Long resisting any comparisons between the current Iraq War and the Vietnam War…..Bush abandoned all reason today and invoked the Vietnam War in a way which was tailor made to his War Veteran Audience.
A commonly held belief of Vietnam War Era Vets…is that the administration of the day tried to micromanage the War….and if only the politicians would allow the Generals to run things their way…then they would surely have success. How slow people can be to learn the lessons of history. How distasteful it was of Bush to play on the aged psyches of these veterans. Generations in the U.S. have been indoctrinated to believe that War solves problems. It does not. It merely creates new problems and short of complete annihilation…any enemy of today may only become a worse more committed enemy of the future.
Bush has made great pains to say again and again…that he lets the Generals make the decisions…this is demonstrably False….people who’ve never fought in a War have been playing out their War Game Fantasies with the blood, sweat, and guts of real human beings….both soldier and citizen. If American Citizens do not take their country back…..we may one day be wishing that all Americans should be scattered to the four winds of the earth….and that they should never be allowed to form a country again. The opposition to the U.S. government must become unified and develop something approaching a spine rather than think that they are playing political games…giving the U.S. president dictatorial powers of spying on U.S. citizens or any other citizens is not a compromise!!! After all the lack of wisdom and recklessness displayed by this administration….it’s amazing to me that these politicians of both parties in Congress approach these issues so ignorantly. If Bush claimed that Muslims were biologically disposed to violence and that they should all be rounded up and put in prisons….this congress would try to compromise with him….well…don’t put them all in jail….but watch them all very carefully! That’s what they would say.
If it is true that most Americans are unhappy with this current congress it is clearly connected to their not standing up to this administration and to their grand standing to little real effect. A lot of these politicians have also taken to blaming the victim…like lots of abusers….they have started blaming the one that they have abused. Trying to cover up their own culpability. The differences between Iraqis could have been dealt with in a healthy way if they weren’t continuing to face such danger daily from a situation created by the U.S. Sunnis and Shia live and work together side by side in lots of countries just as Catholics and Protestants…Hindus and Buddhists….Hindus and Sikh. Extremists have taken the initiative to try and increase their own power and have used their divisions to do it. Unfortunately it is the regular people who most want to be tolerant and have a stable life in fairly secular terms…who are daily draining out of the country….the only people left will be extremists wanting power…Iraq will now suffer the same future as Yugoslavia…a division of the country will be necessary or genocide will be the result. The U.S. has exacerbated the differences between Iraqis by installing a puppet government based on a so called “free election” when tribalism and religious differences were clearly what people were marking on the ballot papers. Without national reconciliation a la South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission there is no way that democracy has a chance to develop….the people will cling to tribal and religious loyalties irregardless of the candidates qualifications or intentions.
I’d like to call upon our resident historian [Blaze] and ask him if he has any thoughts to share upon this Vietnam business. Apparently it is a commonly held Neo-Conservative Myth….that the death and turmoil that occurred after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam was because they pulled out. In particular they try to link the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia to this pull-out. As I understand it historians of any seriously objective approach see this as ludicrous. As I understand it, Vietnam was a country in the process of civil war which the French foolishly got involved with…and the U.S. followed….making it out to be a question of Communism versus Capitalism….Totalitarianism versus Democracy….when in fact it was a People’s Movement against the oppression of the well to do fat cats and well heeled colonials. Like Cuba before it….the Vietnam War came about because the powerful and influential tried to resist the desires of the regular people. I fear that the time for evolutionary change in the U.S. is quickly slipping away and it will be replaced with revolutionary methods. The world has not had a chance to vote for these rulers….and yet they screw up country after country around the world. How long will people sit back and allow this to continue. As inspired by V for Vendetta………..The Ulcered Sphincter of Asserica does not seem to tire of War….they’re still re-fighting the Vietnam War in their minds….decades later.
+ Robyn Graves +
