Blumenthal, pretend warrior
Democratic senatorial candidate Richard Blumenthal has succumbed to an occupational hazard of boomer political candidates: alluding to some details of military service that turn out to be a lie.
In Blumenthal’s case, his Vietnam-era stint was in a Washington DC Marine Reserve unit virtually guaranteed to never go to Vietnam. Nothing wrong with that, if he’d left it at that. But although he intermittently made it clear that he had never served in Vietnam itself, at other times he inexplicably decided to claim Vietnam vet status by saying things like ““We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.”
There seems to be something deeply enticing about claiming to have been a warrior when one is not. Vietnam is a special magnet, both for those asserting they served honorably and those who wish to accuse the US of war crimes by citing their (false) participation in them. In fact, there’s an entire book, Stolen Valor, dedicated to describing and exposing “phony heroes who have become the object of award winning documentaries on national television, liars and fabricators who have become best selling authors, and others who have based their careers on non-existent Vietnam service.”
Blumenthal is actually a fairly mild version of this genre. After all, he often admitted he did not go to Vietnam, and when he did claim service there it was not to put down his country. But the temptation to embroider was too great, the enticement to claim participation in a war he had no part of too strong, and he crossed the line into outright lies. Now those lies have caught up with him, via a very unlikely source—the NY Times.
Blumenthal is hardly alone. In fact, the tendency to exaggerate one’s service is so ancient and so common that (as Roger Simon pointed out in this 2004 essay) it was represented by the stock figure of Capitano, “The Braggart Soldier,” in traditional commedia dell ”˜arte.
Blumenthal has also used his Vietnam claims to talk about how returning vets of that era were treated. The impulse was a positive one—the context was always an effort to support the vets of today. But his good intentions do not excuse his lies.
[NOTE: At the moment, Blumenthal remains in the Senate race.]
Reading pop fiction–the kind with male heroes–you’ll find that calendars and circumstances are often stretched to make the male character have served in the last war, whichever one that was.
The Roy Blakely Boy Scout books, kids’ stories in the Twenties, had an occasional male character who helped out. He was a vet of WW I.
John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee subtly moved from having served in what was hinted (by description of terrain) to be Korea, to what was hinted by description of terrain to be Viet Nam–or some SEA jungle. McDonald did a good job of avoiding the kind of detail that would date the stories and so he didn’t say specifically. But McGee had to have been in one. Somewhere. And the stories were written over a long span of years so that thinking of Korea would mean McGee was too old for the derring-do of the later stories.
That died during and after the Viet Nam war, and I think the first return to it was Magnum P.I.
I recall Mickey Mouse Club’s “Spin and Marty” where a couple of the adults at the dude ranch referred to having been in the Navy in WW II.
And in Bye, Bye Birdie, the father of the female lead makes an unnecessary reference to having been in WW II.
It is generally considered a good thing for a public figure to have been a veteran, and the same goes for the generic fiction hero.
Obviously, Blumenthal was trying to appeal to the normal folks with an old theme.
Problem is, that’s all he thought it was. Just a theme.
False.
What I find most puzzling is that there was no need for him to make up such a claim. He served in the Marine Corps Reserve. No one has ever questioned that he failed for fulfill his military obligations. Did he make up this claim of service because he felt guilty over the multiple deferments? Only Blumenthal knows.
So many of our war myths came from Winter Soldier…
from soldiers in vietnam collecting ears…
image over substance
to such people as sociopaths, everything is fake, and a fake military thing is as good as a real one as there is no right or wrong, there is only pragmatism
and when one is competing, and the end justifies the means, lying is not a bad thing to do, its a critical thing to do right.
Charles.
He may have been thinking that your point didn’t apply to Bush. Hiding in the TANG was considered a Bad Thing.
But Blumenthal is a dem so it would be okay to hide in the Marine reserves.
I was in Infantry OCS in 69. We trained for Viet Nam, and we also trained to fight the Russians along the InterGerman Border. Viet Nam made the noise and got the ink, but the IGB was The Place. We had 300,000 guys there and there wasn’t any fighting, plus a number of formations prepared to go east–not west–in case of trouble. See ReForger exercises.
If the balloon went up in Europe, the guys in the reserves and guard were going to be in high-intensity conventional warfare making Viet Nam look like good duty. Presuming they could get to Europe of course. The Third Battle of The North Atlantic, well-laid-out in Hackett’s fictional “August 1985: The Third World War”.
