From my blog
With the Swift Boat ads dominating campaign news in August and the more recent attack on Bush's service in the National Guard, I was struck by the following from Clinton's book My Life:
"About three weeks after the election, I had received a remarkable letter from Robert McNamara, who, as secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, had prosecuted the Vietnam War. He had been moved to write me by a news story he read about my friendship with my Oxford roommate Frank Aller, who had resisted the draft and had killed himself in 1971. This is what he said: -
'For me - and I believe for the nation as well - the Vietnam war finally ended the day you were elected president. By their votes, the American people, at long last, recognized that the Allers and the Clintons, when they questioned the wisdom and morality of their government's decisions relating to Vietnam, were no less patriotic than those who served in uniform. The anguish with which you and your friends debated our actions in 1969 was painful for you then and, I am sure, the resurrection of the issues during hte campaign [about Clinton's alleged draft-dodging] reopened old wounds. But the dignity with which you met the attacks, and your refusal to draw back from the belief that it is the responsibility of all citizens to question the basis for any decision to send our youth to war, has strengthened the nation for all time.' "
If only those words could ring true today. The Vietnam war seems not to have finally ended the day Clinton was elected. It will remain until the passing of the baby-boom generation.
Nor has Clinton's belief, in McNamara's words, that "it is the responsibility of all citizens to question the basis for any decision to send our youth to war", strengthened the nation for all time. Just twelve years after McNamara commended Clinton, the nation is still only starting to find its voice in questioning the basis of this current war.
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