So the talk in the US these days is of who did or didn't do what in Vietnam the best part of 40 years ago, writes Kevin Myers.
The Kerry campaign is delighted with the overall perception that its boy gallantly volunteered to do his duty and emerged a war hero, while - it chortles - Bush skulked within the comfort of the Air National Guard in Texas.
In fact, like many well connected white boys, both tried (understandably) to avoid action in Vietnam by volunteering for safe branches of the US armed forces. Bush joined the air force reserve in Texas, to protect the US from Mexico; Kerry volunteered for the US navy, at a time when it seemed the Vietnamese were as great a threat to American seamen as Papa Doc's Tonton Macoute were to the Eskimos of the Yukon.
Malnourished and incredibly brave Vietnamese Communist forces were hiding 20 miles north of Saigon, plucking leeches out of their flesh in two-feet-wide tunnels 20 feet underground; the US navy was a hundred miles out at sea, in air-conditioned ships, eating three regular meals a day, its white-suited officers making lots of preppy Ivy League contacts for use in later life. (So who do I personally empathise with? The Vietnamese. Who was historically right? The Americans.)
Then one day some bright spark decided to surprise the Vietcong by sending boats up the Mekong Delta's many waterways. Ah. But boats, however, need sailors: so, suddenly, it seemed, the war had come to seamen. Lots of gallant, wanly Wasp smiles from Jeff and Clark and Kent on the quarterdeck. No matter; when the time came, Kerry did his bit, and no doubt deserved his medals.
But what if the US hadn't fought against Communism in Vietnam for over a decade, from 1963 to 1975? How different would the world be today? South Vietnam would probably have collapsed in 1964, followed soon afterwards by Cambodia and Laos, and then Thailand. The Communist insurgency in Malaysia, defeated by British Commonwealth forces at colossal cost in the 1950s, would have been reignited, with the country's leader, Tengku Abdul Rahman, a priapic, genial old scoundrel, utterly unable to oppose it. Successful there, insurgency could have leapt borders to ignite in Burma.
Communism was a powerful force in India in those days. Who knows what the proximity of a Communist campaign in the Burmese jungles would have had on the vast army of the untouchables across Indian Bengalistan, who might have deludedly sensed freedom in Marxism? Meanwhile, emboldened by the success and vitality of violent Marxism elsewhere, might Indonesia's vast army of Communists - largely ethnic Chinese - not have begun their own insurgency? Or might the crypto-Communist leader Ahmed Sukarno, an unstable idiot, not have thrown in his lot with the resurgent power of Communist countries? What, then, would the impact of such events have had on the thinking of the politburos of the Kremlin and Peking? These were all violent men, veterans of revolutions in which millions had died: human life meant nothing to them.
The Soviet Union was at that time coming to terms with the West because Stalin was dead and "peaceful coexistence" was in vogue. But was the flame of revolution not burning still in those old Bolshevik hearts? And for all their differences with their fellow Communists in the Kremlin, would the Chinese not have leapt at the opportunity to spread Communism through neighbouring countries? Imagine, then, the consequences for Africa if Communism had swept across Asia, and grown stronger in the anti-colonial guerrilla movements in Mozambique and Angola? What would pathological clowns like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, already the recipient of much Soviet military aid, have done?
In the Arab world, Ba'athism would have blossomed. And in South America, Dr Death himself, Che Guevara, who yearned to turn the entire continent into Vietnam, might well have seen his dreams come true. Imagine, then, the gloom spreading through the serfdoms of eastern Europe, as their oppressors' puppets triumphed across the globe.
Virtually everyone who was young in those days - and that includes me - was vehemently opposed to the US war in Vietnam. We derided the "domino" theory, though the early 1970s proved the theory was right: within the twinkling of an eye, all Indo-China fell to violent Communism, and Cambodia vanished into a darkness of genocide and cannibalism. But their 10-year stand-fast in Vietnam had enabled the Americans to erect a firewall in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia. Moreover, both the Chinese and the Soviet now understood the consequences of taking on the US: you might win, as North Vietnam finally did, but at terrible cost.
Of course the war was an abomination, and the Americans did some terrible things, as do all armies in all wars. They did dreadful things in Korea too, but they were on the side of freedom - which doesn't excuse everything, but consider this. The average annual income in democratic South Korea today is €18,000. In Vietnam it is €477. In North Korea, it is about two blades of grass.
Both US presidential candidates tried to hide in the military undergrowth to avoid service in Vietnam. One, Kerry, was flushed out and sent into action and in time became a hero. George W. Bush might have been one too if his Air National Guard unit had been deployed in Vietnam.
They were both, unwillingly, on the same side, against Communism. Where is Communism today? That, not their military records, is the interesting story about what was happening nearly 40 years ago.