The Vietnam wannabes

The Vietnam War just won't go away, will it? The latest public figure to be caught lying about his Vietnam service is the Connecticut attorney general who's running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. (Dodging Vietnam service was a bipartisan sport; lying about it seems mostly the province of the Good People on the left, like the historian Joseph Ellis, who not only phonied up war service for himself, but also invented a career in the anti-war movement.) The great mystery here is why the people who were so opposed to the war at the time were later so anxious to associate themselves with it. Burkett and Whitley wrote a book about this phenomenon: Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History.

And don't you love the headline the New York Times put on its story?: Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History. Indeed. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford