It may be a condition felt most acutely by guys my age — who grew up and were shaped by the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s — this gut-wrenching replay of brother against brother between John Kerry and the swift-boat veterans.
Like that ulcer that you think might have finally healed, from time to time something happens to remind you that the wound you carry inside can still make you sick and impair your judgment.
Vietnam.
For guys my age, that damn war is hard to explain; impossible, really, to talk meaningfully about with our children, many of whom are now about the same age we were when we went through it. Even our spouses may have a hard time understanding why it still gnaws at us so.
How else to explain the vitriol connected to the role a war fought more than 30 years ago plays in a campaign for the highest office in the land? The letters to the editor on the subject and the e-mails and telephone messages about coverage of it are laden with condemnation for either the candidate or the aggrieved veterans who think the candidate to be a traitor.
But if you are seeking an answer to why this issue has the legs it has, think about where we were in 1971.
From my perspective, there were two clear turning points during the war: the Tet offensive in 1968, when the North Vietnamese war of attrition began in earnest, and 1971, when public condemnation of the war moved beyond the counter-culture demonstrators in the streets.
Not that the country was ready to give it up and bring the troops home in 1971. Far from it. The following year voters overwhelmingly re-elected Richard Nixon and his “peace with honor” platform over George McGovern.
But the tide of public opinion slowly began to turn in 1971 with two events.
First, some veterans returned home to say the war was wrong. John Kerry, a handsome and articulate Bostonian who reminded some commentators of John Kennedy in speech and manners, was among them. He and other veterans not only criticized the command machinery they had served under, but they also accused their fellow soldiers of what amounted to war crimes.
That same year, American newspapers began to publish a secret Pentagon report that assessed the horrendous human and economic cost of the war and opened to public inspection the foreign policy lies and deceit that put troops there.
The Pentagon Papers made clear the fundamental flaws in U.S. military and diplomatic action in Vietnam up until that time and served as a predictor of the failed policies over the next four years that led to thousands of more U.S deaths and, ultimately, that haunting image of the military helicopter airlifting embassy staffers in Saigon out of harm’s way in 1975 Since then, the debate about how Vietnam was lost has never fully been settled.
There are those who luckily were exempted from service and who protested the war — I’m in that category — who blame failed political leadership over a 20-year-span. You’re unlikely to convince us it was anything else, certainly not the fault of the guys who served, many with honor.
Many veterans obviously believe Kerry and his companions who testified against the war turned the country against them as well. They blame him and others like him for the country’s failure. Some believe he is a liar, although it is important to remember that this is a debate over degree, because there were documented atrocities in the conduct of the war.
So this isn’t really a debate over whether John Kerry lied about being on a secret mission in Cambodia on Christmas 1968 when he was actually a few hundred yards away from the watery border, is it? Do we really need medical records to prove whether his wounds were serious enough to get him a ticket home?
What it is about — always has been, always will be — is who lost Vietnam.
Perhaps the saddest part of this latest flare-up in our generation’s eternal ulcer is that we now understand, convincingly, that it will eat away at us for the rest of our lives.
With that damn war, we seem to have lost the capacity to be healed.
