Yesterday, Hugh Hewitt pushed hard on President Bush's Vietnam analogy, emphasizing that a U. S. withdrawal would leave Iraqis to the Arab Pol Pot, genocide, and torture. Images of American guilt for Cambodian genocide were as hot and heavy as facts and analysis about Iraq were scarce and unmentioned.
This brings the right-wing full circle on Iraq. When the Bush administration and the attack media originally promoted the invasion, the argument that got them over the top was the idea of establishing "democracy in Iraq" and spreading democracy in the Middle East. That's an idea that had it's liberal origins in the French Revolution and Marxist development in the goal of spreading communism. The administration's conservative arguments about American "empire" and fear of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were not moving popular opinion decisively in favor of invasion. As a result, the administration had to throw in the liberal idea of spreading democracy abroad even as they were undermining the rule of law and our democratic rights at hom. The administration had to do this because United States is not a conservative country despite the presence of an active right-wing. To seal the deal on the war, the Bush administration's propoganda machine had to appeal to the liberal instincts of most Americans.
The right is making the same move now. Giving up temporarily on conservative analogies about Winston Churchill, our fate, and god's design for us, the right is now trying to appeal to a liberal sense of guilt over our potential responsibility for civilian casualties. Given the prominence which liberal filmakers and teachers have given to the Cambodian "Killing Fields" over the last twenty years, it's easy to see the power of the image and the sense of guilt and responsibility that it would stimulate.
One could be outraged over the cynicism of the right-wing's appeal. I don't remember the right caring too much about genocide in Cambodia in the years after the news emerged.
And it is outrageous.
Instead of being stuck on our outrage, however, let's design a little test for the sincerity of right-wing figures like President Bush, Hugh Hewitt, and the rest of the people flogging the Vietnam/Cambodia analogy.
The test is simple. If the Hugh Hewitts of the world are sincere in their worries about genocide, they will have already expressed a great deal of"guilt" and remorse over the at least one hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion.
Personally, I haven't seen any of that guilt. So, I have to assume that the current effort by the right to promote a Vietnam/Cambodia analogy is as cynical and dishonest as the rest of their propoganda ploys.
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With layer upon layer of exaggeration, and lies, George W. Bush and his war cabinet flung our nation into an illegitimate, illegal, and unnecessary war.
The costs and consequences of this have been and will continue to be enormous.
Lives have been needlessly lost. Political instability and extremist religious fundamentalism are catching on like wildfire. The chances of terrorist “blowback” have increased enourmously.
For us at home, the immediate causalities have been jobs, education, health care, civil rights,and civil liberties. Returning soldiers and their families, recieve insufficient help (read NO HELP) from the right-wing gang in Washington. Just ask my cousin Lt. Justin Barnette who served 18 months of a six-month tour of duty in Iraq building roads for oil companies. A National Guardsman BUILDING ROADS FOR OIL COMPANIES!!
So, we are mired in this war. Men, women and children have died agonizing deaths for no
reason. “Shock and Awe,” the name given to the initial stage of the U.S. bombing, slaughtered innocent Iraqis, and destroyed and fragmented a once reasonably stable country.Saddam Hussein was a brutal man but much like Mussareff of Pakistan, we needed to live with it for the sake of stability.
In this war, much like other wars, the White House architects of this disaster nor their children have shed a drop of blood nor come home in body bags. That fate has, as always, fallen largely on the sons and daughters of the poor and the near poor.
From the very start the Bush administration has offered no compelling justification for war. As each of its reasons for invasion have been found wanting in the Security Council and the court of world public opinion, it has had to invent a new rationale. But each time it came up empty and found itself more isolated. This has been further amplified by the Bush administration’s arrogance and its bullying ways in the international arena.
And yet it would be a mistake to see diplomatic blunders as the reason for this crisis. The underlying cause is the administration and the far-right in general have an unchecked desire for regime change and its ambition for world empire.
Since 2002, the Bush administration has carved out in full public view a new and dangerous doctrine based on preemptive strikes, regime change, and the dominance of right-wing desires for U.S. imperialism.