I don’t fault the guys who opted for the reserve component. It was just luck they didn’t get chewed up in Europe. And luck like that wasn’t the way to bet.
The historian Joseph Ellis is another guy who got caught telling lies about his nonexistent Vietnam service.
Kind of a common phenomenon among many male boomers who avoided the war. I’ve always thought that part of the exaggerated machismo on Wall St reflected that generation’s draft avoidance: “business is war”, traders wanting to “rip their faces off” — this stuff began to surface in the mid 80s when the draft dodger generation began to assume executive power.
Maybe deep down some (not all) of them knew that they avoided the war out of cowardice, not principle. And maybe some of liberalism’s self-loathing came from a form of survivor’s guilt, knowing that they used their socio-economic status and connections to avoid the war, thus condemning a poor person or minority to take their place.
First, Blumenthal appears to have lied almost entirely when speaking before either Veterans groups or those highly supportive of veterans.
As a Vietnam vet, I am particularly offended at those who falsely claim to have served or disingenuously inflate their service, in an attempt to use that false claim for personal benefit.
Despite his supportive words at such times, I can’t agree that his intentions were good, he’s an ambitious politician and his claims were entirely self-serving.
According to the NYT, ” He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.
In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive. ”
Michelle Malkin comments:
“It is worth noting that the NYTimes spilled barrels of ink attacking the Swift Boat Veterans for pointedly questioning some of John Kerry’s Vietnam war claims.
Savor the irony when bogus war story-teller Richard Blumenthal, with nothing but desperate spin for a defense, starts accusing the Swift Boat Veteran-bashing Times of… “Swift-boating.”
How embarrassing!
I just saw a bit of the press conference (at a V.F.W. Hall, of all places!) but could not bear to watch it. Hopefully he will resign quickly, and Connecticut can get back to reality. Unfortunately, so many actual veterans of the era have been forgotten about. Anyone in the military around that time can remember the vitriol openly vented at those caught on the street in uniform. Hell, you didn’t even have to be in uniform. I was turned down at bars and given dirty looks just for having “the haircut”. Interesting that the NYT would go with this, they miss the boat on so many stories of late. I smell smoke…
Being a phony veteran is an old tradition among our politicians. Read James Bradley’s ‘The Imperial Cruise’ and you’ll never view Teddy R. the same way again.
LBJ, made one uneventful flight in the pacific during WWII and recieved a bogus silver star. Kerry, well the swifties laid bare the truth on that steaming pile. Tom Harkin was also caught in blatant lies about being a veteran. Then there was Pat Robertson too.
It would seem that politicians share this trait in dispropotion to the rest of us. Perhaps all of the lieing that they do so often numbs them until they become oblivious and too obvious.
I think Samuel Johnson said it most pithily: “Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”
On August 5, 1970 I helped medevac a young trooper from Kham Duc, Vietnam. He had been horribly wounded by a NVA Sapper who had thrown a satchel charge into his bunker.
I was medevaced the next day and it took me thirty years to learn the fate of that young soilder. In his name and that of the other 58,000 who died in Vietnam I curse Blumenthal.
Too many died too young to be mocked by such.
I think it is a shame that those who avoided Viet Nam don’t come clean about what the times were like. The country as a whole did not give young men a clear reason to risk their lives. In fact, it gave them plenty of reason to think that serving was immoral. As the protests grew and Walter Cronkite gave up on the mission, those who sought deferments were not necessarily cowards.
Rather than lying about or embellishing their service, they should come clean about society’s failure in those days and how that influenced decisions they now regret. I would much rather they taked about how their decision then affected their and has informed their mature views on things like duty and patriotism. I would like to hear them talk about the things society should do before we send our soldiers to another war and how the greatest sin is playing politics with the lives of the young. I would like them to tell their own journey from doubt and fear to belief in our country. The young can learn from our failures and mistakes only if we relate them in an honest and personal manner.
Correction: I would much rather they talked about how their decision then has affected their life…
Yes, only now do we appreciate how badly we were Cronkited back then. This underscores yet again the extent to which the subversive rot has infected the news media, and how long it has done so. Decades after the fact, we find that “the most trusted man in America” was in fact a leftist lunatic with a sonorous voice and grave demeanor.
