Refighting Vietnam in Battleground States

TAMPA, Fla. — Over coffee, the two recent college graduates sat debating the significance of a bitterly contested war that left them deeply divided.

Not Iraq, but Vietnam.

"I don't care about that war," said Rich Clark, 25. "It didn't affect my generation. It's ancient history."

His friend begged to differ. "Vietnam is an analog to what's happening in Iraq, another war America got suckered into and shouldn't be fighting," said Julio Torres, 29. "It couldn't be more important."

In Florida -- a key battleground in this year's presidential election -- and elsewhere in the nation, the campaign's focus has shifted to a tumultuous era of antiwar marches and counter-demonstrations. Three decades after its bitter conclusion, the Vietnam War again is playing a discordant role on the national political stage as debate rages over Sen. John F. Kerry's record in a military conflict waged before Clark and Torres were born.

The dispute prompted Cheryl Koski, 47, a college journalism professor in Tampa, to pose a question echoed by many voters: "Why are we going back and revisiting all this?"

The newest Vietnam debate has ensnared not only voters who are familiar with the period, such as Koski, but a new generation -- many of whom know little about the conflict and the swirling national ill-will it engendered at home and abroad.

While many younger voters dismiss Vietnam as irrelevant -- their father's, or even grandfather's war -- others are hashing over its significance today and whether it should become part of the process in picking the next president.

Among all voters, how those questions are answered could prove crucial to who wins Florida and other closely contested states expected to determine the outcome of November's vote.

Historians suggest that Vietnam continues to plague the national consciousness because it foreshadowed America's present-day international status: mired in an unpopular war that has prompted much of the rest of the world to condemn the United States.

"Vietnam remains such a hot-button issue in part because it doesn't fit into America's heroic, freedom-loving sense of itself," said Peter Kuznick, a historian at American University In Washington.

"It's the most egregious case of us being on the wrong side of history -- the bad guys. And the recent debate over John Kerry's wartime experiences has forced us to relive that contradiction all over again."