Well, after receiving a few comments on the Swift Boat ads that Mac and I debated I’ve come to the (thankful) conclusion that the controversy, for what it was worth, seems to be closing.
Two things.
Yes, S.L.A. Marshall was a controversial figure in military history. If you Google his name (a questionable way of conducting research) you find some websites in which his methodology is attacked.
Mr. Marshall did claim to interview far more men than he was probably capable of (he claimed to have interviewed over 400 companies in research for WWII combat effectiveness, roughly 4,000+ people if he got to them all), but the core tenet of his study has held true ever since. The U.S. military fully endorsed his findings and have never questioned his results.
Mr. Marshall found two things. 1) Combat is so stressful and chaotic that “after action reports” had to be compiled by many sources since having one person’s recollections of an event as terrifying as armed combat was too unreliable.
2) Many U.S. soldiers wouldn’t fight in WWII because of fear. They were too afraid to both shoot and be shot to be very effective soldiers.
The U.S. military took this to heart and for the next forty years used his findings to train U.S. soldiers.
This goes to the heart of what the Swift Boat ads do, which is use suspect recollections (no one man can say they know what happened, and this isn’t a philosophical debate, it’s a fact) to distort and smear.
The attacks on Kerry were frequently baseless, biased, and partisan. And every time I say that I get someone who says “How do you know? You weren’t there!”
Well, neither were you. And in the end, debating this is not meant to answer that question, it’s meant to distract and distort the record. I chose to believe the Navy’s reports that gave Kerry his medals because no one….absolutely no one in the military has ever questioned them. The veterans that don’t agree with them now didn’t have problems with the medals (at least in how Kerry earned them) until he ran for president. And that should cast doubt on these gentlemen’s claims at the outset.
Last, the whole issue of 527’s is a moot point. 527’s are a creation of the tax code, something so easily (and so often) changed that it is silly to debate their existence.
527’s are, on the whole, a loophole in McCain-Feingold put there because people didn’t really think it through. Now that we’ve seen the good and evil they can accomplish, they will either a) disappear as more politicians are the focus of their wrath, or b) remain because politicians like how the groups can do their dirty work without those same politicians getting their hands dirty.
Personally, I think they’re fine. I don’t think the Swift Boat ads are about 527’s. That’s a dodge the President is using (a canard if you will) because he loves the Swift Boat ads. I think they’re a great contribution to the political debate.
I simply don’t like the Swift Boat ads because they’re untrue.
