| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
23 Oct 2003 05:36:09 PM |
| Object: |
Americans are beginning to smell "Vietnam". |
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=526
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Commentary: Vietnam, Again?
The Bush Administration promised a quick and easy victory in Iraq, it
didn't happen;
now Americans are beginning to smell "Vietnam".
By Stewart Nusbaumer
At Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the U.S. military’s primary air
cargo port for the east coast, a new and larger morgue is about to
open.
Just in time.
The news from Iraq is roadside bombings, guerrilla hit-and-run
attacks, small-arms ambushes, mortar assaults, all followed by
announcements of U.S. war dead.
We do not know how many have been killed and wounded, but we do know
there have been many more than what the Administration predicted.
Many, many more.
The Bush Administration arrogantly said this war would be quick and
easy.
What it has become is bloody and what it is becoming is a brutal
quagmire.
The Administration warlords failed by starting this war and it is
failing in conducting the war.
But it’s not all bad for the Administration, according to Paul Bremer.
The civilian administrator in Iraq informed the U.S. Senate last month
that history is on our side.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bremer does not appear to know anything about
history.
When a weaker but determined enemy utilizes an asymmetrical war
strategy -- fighting a war other than what the more powerful force is
prepared to fight -- then the weaker power may very well defeat the
stronger one.
Mr. Bremer spoke to the Senators about Germany and Italy as historical
references, yet he carefully avoided more recent historical examples,
specifically, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
That is, the United States’ humiliating defeat in Vietnam and the
Soviet Union’s ruinous defeat in Afghanistan.
In both cases, it was the weaker power that defeated the stronger
power by engaging the superpowers in long, costly wars of attrition.
In Iraq today, guerrilla forces, armed with simple weapons and stealth
and personal fervor (from resisting a foreign occupying power), are
exploiting the U.S. military’s sluggishness, negating its superior
firepower, and undermining its political programs.
Iraq looks like another long war of attrition.
This does not place history on the side of the United States, but on
the side of Iraqi opposition.
Unfortunately, much of America seems to have forgotten that being a
superpower does not mean we actually possess super power.
There are limits to U.S. power; every nation has limits when imposing
its will on other people.
Our restraints may be less, but they still exist.
A costly guerrilla war in a far-off country for a goal not critically
important to America's security is one such limit on the effective use
of U.S. power.
We learned this in Vietnam.
But Americans have been fooled, again, duped by another generation of
zealots who rewrote history and insisted U.S. potential was nearly
limitless and the future was America’s to carve.
With full determination and confidence, the Republican leadership said
we could and we must remake the Middle East, and much of the nation
followed, reluctantly.
Last time our fervent believers swore that Vietnam was a falling
communist domino that would knock down all of Southeast Asia, then
India, sending destabilizing shocks throughout the world.
This time they swore that Iraq was a reverse domino that could spread
democracy and prosperity throughout the Middle East and then the
world.
Instead of stopping the communist domino in Southeast Asia, today's
neo-imperialists insisted America needed to push the Southwest Asian
domino of democracy and save the world.
In both cases, the preachers of war declared the security of the
United States was at stake.
In both cases, they lied terribly.
But Americans are beginning to wake up and to remember, at least some
are.
They are beginning to smell something familiar in the war in Iraq.
It’s not only the dead Americans that are stirring their memory, but
also the loss of American jobs.
Americans are remembering that wars of attrition bleed both soldiers
and economies, which together destroy domestic budgets, divide and
polarize people, increase crime, reduce welfare, undermine the "good
life" -- their American Dreams!
Wars seldom have serious impact on the wealthy, but they are
devastating to working people.
And Americans are remembering that Presidents exaggerate national
security threats, whether from communists in Southeast Asia or an Arab
dictator in Southwest Asia.
They are beginning to remember Vietnam.
Not necessarily consciously, but it's growing in the national mind.
Numerous recent polls show that white males, the group most supportive
of George Bush, are deserting the President, his handling of the war
and his management of the economy.
Americans are throwing George Bush's empire building into the dustbin
of the unimportant, along with his silly Great Domino Theory For
Democracy, as they refocus on the threats to their personal lives.
A failed war built on untrue premises has a way of snapping people
back to realizing what is really important in their lives.
The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz clique rewrote "history," but they
cannot reorder reality.
They deployed the strongest military in the world, yet they cannot
stop Americans from dying on the battlefield.
They committed America to an unnecessary war, but they are unable win
an unwinnable war.
And these men of business and wealth are now powerless to stop a
deteriorating economy, one that is chipping away at what they desire
most: the reelection of George Bush, their man in the White House.
Finally, and fundamentally, they cannot eradicate the horrible
historical mistake of Vietnam from the collective mind of America.
They thought they did, they were convinced the curse of Vietnam had
been buried, but that is also beyond their power.
Although Vietnam is seldom spoken, it is the dark, constant shadow in
the mind of America.
Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon tried to rewrite history and
committed America to an unwinnable war that became a quagmire that
drained not only American soldiers but also the American economy.
George Bush has taken the same arrogant road and committed America to
a similarly hopeless war that is spawning American dead and a ruinous
economy.
Hopefully this history will read differently than Vietnam, will say
that Americans quickly ended the bloodshed and suffering in Iraq by
retiring another President who imagined personal glory in death and
destruction.
Let's work for a better history than what Lyndon Johnson and Richard
Nixon gave America in the form of the Vietnam War.
Let's stop another Vietnam.
Stewart Nusbaumer is editor of Intervention. Stewart was in Vietnam in
1967, serving with the 3rd Marine Division.
__________________________________________________________
Remember?
General Westmoreland's constant claim that there was "light at the end
of the tunnel," that victory was imminent, was shown to be a lie.
Search and destroy was a pipe dream.
The NLF did not have to be flushed out of the jungle--it operated
everywhere.
No place in Vietnam was a safe base for American soldiers when the NLF
so decided.
Harry
.
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