With Friends Like Teddy, Who Needs Enemies?

April 7, 2004

In a recent speech to the Washington think tank, the Brookings Institute, serial adulterer and resident lush, Ted Kennedy, stated that the war in Iraq is “George Bush's Vietnam.” Of course, reasonable thinkers know just how outrageous that statement is but it cannot, and should not, go unchallenged. Especially when he added that this administration has “the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon.”

 

We'll get to credibility in a moment. Right now let's talk about irony. Although it was President Eisenhower who was the first to send advisors to Vietnam, they were primarily just that. They were advising the South Vietnamese and staying out of the fight. It wasn't until February of 1961 that the U.S. military buildup began in earnest when Eisenhower's successor began sending “special forces” troops to South Vietnam. The army officially considers the start of the war to be December 11, 1961 when the president sent helicopters to Saigon. On January 12, 1962, the president signed off on the first combat missions against the Vietcong. That president who took us from an advisory role to an active military role was Teddy's brother, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's vice president, Lyndon Johnson, took over after Kennedy's death and escalated the war to its now-infamous levels. It was Richard Nixon who got us out.

 

Another Vietnam? Here's a brief comparison of Vietnam and Iraq. Iraq – 614 soldiers dead. Vietnam – 58,000 soldiers dead. That's not to say that each life isn't precious but there's no comparison. In Vietnam, it was a war of containment and we lost. We spent 14 years, billions of dollars and 58,000 lives and not only never took Hanoi, we pulled out just as Saigon, the South Vietnamese capitol, was being overrun. Juxtapose that with Iraq where we marched from Kuwait to Baghdad in 20 days, making it one of the swiftest victories in history. The brutal regime was toppled and the dictator eventually captured. There was no such clear victory in Vietnam. During Vietnam, we had young men devising all sorts of ways to get out of serving. In Iraq, we have proud men and women enlisting for the noble cause of freedom. This is no more another Vietnam than Ted Kennedy is another Billy Graham.

 

Now, on to credibility. Ted Kennedy, who talks about a “credibility gap,” has a credibility gap himself big enough to drive an Oldsmobile into. Need I remind the senator of that fateful night in July of 1969 when he went out drinking with a bunch of campaign workers and left one, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die after he ran his Olds off the Edgartown Bridge. As Miss Kopechne, trapped in the shallow waters, gasped for air until she died, the young senator and “Conscience of the Democratic Party” swam to safety, never lifting a finger to help her nor making any attempt to summon help until the next day. Instead, he slithered back to the Kennedy compound and devised a story to tell the press to save his own sorry skin.

 

Isn't this the same Ted Kennedy who paid another student at Harvard to take his Spanish final exam? He was busted and the Harvard administrators bid young Kennedy, “Hasta la vista.”

 

Ah, and who can forget the infamous “waitress sandwich” incident in 1985 when Kennedy and his carousing partner, Senator Chris Dodd from Connecticut, allegedly held down and groped a waitress in the private back dining room of Washington's La Brasserie restaurant.

 

Yeah, let's talk about credibility, shall we, Teddy. The Conscience of the Democratic Party, eh? Maybe that explains the Clinton years.