The controversy over Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s claim of service in the Vietnam War continues. After the New York Times was accused of leaving out exculpatory statements made by Blumenthal on one such occasion, the newspaper insists that the earlier comment does not alter the misleading representations, here. Moreover, newly disclosed statements like “I wore the uniform in Vietnam and many came back to all kinds of disrespect” undermine his defense. Below is my column today on the New York Times blog discussing the scandal.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s reported exaggeration of his military record is a shock to many supporters. But the irresistible temptation to invent or exaggerate military service is common to politicians and non-politicians alike.
Whether it is a pick-up line in a bar or a boast on Memorial Day, people often learn that a little fib of military service can go along way in achieving certain advantages. It is a way of instantly giving yourself a better image — perhaps becoming the person you wish you were.
For the state’s top lawyer (and a senatorial candidate), such claims are particularly problematic. Blumenthal’s office routinely prosecutes fraud and false statements in various contexts. Moreover, federal law makes certain false military claims a criminal matter. (Under the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a person claiming specific military decorations or medals could be sentenced to a year in jail).
What is fascinating is that Blumenthal was already considered one of the nation’s leading politicians and lawyers. He is not some Walter Mitty who desperately wants to reinvent himself like Steven Burton, 39, of Palm Springs, who appeared at his high school reunion in a Marine Corps uniform supporting about a pound of medals.
Burton was just some schmo who worked in a bank and decided to remake himself into a decorated officer. Blumenthal is the guy that many people want to pretend to be: a Harvard-educated lawyer with a record of fighting for the public interest. Yet, even he wanted a degree of personal enhancement or reinvention.
In that sense he is similar to other leading citizens like Illinois Circuit Judge Michael F. O’Brien who claimed not one but two Congressional Medals of Honor. Likewise, there was Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, the 25th Chief of Naval Operations, who was a legend in the service as the only C.N.O. to have reached that position from the enlisted ranks. He committed suicide after being accused of wearing unearned “Combat Vs” on his Navy Commendation Medal and Navy Achievement Medal indicating valor in combat.
For politicians, the desire to claim military distinctions is sometimes irresistible. Politicians thrive on symbols and rhetoric that create bonds with the public. Military service is perhaps the strongest such self-authenticating qualification. It recasts a politician in a new light — not some self-serving egomaniac but a selfless public servant. Blumenthal’s comments about the trauma of returning home to a hostile nation would resonate with anyone and elicit universal affection.
Of course, the terrible irony is that reinventing oneself in this way can wipe away years of well-deserved respect and trust. In the eyes of many, Blumenthal has joined the ranks of the “semper frauds.” While he told crowds that he still remembered “the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse” following Vietnam, he is now experiencing that very reaction from citizens.
For the other views on the New York Times blog, click here.
Good Lord, must we forever read this crap about young men “serving their country with honor”? No one who served in Vietnam served with honor, nor did they “serve their country.” To spout such absurdities indicates a complete misunderstanding of what happened in Vietnam and why.
The U.S. government, on behalf of U.S. corporate interests, which are not synonymous with the interests of the American people, invaded Vietnam, set up a puppet government, and proceeded to torture and murder the Vietnamese people while destroying the nation’s infrastructure and engaging in environmental destruction on a scale almost unmatched in human history.
The war was about denying the Vietnamese people the right to self-determination and protecting (and enlarging) the profits of U.S.-based corporate interests. At its peak, it reached near-genocidal intensity. It left in its wake three ruined countries, millions dead, millions of people with birth-defects, the killing fields of Kampuchea, and thousands or millions of casualties, often to children, continuing today from unexploded ordinance and environmental pollutants.
Those who “served” the U.S. corporate interests in this conflict did so out of blind obedience at best, and often out of virulent racism or jingoism or both.
Where was their personal responsibility for the consequences of the decisions they made? No one was forced to serve in Vietnam. Flight to Canada or a prison sentence (or successful conscientious objector status) were equally possible choices. Everyone has the ability to say no. If one were ordered by the government to murder the neighbors’ children or go to jail, would the threat of jail justify the murder of children? If not, then how does it do so when the children are non-white and 14,000 miles away?
And ignorance is no defense! The information necessary to make an informed decision was widely circulated.
In our ostensibly democratic society, the people are the government, thus the ultimate responsibility lies with the people. This is true even in undemocratic societies — the ultimate power, hence the ultimate responsibility, lies with the people, not the state or the so-called ruling class. The state and the “rulers” are powerless without the conscious cooperation of the masses.
Those who “fought” in Vietnam — that is to say those who collaborated with the U.S. state and U.S.-based corporate interests to destroy the aspirations and hopes of tens of millions of Southeast Asians and to maim or murder millions of them in the process — are no less culpable than the Vichy French were for their cooperation in the Holocaust.