The most telling indication of the problem was Dan Rather’s reaction to getting caught. It wasn’t shame, or embarrassment, as one might expect, but rather (!) indignation that anyone would question his word that the documents came from an “unimpeachable source.” Putting aside the obviously fraudulent nature of the documents, in no way, shape, or form could any honest observer ascribe the provenance of those documents to an “unimpeachable source.” The source was about as “peachable” as one could imagine, and Rather knew it, but tried to brazen it out. Kinda like he’d done this before, and no one had questioned him then..
According to the NYT, ” He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
There was nothing “mild” about Blumenthal’s press conference today, which was painful to listen to. In fact, contrary to the above info provided by geoffrey britain, Blumenthal claimed that instead of “waiting,” he went down to the recruitment office and signed up for the Marine Reserves “because there were waiting lines to get into the army marines….”! Yeah, tell that to all the guys who were drafted! I’m sure many would have preferred to wait in line.
Blumenthal further patted himself on the back: How did he find out about signing up with the Marines (Reserve)? Why, he looked it up in the phone book all by himself — instead of being called by the govt! Also of note, he had the gall to opine that he might have misspoken, BUT the “misunderstanding” might be due to some misleading articles written by reporters (he was careful to note that, of course, none of the reporters present at this press conference would have done such a thing!) and he “could not possibly know because their have been so many thousands of articles written about [him].”
He is a real piece of work! Even if one were to give him the benefit of the doubt — i.e. he got carried away in the past in the heat of campaigning — his speech today said volumes about this man’s character and integrity, or, rather, his lack thereof and left little doubt about who the man really is.
Those were the days my friends.
I graduated high school in 1950. I enrolled in college and got a student deferment as all young males were draft bait in those days. WWII vets that I knew counseled me to go to college because then I could go in as an officer. Their opinion was that it was a far better gig than be a dogface, as they had been.
Upon graduation I had a good job lined up with an oil company, but knew the draft board was going to be reviewing my case. In Sept. the draft notice came to my mother’s house in Colorado. I was working in Utah and she told me my notice had arrived. (I hadn’t expected it so soon.) I had to make a choice – get drafted or enlist. I opted for enlisting, made it into OCS, and then into Navy flight training. Korea ended as I began OCS. As luck would have it I liked flying and was good at it. So I decided to make a career of it. As a result was still on active duty when things heated up in Vietnam. No one would have predicted that Naval Aviation would play such a big role in that war but uit did. Most of us who were carrier pilots ended up doing at least one tour over there. At the time none of us thought much about who was dodging the draft or why. What we wanted to do was get the doggone war over. But our government’s lack of a desire to win and our journalists stood in the way. Then there were the student protests and the anti-military hatred we encountered when we got back home. Having lost six friends over there, I was pretty disgusted – no, I was boiling mad about the no win policies, the anti-Americanism of our journalists, and the pathetic spectacle of anti-war students chanting, “Better Red than dead!” Kerry’s lying, self-serving, treasonous behavior was so disgusting – I never understood why he wasn’t charged with treason for meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris. On top of that were the atrocities committed by the Communists in Vietnam and Cambodia after we betrayed the South Vietnamese. I don’t think there are many Vietnam vets around who are not still mad as hell about the whole stinking thing.
Why would any prevaricating politico want to lie about serving there? Beats the hell out of me.
As someone who served DURING Viet Nam whose brother in law was on 100% disability from his service IN Viet Nam I can assure everyone that people knew if they had served in or around Viet Nam. Mr. Blumenthal is simply a liar. He has demonstrated that trait on numerous occasions. Now that he has been exposed, the media will check out his history. Too bad they never checked out Obama.
In a related matter one source reported that Blumenthal claimed to have been captain of the Harvard swim team. It seems he was never on the team.
Did he at least go to Harvard? Or stop for a red light in Harvard Square? (Which would make him one of the few drivers there ever to do so.)
Where the hell are the MSM, anyway? How come they’re not breaking these stories? Too busy dumpster diving in Wasilla? Or do we already know the answer to that question?
Just saw that Chris Dodd (!) spoke up for Blumenthal, characterizing him as “one of the most honorable men I know.”
Oh. OK.
Surely Skylab will achieve self-awareness long before Democrats will.
You ask why. Shakespeare nailed it in Henry V.
“… and gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed and hold their manhood cheap…”
War is the most significant occurrence during any man’s lifetime and a man will, despite all his other achievements, always consider himself to have been weak or a shirker if his contemporaries served and he did not. I think pacifists suffer from this as acutely as anyone else.
