shamed them by
coming forward to defend their own, if not Kerry’s,
honor.
But by then, see, the Swift-Boaters had moved
on to the second phony
smear: that in 1971 Senate testimony, Kerry supposedly
accused all
Vietnam veterans of atrocities. I think even
a glance at the transcript
reveals that he did not. That American soldiers
committed terrible
crimes in Vietnam nobody can deny. By the time
Kerry testified, Lt.
William Calley had already been convicted in
the 1968 My Lai massacre.
Retired Gen. Tommy Franks recently disappointed
FOX News host Sean
Hannity by commenting that" the things that Senator
Kerry said are
undeniable about activities in Vietnam. "As an
American citizen, Kerry
didn’t need to earn the right to dissent against
the war after he came
home. Yet earn it he did. Even so, there are
always people who confuse
dissent with treason, one reason demagogues everywhere
love war.
But the Democrats’ biggest problem is that ordinary
people have trouble
believing the depths of mendacity to which their
opponents have sunk.
Consider Georgia Sen. Zell Miller’s ranting keynote
address last week.
How crazy was it? Well, at one point, the turncoat
Democrat inveighed
against democracy itself.
" At the same time young Americans are dying in
the sands of Iraq and
the mountains of Afghanistan, "he thundered,"
our nation is being torn
apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’
manic obsession to
bring down our commander-in-chief. "
People, it’s called a presidential election. Furthermore,
virtually all
Democrats supported George W. Bush in Afghanistan;
they criticize him
for shifting to Iraq without finishing the job.
Most voted to give him
the authority to use force if necessary against
Saddam Hussein. It’s
his catastrophic misuse of that authority they
dispute.
" Motivated more by partisan politics than by
national security, "Miller
alleged," today’s Democratic leaders see America
as an occupier, not a
liberator. "In fact, Bush himself has referred
to the U.S." occupation
"numerous times. Miller laughably charged that"
Kerry would let Paris
decide when America needs defending. "In fact,
in his Boston acceptance
speech, Kerry unequivocally stated" Let there
be no mistake.... I will
never give any nation or any institution a veto
over our national security. "
Miller cited a laundry list of weapon systems
Kerry supposedly voted
against as a senator, ignoring the fact that
then-President George H. W. Bush
and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney proposed cutbacks
in precisely the
same weapon systems—the B-2 bomber, the F-14
Tomcat, etc. —as part
of the so-called peace benefit after the Soviet
Union collapsed in 1990.
That proved too much for the normally compliant
souls on CNN. When
pressed by Wolf Blitzer, Judy Woodruff and Jeff
Greenfield after his speech,
the irascible old faker had no answers. Truth
is, Miller is anybody’s dog who
will hunt, as people say in the South. Just drop
the tailgate and old Zell will
jump right in. It’s no use waiting for a timid
press corps to do its job.
Smears, brazen falsehoods and character assassination
are what this
administration and its hired media accomplices
do; it’s how contemporary
Republicans operate. If they want to quit playing
defense all the time,
Democrats like Kerry are going to have to start
warning voters ahead of
time.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
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