Those who went to Vietnam to assist in the murder of Vietnamese and the crushing of their aspirations for self-determination are deserving of nothing but contempt until they own up to their crimes and devote themselves to acts of redemption. Those who have not and will not are no better than Nazi war criminals living out their lives in relative comfort in Paraguay or Argentina. And those who actually brag about their exploits are beneath contempt.
Far more troubling, however, is the logical conclusion to be drawn from Blumenthal’s prevarications: namely, that it benefits a politician in 21st Century America to have (or pretend to have) served as a lackey assisting in one of the worst war crimes of the 20th Century. What this says about the disgusting absence of any true moral values by most Americans — the most coddled, overprivileged, wasteful, self-obsessed, and infantilized group in the history of humanity — should give one pause.
Blumenthal is just another self-aggrandizing, self-obsessed, power-hungry narcissist. That these sorts of persons appear to be all the American people are capable of voting into office says all one needs to know about this “beacon of liberty,” the United States of America.
Professor Turley, Maddow’s interview with Rand Paul who opposed the Civil Rights Act (but not civil rights) on libertarian grounds is all over the blogosphere, i thought you’d have brought it up by now.
Anyone can see that bragging about Vietnam gets people in trouble, including McCain.
I mean it is a no-win without rewriting history.
Losing the war mentality is a better state of mind.
Underlyiing whatever position one stakes out in this discussion, is a crucial point. In U.S. society, in U.S. history, we still see being in the military as a positive thing to do. How can we think this after all we have learned about the brutality of war, the massive questionableness of nearly every foreign war involvement that the U.S. has been in, the implication of what it means to be a soldier as an instrument of a foreign policy that has been discredited time and again. Is military employment in the Viet Nam invasion a badge of honor?
My uncle was a World War II medic who saw the horror of war and never wanted to talk about it. He suffered terribly until the end of his life. Another uncle returned after World War II largely broken mentally. I ministered to veterans of the Viet Nam war and that foreign adventure was devastating, too, to no good purpose, a war that eventually most of the country turned against and we now know, that like more recent ventures, was based on countless lies by government officials. More than 58,000 Americans died in that conflict and millions of Vietnamese, plus many more who were wounded, maimed, mentally destroyed, made homeless, etc.
Should it need to be said, I was an officer in the U.S. Army.
If lying about military service is considered honorable and something to forward one’s career, possibly we need to think much more carefully and deeply about what war and massive destruction mean, right up to the present time when the U.S. government is striving mightily to find ways to attack, bomb, destroy with a minimum loss of U.S. lives, but with little regard for the deaths and injuries of others. If a time ever arises when fighting for one’s country is unavoidable, let’s think about the consequences, the chaos, and the tragedy that follows. It is nothing to celebrate or take pride in.
Character … it’s all about character.
At the age of 12 Adlai Stevenson accidentally shot a friend while demonstrating drill techniques with a rifle he thought wasn’t loaded. Much later in his career he encountered a man whose son had survived an auto accident in which a friend was killed. Stevenson told the teen’s father that he should tell his son that “he now has to live for two”, which Stevenson’s friends took to be a reference to the shooting incident.
Each deferment that Blumenthal took meant that someone else went in his place. At least 5 young men were affected by Blumenthal’s actions. Were any of them killed or wounded while standing in for Blumenthal? He’ll never know. To pretend that he served along side of them in Nam dishonors their service.
If he was bothered by his actions during Nam them all he had to do was say so. A simple explanation would have sufficed or, he could have said nothing at all.
It’s all about character.
AY,
In all fairness, Mazda did the right thing in pulling the dealership’s contract. There are almost no manufacturer owned dealers. It’s all distributorship and purchasing agreements with individual (usually) locals or groups that own dealerships proper.
Maybe he can solve the mystery of the blanks in the Richard Nixon Watergate tapes. I hear a car dealership in Canada is looking for a new partner. Mazda anyone?
Quote:
Richard Blumenthal’s 2008 Stamford Advocate Quote: ‘I Wore The Uniform In Vietnam’
“I wore the uniform in Vietnam and many came back . . . to all kinds of disrespect,” Blumenthal told the crowd at a 2008 Veteran’s Day parade, according to the Advocate.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/richard-blumenthals-2008_n_583429.html
S-Mom,
Yes, ultimately, it is up to the voters to decide and the First Amendment provides the AG the right to lie about his military service or anything else during his capaign unless he was/is under oath and/or subject to perjury by his signatory to an official document.
As humans, we all have lied, some of us lie now, or we will lie in the future. However, there are some lies that are simply unpardonable and this is one of those lies, at least by my ethical standards.
Notwithstanding Mr. Blumenthals other impressive credentials, a lie of this magnitude illustrates a serious character flaw that he might display unknowingly while he is in office. Remember, he stated within his news conference after the story broke that he did not know that he said what he said until someone pointed out his use of his specific words. Therefore, he is either lying or he has a mental problem of not being cognizant of what his is saying or doing. Either of those traits/problems makes him unfit as a governmental leader.
