Bush, seeing no need for major changes other than his recent escalation, said Thursday, "Our troops in Iraq are performing brilliantly.
Along with Iraqi forces, they have captured or killed an average of more than 1,500 enemy fighters per month since January."
That is no different than Johnson bragging to the media in February of 1968 that 10,000 communist fighters were killed and 2,300 detained in the latest battles, compared to only 249 US fatalities. "I can count," Johnson said. ". . . is that a great enemy victory?"
Johnson won the body count and lost the war. Bush has yet to see that his war is down for the count.
The blockquote is the end of on op ed with the same title as this diary. Appearing in toda'Boston Globe, it is by the inimitable Derrick Jackson. Read it. I did. Which is why I wrote this.
I tried above the fold to give a sense of the column. It is so well constructed it is hard to do so without violating copyring. Let me offer one slightly earlier paragraph that can help establish the parallels which Jackson draws before the debacle of my generation, Vietnam, and that of today, Iraq:
We are 4 1/2 years into this war, and the Bush administration has not sorted out what we have done. Bush, by citing isolated examples of "how our strategy is working" and deluding himself about "the progress I have reported tonight," is no different than when General William Westmoreland told the National Press Club about Vietnam War in 1967, "I am absolutely certain that where as in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."
I find myself in a strange situation. In 1965 I enlisted in the United States Marines because I believed I had an obligation to serve, even though I strongly opposed the war in Vietnam, having marched against it the previous year. In those days there was still a draft, to which in theory I would have been subject once I dropped out of college, which I was about to do - I still needed to grow up at age 19 at the end of the my sophomore year. I had a nsacent sense of obligation to give back, the same sense that led me to leave the private sector first to work for local government for the better part of a decade, then for more than a decade to work as a public school teacher. Further, I thought it somewhat immoral that because of my middle class background I had been able to avoid being drafted because I was in college while others, more heavly among minorities, were being forced into service and often into combat. As it turns out, my previous psychological problems might have prevented my induction: I had to argue my way past a psychiatrist in order to enlist.
I truly believe that once draft exemptions were enlisted and we went to a lottery system, the greater exposure of children of the elite to the possible ravages of war helped hasten the end of our participation in that unwinnable conflict. Certainly the 1968 Tet offensive, whether or not it was a military disaster for our military opponents as some might argue, what a political disaster for the American war effort. The offensive began January 30, 1968, and the American people were shocked by the widescale effort the Viet Cong were able to undertake after the repeated assurances from Gen. Westmoreland of light at the end of the tunnel, a light that then seemed like an onrushing train. on March 31 (while I was in Sweden) Lyndon Johnson told the nation he was not running for reelection, only weeks after the bragging in February to which Jackson refers in his column.
Iraq and Vietnam have parallels, but they are far from exact. In both cases the nation was taken to war on false pretenses. One that might elude some people is the connection in profiteering - Brown & Root Construction made a fortune building the Cam Ranh Bay naval complex during Vietnam, and we all know about its successor, Kellogg, Brown, Root, as a subsidiary of Halliburton. But while the current vice president headed the latter (Halliburton), Johnson's connection was that George Brown may well have bought his first seuccessful (disputed) Senate primary victory for him (Brown was involved also in a previous challenge for the Senate against a sitting governor that Johnson narrowly lost and which had massive corruption on both sides).
The most important distinction, looking back, as that Johnson was a tragic figure. He had much experience in confronting poverty, and a personal commitment to making a positive difference for those less well off. He fought for civil rights, and for making an economic difference. I think he personally agonized over the deaths of American troops, perhaps because he himself saw service during WW II, leaving the House to serve in the Navy and being awarded (with some controversy attached) the Silver Star. And there is no doubt of his commitment to alleviating the effects of poverty. FWIW - No Child Left Behind is the current incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which first became Federal law during Johnson s' presidency.
I have sympathy for Johnson, and despite the damage to his legacy done by Vietnam, view his presidency on the whole positively. I cannot say anything positive for the current president, either as a person or as a leader. He has benefited from privilege, avoided responsibility, refused to acknowledge his failings. Like his immediate predecessor, he is my age contemporary, although I graduated from high school one year earlier than either. Neither really confronted the challenge of Vietnam. Cilnton at least partially confronted the other great moral challenge of the time, Civil Rights.
I wish I had words of wisdom. I wish I might be able to offer the one great insight that could extricate this nation from the morass of Iraq. It, like Vietnam, is now seen as a political problem, and far too much of the discussion - in the media and I would guess in Congress as well - as on that level. The discussion should be on Iraq as a moral problem. I see the supporters attempt to use pseudo-moral arguments for political advantage.
