Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

On her own
Hillary takes one giant step and one baby step out of her husband's political shadow.
By Anthony York
[07/08/99]

"My fiancé wants me to be a racist!"
Before Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's killing spree got him on CNN, Rev. Matt Hale was consigned to the Jerry Springer show, where he sparred with black and Jewish viewers and defended hate as a religion.
By Anthony York
[07/07/99]

Politics the KLA way
Divisions between rebel leaders manifest as some leaders split off to form a political party.
By Laura Rozen
[07/07/99]

"Jews have been the villains, not the victims"
The outgoing message on the World Church of the Creator's answering machine offers diet advice, tips for raising "strong, natural, instinctive" white children and a warning to its opponents.

[07/07/99]

Throwing the book at it
Allegations of deceptive politics and public giveaways shroud plans for the Clinton presidential library.
by Suzi Parker
[07/06/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Ciarciaglino, 53, just heard that the GOP presidential front-runner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, avoided time in Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard.

The story, of course, reminded him of 1988, when it came out that George Bush Sr.'s pick for the vice-presidential spot, then-Sen. Dan Quayle, had used his father's connections to secure himself a spot in the Indiana National Guard during the Vietnam War. This revelation moved Ciarciaglino, who has never voted for a Democrat for president, to write an op-ed for his local paper, the St. Petersburg Times. "When the rattle of musketry could be heard and the desperate cry of freedom went out, you closed your ears and your heart and looked only to yourself and to yours," he wrote to Quayle in August 1988.

But now Ciarciaglino says he's getting used to candidates with doctorates in war evasion. Especially after the draft-dodging Clinton got elected. Twice. "I blame George Bush Sr. for Clinton," Ciarciaglino says. "Once he took Quayle on as running mate, he set the stage so that Clinton's draft dodging couldn't be used against him. When I watch Clinton wearing that damned leather bomber jacket, I want to stick it in his nose," he fumes.

No doubt a lot of veterans share Ciarciaglino's anger, which was re-stirred this week after the Los Angeles Times published a story about George W. Bush's Vietnam-era stint in the Texas Air National Guard.

So far, the issue hasn't seemed to matter much to voters. Clinton, after all, defeated two bona fide World War II heroes: Bush's dad and Sen. Bob Dole. In the next presidential race, Arizona Sen. John McCain's five-plus years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam clearly trumps any other candidate's military hand, but it hasn't figured much in early fund-raising and endorsements. And neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post picked up the Los Angeles Times' story on the Republican front-runner's National Guard service, though it's conceivable both papers are doing some digging of their own.

The Los Angeles paper's story may also have limited impact because, while it seemed to be questioning whether any doors had been opened for the son of then-Rep. George H.W. Bush, it found nothing more than vague impressions that maybe, perhaps, some might have been. The former commander of the Texas Air National Guard, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, insisted that, "Nobody did anything for him. There was no goddamn influence on his behalf. Neither his daddy nor anybody else got him into the Guard."

Yet the question, "What did you do during the Vietnam War, Daddy?" is still worth asking. As America's most unpopular war, as well as one in which the affluent and well-connected had unprecedented ways of skirting service, the Vietnam experience left an ugly, unhealed scar on the national psyche. Many baby boomers believe that young American men who came of age during the Vietnam War had only two principled options -- if you supported the war, you had an obligation to fight in it, and if you opposed it, you had an obligation to fight against it, and risk imprisonment and the sacrifice of your career. But some young war supporters whose families had the right connections were able to dodge these responsibilities.

The fact that three out of the 10 Vietnam-era male Republican candidates -- and probably the three wealthiest -- wound up in the National Guard is a demographic blip that's hard to miss, especially given that only two of 10 served. Somehow it seems unlikely that 30 percent of the class of '68 at, say, Frederick Douglass High School in Inner City, U.S.A., or Eli Whitney Technical, out on Rural Route Y in Appalachia, wound up in their National Guard. And it's almost impossible to envision a low-income class of '68 in which only 20 percent of the young men went to Vietnam.

The wartime bios of the year 2000 presidential contenders are also revealing as psychic snapshots of the candidates, providing background on not only the circumstances of their family lives, but who they were as young men, before their every move was scrutinized under the klieg lights of presidential campaign politics.

If you doubt it matters, just go back and read Clinton's weaselly letter thanking the University of Arkansas ROTC colonel for "saving me from the draft," which managed to telegraph perfectly the morally relativistic, opportunistic presidency to come.

Next page | Gore: Resisting the war by serving in Vietnam