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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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THE PARTY OF WAR: WHY THE DEMOCRATS DON'T GET IT The word on the street is that the Democrats are really serious about regaining their rep as warriors. If you went to school in the last two decades, you might not know they ever were. In fact, you might think Republicans have always been the war-hawks and that Richard Nixon got us into Vietnam. You probably have no idea that our involvement in World Wars I and II, as well as Korea and Vietnam, occurred during Democratic administrations. Woodrow Wilson was president when the Great War began (August 1914). He kept us neutral, running for re-election in 1916 on the campaign slogan “He kept us out of war”. But in 1917, when Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare (i.e., sinking enemy ships without warning), Mr. Wilson had to make good on his vow that we would fight if that mode of warfare recurred. Our involvement in actions on the Western Front tipped the balance against the Central Powers and allowed Britain, France, and their allies to prevail. President Franklin Roosevelt also kept the USA out of the war Germany started by invading Poland in September 1939. There was no visible support among the American people for our intervention. We watched from the sidelines as Germany overran Europe and then launched a massive offensive against the Soviet Union in June 1941. Only after Japanese naval forces destroyed much of our Pacific fleet in a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor (December 1941) did FDR have the political support he needed to declare war on Japan. FDR was a great friend of England and an implacable foe of the Nazis, but he dared not fight Germany until after Adolph Hitler declared war on us. Teamed with the Soviet Union and England, our enormous economic, manufacturing and military strength enabled the complete defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Harry Truman was president when North Korean forces invaded South Korea in June 1950. Under political pressure for being “soft on communism” (sound familiar?), Mr. Truman directed US forces to intervene. With General Douglas MacArthur in command, our troops bolstered South Korean forces. MacArthur’s brilliant amphibious landings at Incheon – in the rear of the enemy – drove North Korean forces back across the 38th parallel. American and South Korean forces were poised to invade North Korea when Communist China sent 300,000 fresh troops into the war. The communists recaptured Seoul, and American forces retreated from the northern part of Korea after the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in December 1950. Korea was the first time in the 20th century when our political and military leadership differed openly on the conduct of a war. General MacArthur wanted to interdict Chinese forces north of the Yalu river. Mr. Truman opposed it, fearing that it would precipitate a general war in Asia. When the general publicly advocated using nuclear weapons on China, he was recalled by Mr. Truman (April 1951). Thereafter, the war devolved into a costly stalemate. (MacArthur’s recall was the first news event I clearly remember, although I did not comprehend its meaning then.) After his election (November 1952), Dwight Eisenhower exerted his influence on the Korean peace negotiations. Some say he threatened to use the atomic bomb unless North Korea came to terms, but this was never confirmed. An armistice ending the hostilities was signed in June 1953. Contrary to a popular impression – especially among Americans born after 1960 – Richard Nixon did not get us into Vietnam. That honor is shared by Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Mr. Kennedy had been sending soldiers to assist South Vietnam military forces in a growing war against the Viet Cong. By late 1963 we had several thousand advisors in South Vietnam. LBJ inherited all this after JFK’s death. He used it to political advantage during the campaign of 1964. Although voter-support for Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, was only tepid, LBJ evidently felt insecure enough to think he needed an ace to push him over the top. The Bay of Tonkin incident filled the bill. A North Vietnamese PT boat’s alleged attack upon an American warship off the Vietnamese coast (August 1964) was LBJ’s excuse for involving us militarily in Vietnam. (Investigations later cast doubt on whether the event happened at all.) Nevertheless, looking warlike, LBJ defeated Mr. Goldwater with 63% of the popular vote. In March 1965 he called for a commitment of 500,000 American troops in Vietnam. (As my colleagues and I listened to LBJ’s address, we joked that it was lucky Goldwater didn’t win, as he might have involved us in an Asian land war.) LBJ called for no actual declaration of war, nor did he worry about what the United Nations might say. Declaration or not, American forces had thumped the Viet Cong by 1968. They were on the ropes. The celebrated Tet Offensive (January 1968) was a last ditch gambit to turn the war around. Although militarily disastrous for the Cong, it was wildly successful in political terms, sparking widespread protests across the USA and crazed media coverage blaring that the war was lost. LBJ abandoned re-election