I don’t think Blumenthal did the right thing. I just do not think what he did will cause him to be defeated.
Blumentahl’s political views are more suited to CT than McMahon’s. We will see who prevails in November.
Have to disagree with majority here. I think McMahon will prove to be more distasteful to the voters than Blumenthal. The NYT will eventually investigate her if she is endorsed by the republicans later this month and it won’t be pretty.
Yep. Got to side with the majority here.
Lying is lying. Of the three kinds of lies according to Twain, lying about military service is most certainly a “damned lie”. But it is going to make Blumenthal a statistic. An unemployment statistic.
I’m sorry. He was using “Vietnam” as a badge. He meant to deceive the public or at least take advantage of them by making them think he was a war hero.
And prosecutor or not, he is Connecticut’s AG and wants to serve in the U.S. Senate. Doesn’t this require integrity and honesty?
Frankly, I don’t want another word-twisting, self-serving politician in Washington. We need to be exporting them, not importing them.
Jennifer, very slowly now, saying that one served “during” Vietnam does not make it “perfectly clear that he did not serve ‘in’ Vietnam” because it can mean EITHER that he served in Vietnam OR that he served during the Vietnam war era in the United States or elsewhere.
It is inherently ambiguous.
We are VERY concerned with accuracy here at the Turley Blog, and we got this one right.
On an earlier thread, Former Federal LEO, on May 18, 2010 at 1:43 pm, carefully explained that those “who served in any branch of the military stationed anywhere in the world during 1954 to 1975 are officially considered Viet Nam *Era* veterans (Vietnam). However, designation as a Viet Nam Era veteran *does not* confer that we served *in county* within Viet Nam as combat/war veterans. That is a very important distinction for many reasons, to include classification for benefits under the Department of Veteran Affairs policies.”
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/05/18/we-band-of-harvard-brothers-connecticut-attorney-general-and-senatorial-candidate-richard-blumenthal-accused-of-lying-about-service-in-vietnam/#comment-133690
There is a full discussion of the Times coverage at the Washington Post blog.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/05/times_defends_posting_of_clipp.html
I happen to agree with the Times that “The video doesn’t change our story. Saying that he served ‘during Vietnam’ doesn’t indicate one way or the other whether he went to Vietnam.”
The objection by Blumenthal supporters that the Times left out his other quotation is completely lame.
He said he “served in Vietnam.”
But he said he “served in the military, during the Vietnam era.”
So the sum total of his message to his audience was that he served in the military, in Vietnam, during the Vietnam era.
Liar.
JT pointed out the crucial point — perhaps Blumie wanted to become the person he wished he had been. After all those deferments, after joining the reserves for training when the draft and the war had finally wound down, after all those tedious years in the reserves, he sometimes perhaps wished that he had signed up, that he had gone to Vietnam, that he had tested himself, and that he had not let others go in his stead.
Maybe it gnawed at him. He seemed to go out of his way to help the vets who returned. He must have sensed that he was not one of them, whatever his desires. It looks like his lofty wishes clouded the reality of his ordinary, mundane peaceful existence in the chaos of wartime in the 1960s.
The NY Times — and you — have gotten so much of this story about Mr. Blumenthal wrong. Let’s start with the fact that you call him the “top prosecutor.” In two states — Connecticut and Louisiana — the Attorney General does not have criminal jurisdiction, but only civil. In Connecticut, the Chief State’s Attorney has criminal jurisdiction. Thus, it is inaccurate to call Mr. Blumenthal the “top prosecutor.”
And then there’s the fact — as so many media outlets other than the NY Times have pointed out — that Mr. Blumenthal said in that SAME supposedly-offensive speech that he served “during” Vietnam, making it perfectly clear that he did not serve “in” Vietnam.
And of course there’s the fact that the story came from Mr. Blumenthal’s Republican opponent, as she has now publicly admitteed (see today’s Hartford Courant).
Not to mention 25 years of exemplary service to the State of Connecticut, all of which you seem to think it’s okay to ignore.
I expected more from the NY Times, and I expected more from you.
Jennifer Jaff:
Your point is a good one on the prosecutorial reference, which I have changed. However, we will have to disagree on the merits.
*snicker*
For a guy who was the top lawyer in the state, this is not good.
On the stand, the witness was asked if he had served in Vietnam.
Answer: No.
Please read the following statement from your speech in 2008.
Answer: In that speech I said “I served in Vietnam.”
What is your explanation?
Answer: I told the truth at other times.
Your witness.
Sample campaign slogans for Dick:
Vote for Blumie!
He tells the truth. Sometimes.
Honest. Forthright. Truthful. Depending on the part of the speech you hear.
Challenged for truthfulness — by the Queen of the World Wrestling Enterprise!!!