Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
WASHINGTON - Perhaps it's just the dog days of summer in the nation's capital, with the heat and humidity high enough to blister a ball-peen hammer, that calls Vietnam to mind.
Or maybe it's the Boston convention spectacle where a Vietnam veteran, John Kerry, was nominated for president to the accolades of a hall full of cheering delegates who doubtless included a large number of retread hippies, antiwar demonstrators and assorted draft dodgers, including at least one on the podium.
It could simply be the unending war in Iraq, with its daily body count, which is now under new senior civilian management, and the fact that this new management team boasts firsthand Vietnam War experience, that brings an old, lost war to mind.
Next spring it will be 30 years since Saigon fell and America's 10-year war ended in an unseemly stampede to the helicopters on the rooftops. Yet Vietnam is not only still with us, it is an issue in the presidential campaigns of the year 2004.
Even Bill Clinton told the Democrats assembled in Boston that it was better to have served in Vietnam than to have evaded service - and won thunderous applause for the line. Bill, of course, was comparing Kerry's combat service with President George Bush's alternative service in the Air National Guard. Pretty good for a guy who, as he acknowledged, evaded service in the military himself.
Then there is the vice president, Dick Cheney, who turns up most frequently on military bases to give his political speeches for the other side. That would be the same Dick Cheney who took four or five draft deferments during Vietnam because he had better things to do than serve his country.
Forgive us if, on days like this, we fear we have fallen down the rabbit hole and passed through the looking glass. Things just keep on getting curiouser and curiouser.
The pollsters tell us that America is pretty well polarized by this election; that the election will be decided by the undecideds who make up only 5 percent or 6 percent of voters. Everyone else, they say, is locked in on one side or the other, arguing hotly over the dinner tables of America, no longer listening to anyone or anything.
The one bit of really interesting news this summer is the handover of the American civilian effort in Iraq from the Coalition Provisional Authority run by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to a full-fledged U.S. Embassy run by the Office of the Secretary of State. A segue from military hawks to civilian diplomats? Not really.
The new ambassador, John D. Negroponte, began learning his civil-military moves in Saigon a long time ago. His No. 2 in Baghdad, James F. Jeffrey, was an Army officer in Vietnam in the early 1970s. The man in charge of political-military affairs is Ronald E. Neumann, another Army officer in Vietnam. And William B. Taylor Jr., head of the Iraqi Reconstruction Management team, is a West Point graduate who was also an Army officer in combat in Vietnam.
They report to a secretary of state, Gen. Colin Powell, who served two tours in Vietnam early in his career, and a deputy secretary of state, Rich Armitage, who did three tours in Vietnam in the brown water Navy in the Mekong Delta.
There is, they say, more military experience represented in the executive suites of the State Department than in the entire Office of the Secretary of Defense.
It doesn't necessarily mean that things suddenly are going to begin working better and more efficiently in Baghdad. But, given the fact that they could hardly get much worse 16 months after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, there is hope for improvement.
Who knows? In a time when one can hear Bill Clinton praising one man's combat service over another man's evasion of service, literally anything can happen.