plans. Senator Robert Kennedy mounted a run for president as the “peace candidate”, which ended with his assassination in June. Both Richard Nixon and VP Hubert Humphrey promised to end the war soon, but the divided Democrats lost to Mr. Nixon. Vietnam (or “Veet-namm”, as LBJ pronounced it) marked more firsts for the USA. It was our first war in the 20th century where the media were adversarial instead of a positive part of our war effort. It also marked the first time citizens engaged in widespread anti-war protests. Vietnam finished the tradition of “the loyal opposition” for the Democratic Party. (I can testify to feeling that the country was out of control in the spring and early summer of 1968, as the murder of Mr. Kennedy followed closely upon the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. I was shocked to hear radio reports of Mr. Kennedy’s death while I shaved on the morning of June 6th. The middle-class Americans I lived among wondered what would happen next.) It took Mr. Nixon four years to get us out of Vietnam, but by that time the war was his. That LBJ had gotten us into it – possibly by a ruse – was forgotten. Mr. Nixon got the peaceniks’ full ire, and Democrats became the anti-war party. Forty years on they still are. Mr. Nixon is dead, but they have Mr. Bush to hate now. No war run by a Republican administration is worth dying for. Although Democrats managed to elect Jimmy Carter (a peacenik in military drag) once, and Bill Clinton (a Hugh Heffner-wannabe who used the military for timely diversions) twice, the anti-war strategy is obviously not working. In the whole of American history, no president has ever been elected on a platform calling for us to abandon a war we have committed ourselves to. Democrats have lost seven out of the last ten presidential elections. Recently, fifteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives crafted a document which purports to define a new strategy they hope will get voters to trust their party on national security. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer captained the production of “Ensuring America's Strength and Security: A Democratic National Security Strategy for the 21st Century”. He says, “If we don't convince people we are capable of defending the country, we'll never get to other issues.” The document produced by Mr. Hoyer’s group is a worthy effort. It contains some good ideas, including a “Manhattan Project” on hydrogen fuel research to make us independent of foreign oil. The group earns a degree of respect for making a game try at a comeback. Presumably, however, Mr. Hoyer’s “other issues” would include gay marriage, a secularized society, health care on the Canadian (socialist) model, opposition to parental choice in elementary and secondary education, higher taxes, more welfare, voting rights for illegal immigrants and convicted felons, and the entire liberal vision voters have repeatedly rejected. The Democrats’ “program” is bankrupt. The country does not want it. This is why Mr. Bush is president, the Congress is Republican, and Democrats are trying to hang onto the Supreme Court by their fingernails. It is true that the country does not trust Democrats on national security, but this is only part of their problem. It is instructive to note that Presidents Wilson and FDR were both elected in peacetime on social platforms. Each was re-elected on promise of neutrality in the war that began on his watch, and each had the nation’s trust and support when he was later forced to take us into war. In other words, the public’s trust started with that domestic agenda; the public’s later trust for the military intervention derived from that earlier trust. (Both Truman and LBJ inherited their jobs from the deaths of their predecessors, and both experienced difficulties in their military interventions.) Mr. Hoyer and his group believe they can become contenders again by looking strong on national security, so they are addressing this problematic aspect of their party. But I believe they have the problem inverted. They have not earned the nation’s trust on domestic policy, as Wilson and FDR had. Instead, their party is allied with radical fringe groups who reject values of the country’s mainstream culture. This is why lifelong Democrats like former Senator Zell Miller say they haven’t left the party. They claim it has left them. The Democratic Party today is like a once-great football team trying to rebuild itself. Because someone remembered that the old team used to stage stylized celebrations in the end-zone after a score, the current team spends a lot of time rehearsing those old celebratory moves to bring it back to greatness. But totally missing is an understanding of the excellent blocking, tackling, passing, running, and other truly decisive elements which made the old team effective. A bleak frustration sets in when the cosmetic measures fail to bring the team to its former glory. No matter how many strategy papers on national defense a party writes, it cannot win elections on a platform of simply being opposed to everything the opposition stands for. Nor will it win by being fundamentally at odds with the prevailing culture of the nation. Until Democrats figure this out, they will be playing second fiddle. The way things look, that could be for a very long time.
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