Glenn Reynolds has written a column about Kerry and the Jane Fonda problem. Many bloggers will be posting and posting and posting.

I really don't want to write about this at all, for a variety of reasons. But what the hell; it's a big issue, whether I like it or not.

Yet another election is going to be about Vietnam.

Well, I am sick to death of Vietnam!

I am more sick of Vietnam than I am of Kerry, even. And that man promises to turn this election into a referendum on the morality of Vietnam.

It will be divisive and ugly.

For what it's worth, here's why I'm sick of Vietnam. I grew up with Vietnam on television, day after day after day. I saw the modern machinery of big media cut their teeth on Vietnam War coverage. Many of today's media titans were reporters during that war. Most of them were on the anti-war side.

I saw the Vietnam War manipulated by innumerable activists -- to the point where everyone was hounded by slogans like

"You're either part of the solution or part of the problem!"

Opposition to the war in Vietnam was more than an opinion in those days. It came to be a big dividing line in the culture.

One of the things I noticed early on was how tough it was to tell whether most of the antiwar activists were against the war out of genuine conviction (either that all war was wrong, or this war was wrong) or whether they were motivated by personal concerns and took on the antiwar stance as a sort of cover.

What do I mean by that?

Back in those days, the country had this thing called the draft. Most of the time, it took the form of avuncular General Hershey, who oversaw what was called the Selective Service System. The draft lent itself to endless mini-corruptions of the soul -- chiefly by a system of "deferments." If you were in college, you'd get a deferment. If you stayed on through graduate school, you'd get another deferment. A lengthy, drawn-out process that turned many a young man into a cringing wimp.

Under this system there were only two ways to avoid becoming a wimp: military service (of whatever variety might be available) or becoming a ferocious anti-war radical.

Many of the war protesters were really involved in the protests to prove their manhood. Failing that, they were at least covering up their cowardice. They weren't shirking a war because they didn't want to go! Why, they had principles!

All of these guys (those who served and those who shirked) are now middle aged men, in the prime income-earning years of their lives. What do they think? Is there still animosity between those who served and those who didn't?

How much self-righteous anger and indignation can be summoned?

Enough to win or lose an election? Enough to favor Bush or Kerry?

Both men served, but each had a different message about the war -- and each one will try to spin his version to these middle aged men from both camps.

I have no idea how it might play out, nor do I know how the rest of the country might feel.

I'm from the post-draft (er, "new, improved draft") generation. For men born after 1953 (a key dividing line in the Boomer generation, by the way), a lottery system replaced the draft. It was a good idea, really. Instead of the never-never land of endless deferments (and classifying nearly everyone else 1-A), the new system was swift and certain. Each day of the year was assigned a number, and numbers would be called from lowest to highest. Depending on what number your date of birth drew, you knew the odds, because by the time I was eligible, they were only calling the first 100 or so numbers. When my birthday drew number 318, I knew that I simply would not be drafted.

Besides, when I turned eighteen it was 1972, and the war had been pretty much settled by a now-long-forgotten (but then soon-to-be-signed) peace treaty.

Yes! There was peace in Vietnam, and the treaty's drafters, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, were each awarded a Nobel Prize. (1973)

Nixon intended for the peace to hold, and he had bombed the shit out of North Vietnam to the point where they really couldn't stand it anymore. They knew that despite Nixon's "Vietnamization," and "peace with honor" plan, he wouldn't hesitate to send the B52s right back if there'd been any trouble.

Fortunately for North Vietnam, a thing called Watergate intervened.

At least this election isn't about Watergate.

(I heard a lot about that too.)

UPDATE: Reading over this post (I edit by reading the blog because Movable Type is too uncooperative), I was struck by the way my lottery number -- 318 -- leaped from my memory as I wrote, when I hadn't thought about it in years.

I guess that war really did a number on people.

Would I have been "different" had I drawn a low number and had to contend with the draft? Would it have made me a better person to have been forced to serve? Or would it have been better to have molded myself into a "principled" antiwar activist motivated mainly by indignantly denied cowardice?

I'll never know -- any more than I'll know what it would have been like to be uncircumcised.