Kerry's "Winter Soldier"
REGARDING WILLIAM KRISTOL'S editorial "John Kerry, in His Own Words" (Sept. 6): It's clear from Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony that he did not know his American history. Kerry states: "The term 'Winter Soldier' is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough."
In actuality, Paine wrote "The American Crisis, Number 1" after the Continental Army lost New York and was retreating across New Jersey in late 1776. Washington's men camped at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78.
Richard R. de Villiers
Miami, FL
Radical Youth
I COMMEND Mackubin Thomas Owens for an excellent piece on John Kerry's antiwar activism ("Fahrenheit 1971," Sept. 6). In retrospect, I am especially bothered by Kerry's film footage of himself walking around Vietnam in his military gear, and strongly suspect the whole thing was staged for future political use. Kerry probably knew he'd one day be running for president.
Unfortunately for Kerry, his broader record isn't very presidential. Leave aside his flip-flopping on Iraq. When you look at his 1971 Senate testimony, and his consistent opposition to new, innovative defense spending during the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of John Kerry becoming our president in a time of war is utterly frightening.
Caroline D. Mooney
Cohutta, GA
MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS neatly divides protagonists in America's decades-long debate over the Vietnam war into two categories. "On the one side in this culture war," he writes, "are those who believe that Vietnam wasn't very different from other wars. . . . On the other side are those for whom the Vietnam war represented the very essence of evil."
Of course, this dichotomy creates some problems. We know into which category Owens places John Kerry, since Owens accuses Kerry of presenting "'Americanized' Soviet propaganda" in his 1971 Senate testimony.
But into which category would Owens place such major Vietnam policy figures as George Ball, William Bundy, and Robert McNamara? Each of these men helped prosecute the war effort from Washington, but then retrospectively criticized U.S. intervention. (In fact, Ball was a persistent critic of President Johnson's policy from the beginning.) All three--Ball, Bundy, and McNamara--would likely agree that Vietnam was indeed different from other wars. All three might say that, looking back, Vietnam was a strategic mistake in the broader context of waging the Cold War. But I doubt any of them would describe it as "the very essence of evil."
Owens's Vietnam war dichotomy--while neatly tailored to fit the argument of his piece--is ultimately too simplistic.
Steve Wineberg
Exeter, NH
Samizdat & the Swifties
IN HIS INSIGHTFUL ARTICLE "The Not-So-Swift Mainstream Media" (Sept. 6), Jonathan V. Last mistakes the symptom for the cause. He is correct that the mainstream media have "been strong-armed into covering [the Swift boat story] by the 'new' media."
However, he does not explain why they had to be so "strong-armed." Simply put, John Kerry is their guy. They do not want to do anything that might hurt his campaign. That, above all, is why they are so unhappy about having to cover the Swift boat story.
If the mainstream media really wanted to serve as our bipartisan "watchdog" of truth, they would have investigated the Swifties' case as they are investigating George W. Bush's National Guard record.
Last is correct that the emergence of this "new" media--the blogosphere, talk radio, Fox News--has drastically transformed political coverage. It may well transform politics (if it hasn't already).
Joseph Krizsa
TUSCON, AZ
The Lambeau Legend
I ENJOYED STEPHEN F. HAYES'S "The Battle for Wisconsin" (Sept. 6). The "Lambert" Field anecdote is telling and will probably reverberate through the remainder of the campaign.
Hayes is incorrect, however, in writing that "the pseudo-thunderous voice of Chris Berman" first made the name Lambeau Field famous. When ESPN's Berman says "The Frooooooozen Tunnnnnnnndra of Lambeau Field," he is merely imitating the well-known voice of John Facenda.
Facenda, the legendary narrator of NFL Films, is the one who has the deep voice and first spoke those immortal words.
John Carr
Chadds Ford, PA
Pulp Fiction
GREGORY FEELEY writes that "alternate history . . . hasn't often broken into movies" ("The Way It Wasn't," Sept. 6). Perhaps it seems so because, in recent years, filmmakers who dabble in this genre aren't honestly labeling their pieces as alternate histories, but are instead pawning them off as "documentaries." As a result, audiences are being fed imaginary stories that don't even merit the distinction of "historical fiction."
Take Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. If ever there was a film that obliged its director "to acknowledge the real world," as Feeley puts it, it was this one. But, of course, Moore did nothing of the sort. And, sadly, far too many moviegoers left the theater believing they'd seen a real historical documentary.
