Say what? You didn’t know the Democratic presidential candidates debated on TV Saturday night in Columbia, S.C.? Neither, apparently, did most Americans. The debate was Page 22 in The New York Times. Across the top, the headline: "Democrats’ First Presidential Debate Shows Party Fissures."

And how! The nine candidates -- or was it 29? -- nattered and niggled over health care, Bush tax cuts and Iraq. Perhaps especially the latter.

Sen. Joe Lieberman got into it with Sen. John Kerry over his rival’s supposed "ambivalence" concerning the war. Not that ambivalence -- from Lieberman’s standpoint -- wasn’t better than the toasty-hot opposition for which Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and several other candidates will be asked to answer.

Lieberman, for his part, felt called to wonder how Americans were likely to judge "our party’s willingness to make the tough decisions to protect their security in a world after Sept. 11."

Well might he wonder, because to all appearances the rock-bottom foreign-policy stance for numerous influential Democrats remains"Hey, Hey, LBJ! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?"

Vietnam, for Democrats aged, say, 45 to 65, is the definitional issue, just as it was the definitional issue 30 years ago. Around it spun -- and still spins -- everything else.

The war ended, supposedly, three decades ago. In fact, it never ended. On it goes, the people of the streets -- ours, not Saigon’s -- waging endless battle against the evil military-industrial complex and our imputed lust to turn foreign people into red-blooded Americans.

The boys and girls of the streets, a little less luminescent now (more hygienic, though, in general) just can’t let go. What they don’t want to believe -- because it contradicts so sternly and forcefully what they believed in 1968 -- is that you can’t trust the United States.

The outcome, thus far, of the Iraq intervention points us in a different direction. Why, yes, after all, you can trust the United States to do battle for the lives and liberties of the oppressed. Just look at Iraq. Continued...