THE LAST MAN TO DIE FOR A MISTAKE

When Kerry said "no" to Jim Lehrer's question about whether soldiers in Iraq are "dying for a mistake," his answer was so transparently contradictory to everything else he said in the debate that, while certainly false, I don't think it even qualifies as deceit. A "yes" would grab headlines and be endlessly quoted and replayed to Kerry's disadvantage. "American Soldiers Are 'Dying for a Mistake,' Says Kerry" would be the headline of every newspaper on the planet. Kerry was just refusing to testify against himself. (A constitutional right recognized in the Fifth Amendment, so I'm told.) Fair enough. Voters will have to put two and two together on their own.

Kerry coined the remark. He deserves a say in what ironic historical echoes it may have.

There may be another ironic historical echo in store for Kerry's best line. Thirty years ago, a military quagmire and a radical counter-culture conspired to trigger a crisis of self-doubt in America. People like John Kerry came to believe that freedom wasn't worth defending. That communism and democracy were morally equivalent. That each country had its own truth. What we had thought was good-- our leadership in a global struggle against totalitarianism-- we suddenly came to believe was evil. Though we had claimed sovereignty over no foreign territory, we began to think of ourselves as "imperialist." Though we received no forced transfers from other countries but on the contrary distributed foreign aid, we came to believe we were "exploitative." A certain vague guilt complex developed. While based to some extent on facts-- for the exercise of power had led us to expedients whose justice may rightly be questioned-- it was ultimately not dependent on them, and no improvement in our behavior could dispel the conviction that we are guilty. Such was the Vietnam complex, an intellectual cancer that crippled our moral will for a generation. That was the mistake, the "colossal error of judgment." Reagan began to exorcise it, and the fall of communism constituted a vast refutation of the insidious relativism that romanticized revolutions and made freedom and totalitarianism equivalent. John Kerry's defeat will complete the exorcism. John Kerry will become... the last man to die for a mistake.

(Not die. Lose an election. Pardon the poetic license.)