God knows I feel that. My father and uncle were both lifers in the Marines, with my father winning a battlefield commission on Iwo Jima after most of his company was wiped out. (Shortly before my father died, I saw photo of his of about 40 guys sitting on bleachers. Because of the number of guys I asked if they were a football team. My father replied, “No, they were the survivors of B company after Iwo Jima.” “How many guys were in the company originally?” “240.”)
Despite being a lifer, my father perhaps unexpectedly didn’t want me to go into the Marines. I was always highly academic, and as a youth kind of a Ferdinand the Bull type; I had no animosity toward anyone (unlike now!), and even as a kid in a tough neighborhood hated fighting and only fought when absolutely unavoidable. (Although in Hunter’s Point that was all too frequently for my taste.)
I didn’t avoid the draft in college (my lottery number was a few higher than the highest called), but then I didn’t volunteer either, as befitted the lefty undergraduate I was at the time. I went on to grad school (at Berkeley, no less), and the scales dropped from my eyes about left-wing politics.
The upshot is that since then I’ve felt like a shirker, that I didn’t do my part, and frankly I’m a somewhat ashamed. My father (and wife) tried to talk me out of feeling that way, but the fact is, I feel that way to this day. I feel as though I was weighed in the balance, and found wanting. And that thought eats at me.
Sorry for the self-revelatory nature of this comment, but it’s something that’s weighed heavily on my soul for a long time. I wish I could go back and make amends.
Occam.
In the spirit…
I intended to serve in Viet Nam. I enlisted for Infantry, was commissioned out of OCS, went to jump school, language school and hearts and minds school
Got my orders.
My brother, an Air Force C130 nav, was killed a couple of months before I was due in country.
I had a choice; keep my parents from losing two and bail on my buddies, or go where I wanted to go and destroy my parents.
My father had been an Infantry platoon leader in the ETO and he had no illusions.
I chose to get off orders.
There was not a good choice. I have always regretted it, and if I had done the other, I would always have regretted it. Had I lived.
Richard, believe me, I understand, and fully empathize.
If it helps at all – even though I doubt that it does – you would have had regrets about any decision you made. Any at all. Paradoxically, the only men who wouldn’t feel that way are ones totally bereft of character, who think only of their own benefit and aggrandizement.
I’m sure that any second now we’ll hear cries of “Chickenhawk” from the left side of the blogosphere.
Someone who watched the press conference said that one of the vets supporting Blumenthal, referred to himself as an “ex-Marine” and commented on “basic training.” Marines NEVER refer to themselves as “ex”, they are and will always proudly be a Marine. Marines also use the term “boot camp” NOT “basic training.”
Then this popped up at Gateway Pundit blog:
Breaking: Blumenthal’s Soldier Supporter On Stage Today Is a Phony, Too
http://tinyurl.com/3a5werd
It’s looking like there was more than one liar on that stage.
Borepatch, I’m a geezer, but not done yet, and very much want redemption. If the Reds make their move before I’m too decrepit, I may just achieve it.
For some reason, the fact that Generalisimo Blumenthal comes from the Elliot Spitzer school of public service has largely escaped much of the conservative blogscape, at least as far as I can tell. He’s a long-time bully, who has repeatedly used his office for self-promotion and to advance the Left’s agenda. Walter Olson at Overlawyered gives some examples of his work here: http://overlawyered.com/2010/01/richard-blumenthal-guns-tobacco-and-grandstanding-ags/
This is getting fun. Blumenthal may havel also lied about being captain of the Harvard swim team: http://christopherfountain.com/2010/04/20/was-dick-blumenthal-really-captain-of-harvards-varsity-swim-team/
Occam’s and Richard,
In a world where far too many think that the side of the angels is clearly identified and easy to attain, your honest stories are what we all need to keep us humble. Thank you.
JJ,
I believed the journalists and opposed the war, but I had cousins who served. I remember a Christmas dinner with my aunt, the mother of one of them, and I remember her telling us about where he was. You could feel her worry. I never approved of the vile treatment of our soldiers, but I never did anything to oppose it. Maybe it is my own regret that is now feeding my opposition to the apology tours and my disgust at those who were for the war before they were against it. Thank you.
I served DURING Viet Nam I lost six good friends IN Viet Nam. Blumenthal is a damned liar.