Jim Fenske
Westlake, OH
GREGORY FEELEY really doesn't like the works of Harry Turtledove. Feeley's otherwise interesting tour of the alternate-history genre is marred by a snobbish preference for the obscure over the popular. His sneering dismissal of Turtledove's allegedly implausible premises in The Guns of the South and the World War II series makes me wonder why he even bothers with the genre, given as it is to such military what-ifs.
Jim Fladland
Williamsport, PA
Big Man on Campus
IN "NOTES FROM THE UNDERGRAD" (Sept. 6), Matthew Continetti nicely demonstrates John Kerry's abiding opposition to an interventionist U.S. foreign policy. But he made one small error in his discussion of Choate Rosemary Hall. While John F. Kennedy was, in fact, a graduate of Choate, Franklin Roosevelt was an alumnus of Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts.
Richard S. Scott
New York, NY
MATTHEW CONTINETTI makes some very interesting points in his discussion of John Kerry's antiwar college speeches. If Kerry had intellectually determined that the Vietnam war was a mistake as early as 1965, he was in the vanguard of political thought. I graduated from (public) high school in Connecticut in 1968. Those of us who opposed the war that early were a very small minority. The tide did not turn against the war until the summer of 1969.
But let me see if I get this straight. Kerry opposed the war in 1965-66. He later became famous as an antiwar activist when he returned from Vietnam in the early 1970s. Clearly he believes the war was fundamentally immoral.
So how, today, can he highlight his Vietnam service as his central qualification to be our commander in chief? Does he now think it was a just cause after all?
Bob Nevins
Williston, VT
Europe's Iran Chimera
OUTSTANDING PIECE BY Leon de Winter on Europe and the Iranian mullahs ("Europe's Iran Fantasy," Sept. 6). Europeans--at least those in "Old Europe"--seem to believe that 9/11 was some kind of Hurricane Osama: a tragic but natural disaster that we must duly mourn and then move past. They don't understand we're engaged in a war with barbaric terrorists who want to kill us.
We need to resist this kind of thinking at home as well as in Europe. If we don't, how will we ever defeat our enemies?
Brian J. Dunn
Ann Arbor, MI
IN HIS PELLUCID ESSAY on the sad state of European policies toward Iran, Leon de Winter writes that "the most recent European evils" are "the right-wing totalitarian fascism of Nazi Germany and the left-wing totalitarian fascism of the Soviet Union."
This may seem a pedantic point, but Adolf Hitler was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Indeed, to use de Winter's language, Nazism and communism can both (arguably) be seen as examples of "left-wing totalitarian fascism."
William S. Aronstein
Glendale, OH
New Doctrine, Old Idea
REGARDING MAX BOOT'S excellent "Less Respect, More Success" (Sept. 6): Senator John Kerry's less-respected-in-the-world-under-Bush line resonates with voters largely because of a misunderstanding of the Bush Doctrine.
As Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis has written, the Bush Doctrine of preemption sounds foreign to American ears because it represents a formal change in policy. But despite what its detractors say, the Bush policy is not really a sharp break with historical precedent. Indeed, as Gaddis notes, U.S. leaders have reserved the right of preemption (albeit not always officially) since at least 1814.
David D. Begley
Omaha, NE
The Laugh of Khan
HERE I LAY, crumpled up in the fetal position next to my desk, having just read Katherine Mangu-Ward's brilliant "Khan Woman" (CASUAL, Sept. 6). It was a comedic masterpiece.
What else can I say, when confronted with the "original sin" of the creation narratives so deliciously presented by none other than the Princess Khatun Mangu(-Ward)? Deep theological discussion such as this is what keeps me reading THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Following Mangu-Ward's advice, I am now headed to my local library to check on the "L" index in the Britannica. Thank you, Princess Khatun.
John Leonard
Englewood, CO
The Paranoid Style
I WANT TO APPLAUD Noemie Emery's article "A Conspiracy Too Vast" (Sept. 6). Her descriptions of Democratic paranoia are as funny as they are accurate.
When, years ago, Richard Hofstadter published his essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," he was referring to the American right. But today, as Emery demonstrates, it is the left wing of American politics that is more indulgent of conspiracy theories.
Rick Johnson
Cheshire, CT