I said that I find myself in a strange situation. There is nothing I can hope to say that has not already been said, multiple times, by many people, with far more clarity and cogency that I can hope to offer. That is far too reminiscent for me of the period between April 1 1968, when I read in the International Herald Tribune of Johnson's announcement that he was not running, and 7 years later when the helicopters used to evacuate people from the U S Embassy in Saigon were being pushed over the side of an aircraft carrier whose flight deck was overloaded with evacuees. Starting in the mid-1970's we saw an increasing number of political candidates who had served in Vietnam, sometimes spending time as POWs, and they were usually running as Republicans, perhaps in opposition to the failed management of the war. Now we see Democrats in a similar posture in this conflict.
I don't know if Jackson thinks the parallel he makes between Petraeus and Westmoreland means 7 more years of conflict in Iraq. Such a possibility horrifies me. The level of US military deaths is certainly less than it was in 1968, although the total level of casualties as compared to the force levels in country are not dissimilar, especially were we to include those suffering PTSD. Our medicine has improved significantly so that many who would have died 4 decades ago now survive, having experienced their own "alive days."
For a long time during the late 1960s I used to regularly participate in silent vigils against the war: every Sunday Morning I would stand for an hour in front of the Arch at Washington Square Park in the Village before heading off to Quaker Meeting on W. 4TH Street (I may not have officially become a Friend until 2003, but I already had strong leanings in that direction). Nowadays I find my protests in my late fifties and early sixties limited to pouring out my frustrations and anger and sadness in words such as these.
I find myself in a strange place. In 1968 I turned 22. I had not seen combat, but I had served with those who had. And foolish me, I thought my silent vigils could make a difference. In 2008 I will turn 62. I am far more directly politically active than I was 4 decades ago. And yet I feel my political efforts make less difference than did standing silently on a Sunday morning for the several dozen vehicles and a similar number of pedestrians who might see us.
Four decades ago we had been threatened with the domino theory, that time's version of if we didn't fight them over there, the consequences that would ensue. It was as intellectually vacuous and for a while politically effective an approach as anything ever crafted by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney on behalf of this administration.
I do not apologize for the meandering quality of this diary. It has a purpose.
Today I will do two things. I will head south for the annual Collis-Warner pig roast put on by our next Senator from Virginia Mark Warner and his wife Lisa Collis. Many in the Virginia political community will not be there - today is too important for those campaigning to take back the General Assembly. I will then head North for a birthday party for my father-in-law. Those two events means I will not be participating in the demonstrations in the District, whose importance I acknowledge, even as I also note that one difference from 4 decades ago is that demonstrations no matter how large no longer seem to have political or media impact: if they had, those before this war began would have been sufficient to prevent it.
I do not belittle the efforts of those who take such a path. For myself? I find that I must do other things, work for putting together the structures political and otherwise to rebuild this nation morally, economically, politically. It is a major part of why I still teach, and have now committed to my principal that I will do at least one more year after this one (unless I get sucked into a serious role in a political campaign, something I do not anticipate but would consider if asked) in which case I would take a leave of absence.
Perhaps it is a function of my increasing age,the amount of exhaustion, mental, physical and emotional, that I feel at the end of every school week. I do not yet despair, but I worry that I have a decreasing belief in my ability to make a difference. This administration has so demoralized so many and angered so many others that I fear that we have become Humpty Dumpty. And I have not even a fraction of the king's horses and men that were insufficient for reconstructing him.
I think we must demand that those who want our support politically take a stand. I believe that standing up to the continuation of the debacle that is Iraq is a moral imperative, as is insisting upon restoration of a nation that guarantees individual rights for all here, including those here ostensibly illegally - after all, we theoretically begin with a presumption of innocence, and if we deny that to anyone however loathsome we have abandoned a principle for which it will thereby become more difficult to advocate when we need it for ourselves and those dear to us. Waiting until we have greater political control means abandoning those who suffer or day in the meantime. It would be the equivalent of our agreeing with Boehner, that the sacrifice is worth it.
For me political control and power should be for a purpose. And that purpose has to be moral. Given that framing, it is unacceptable to ignore immorality in the interim until we can achieve power.
Or to quote from Hillel, "If not now, when?"
Today I will do "more normal" activities of life. While doing them I will continue to advocate for right action, as the Buddha might have expressed it. Perhaps that is as close as I can now come to standing before Washington Square Arch, attempting in my daily activities to witness to what I believe is correct. I am a political creature, or I would not be participating here. But first I am a human being, interconnected with every other human being on this planet, now and hopefully in the future. They may have no awareness of my existence, they may be oblivious to any impact my words or actions might have. But I am not. I am responsible for what I say and do.
This is my meandering reflection. If you have persisted this far, I thank you.
What about you? Are you in a strange place? Are we all strangers in a strange land? Or is the strangeness really that in many ways the place is very familiar?
Peace.