I might look at Blumenthal in a better light if he had at least been honest when confronted with his lies. But he didn’t.
“On a few occasions, I have misspoken about my service and I regret that. I take full responsibility,” he said, surrounded by friendly veterans at a VFW hall in West Hartford.
“But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country,” Blumenthal added while making no apologies.
Note to Blumenthal: You didn’t miss speak you lied and YOU impugned your record with the lies.
It’s interesting how this sort of regret works. It’s not an either-or phenomenon, in my opinion; there are varying degrees, as there are for most things.
I served in the Israeli Army from 1986 to 1989, the standard three years for a male, as a military policeman. I served honorably, and feel not the slightest bit ashamed of my service. But I do sometimes wish I had had the guts to join a combat unit and make a difference there. Strange, isn’t it?
In re Blumenthal — you will find more men of character among military veterans, in my opinion, because military service forces you to look at your life in the barest, starkest possible terms. But military service certainly does not guarantee character; witness Marine Col. Jack Murtha.
I think Blumenthal got into the habit of lying about his service, now and then, simply because he thought he could get away with it. Simply that, nothing more. The real test, now, will be to see if he can own up to his mistakes like a man — admit that he screwed up, ask for forgiveness, and move on. His recent actions don’t bode well for that.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Expat,
The seeds of near civil war were sown by Vietnam. It tore some families apart, broke friendships, divided people who otherwise would have been cooperative. Unfortunately, many of those divisions are still with us. The anti-Americanism, the better Red than dead philosophy, the appeasement of tyrants and bullies policies, etc. are all still alive and well. And being pushed forward by Obama and friends.
For those who have changed their ideas about the war, I have the deepest respect and gratitude. It means you have been willing to think critically and see the other side of the story. Micael Medved is one who has been very up fron about his change of mind.
I also appreciate Occam’s and Richard sharing their feelings. I have a secret to tell them. They are not the only ones who feel guilt. Most combat survivors suffer from guilt too – survivor’s guilt. It comes from wondering why it was your friend and not you that didn’t come home. So many better men than I lost their lives, yet I’m still here. Why? It is an unanswerable question. But it is there as surely as the sun rising in the morning. Many PTSD sufferers find this to be their biggest issue. It gives one an impetus to try, as a survivor, to live a better life and honor the memory of your lost friends, but the guilt hangs on. It wasn’t until I turned my guilt over to God that it became bearable. That is not a plug for religion, but an acknowledgement that there are things in this world we cannot handle alone. We need to turn them over to a higher power however we conceive that power to be.
I am still a very angry, bitter man about Vietnam. I try to be a lot more philosophic today and don’t let it consume me the way it used to. However, I still wonder why some pol would lie about whether they had served or not. It was a stinking mess. Nothing to be proud about. I appreciate Dick Cheney’s answer that he had better things to do than serve in the military; honest, straight-forward with no apologies. Truth is, with his heart problems, he probably would have been 4-F anyway.
Was there a republican on the west coast, pacific northwest, possibly, who got busted for claiming to have been in Special Forces?
I believe he’s been submerged in well-deserved anonymity since.
Hadn’t heard that one. Maybe the MSM are hushing it up. I kid. The media would be doing everything up to putting flyers under windshield wipers for months if that were to happen.
There must be a psychology Ph.D. dissertation or two to be written on why leftists/ Dems/ Reds/ socialists/ progressives/ whatever they call themselves now are so given not just to misrepresentation, but to this particular form of misrepresentation. Considering that the L/D/R/S/P s are strongly anti-American and anti-military, why are they drawn like a moth to the flame for this fraud?
Freud could have a field day on this one.
Occam.
With respect, you don’t need Freud.
They think a significant number of the rest of us–the rubes–believe that military service is important.
Might be enough for a swing vote.
Richard, sure, that explains Blumenthal, and Jean Francois Kerry, but what about losers such as Jesse Macbeth, and the other anonymous lefty frauds whose names escape me now?
Maybe their idea was to garner attention, a la Cindy Sheehan. I don’t know.
Occam.
Don’t know what got MacBeth started, but once the anti-war folks discovered him, it was money for old rope. Couldn’t afford to quit.
Speaking of rope…
Occam.
Might be redundant. MacBeth’s usefulness ran out when he was busted. The anti-war folks, who can’t not have known, dropped him when it was clear to everybody.
I heard he got into trouble with the feds trying to get some bennies from the VA under false pretenses.