This White House wanted to impose a new set of rules to govern and dominate the international community. That has proven easier said than done. To its dismay, the Bush administration has come up against an unprecedented worldwide peace movement that has left it nearly alone even in the US. The 2006 midterm elections, while I do not believe were entirely about the war, were certainly heavily influenced thereby. Opposition at home and worldwide opposition to the U.S. occupation will almost certainly escalate, leaving the administration further isolated.
This is a very dangerous, frightening moment. Perhaps the risks and stakes are higher than at any other moment in our history. If only we can hold out till Jan. 2009, then Hillary, or Barak, or John can pull us back from the edge of the abyss before it is too late.
I remember when people could get screamed down on a right wing blog for drawing a parallel between Iraq and Vietnam. It's ice to see that once again the right is three steps behind the left.
timb - In the face of hypocrisy, it is alright to be hypocritical? I remember how the Left has repeatedly compared this to VietNam, since the outset, and now that their ideological opponents are using a similar analogy, it is some kind of outrage. Wah.
What is a few million more dead brown people, so long as the Left gets their political win.
I do not necessarily compare this to Vietnam. The situation in Vietnam was ongoing through 4 administrations who were still wedded to the notion that firepower could break anyone. Still, for Bush to make the comparison himself after denying any similarities should tell us a lot about the desperation that permeates this White House. The primary difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that Vietnam was inherited, Iraq was desired. I do not agree with every word here but read this from the New York Times August 23, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/washington/23history.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=washington&adxnnlx=1188018172-nnG1Y3HNHQYa/kCFrKWzGQ):
Historians Question Bush’s Reading of Lessons of Vietnam War for Iraq
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By THOM SHANKER
Published: August 23, 2007
Correction Appended
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — The American withdrawal from Vietnam is widely remembered as an ignominious end to a misguided war — but one with few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.
Now, in urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, President Bush is challenging that historical memory.
In reminding Americans that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of bloody upheaval in Southeast Asia, Mr. Bush argued in a speech on Wednesday that Vietnam’s lessons provide a reason for persevering in Iraq, rather than for leaving any time soon. Mr. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and the mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people.
President Bush is right on the factual record, according to historians. But many of them also quarreled with his drawing analogies from the causes of that turmoil to predict what might happen in Iraq should the United States withdraw.
“It is undoubtedly true that America’s failure in Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia,” said David C. Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
“But there are a couple of further points that need weighing,” he added. “One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam — this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war. The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred.”
The record of death and dislocation after the American withdrawal from Vietnam ranks high among the tragedies of the last century, with an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, about one-fifth of the population, dying under the rule of Pol Pot, and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese and other Indochinese becoming refugees. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese who were sent to prison camps after the war have ranged widely, from 50,000 to more than 400,000, and some accounts have said that tens of thousands perished, a figure that Mr. Bush cited in his speech, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Mr. Bush did not offer a judgment on what, if anything, might have brought victory in Vietnam or whether the war itself was a mistake. Instead, he sought to underscore the dangers of a hasty withdrawal from Iraq.
But the American drawdown from Vietnam was hardly abrupt, and it lasted much longer than many people remember. The withdrawal actually began in 1968, after the Tet offensive, which was a military defeat for the Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese sponsors. But it also illustrated the vulnerability of the United States and its South Vietnamese allies....by the time of the famous photograph of Americans being lifted off a roof in Saigon in 1975, few American combat forces were left in Vietnam. “It was not a precipitous withdrawal, it was a very deliberate disengagement,” said Andrew J. Bacevich, a platoon leader in Vietnam who is now a professor of international relations at Boston University. Vietnam today is a unified and stable nation whose Communist government poses little threat to its neighbors and is developing healthy ties with the United States. Mr. Bush visited Vietnam last November; a return visit to the White House this summer by Nguyen Minh Triet was the first visit by a Vietnamese head of state since the war.
“The Vietnam comparison should invite us to think harder about how to minimize the consequences of our military failure,” Mr. Bacevich added. “If one is really concerned about the Iraqi people, and the fate that may be awaiting them as this war winds down, then we ought to get serious about opening our doors, and to welcoming to the United States those Iraqis who have supported us and have put themselves and their families in danger.”
To that end, some members of Congress and human rights groups have urged the Bush administration to drop the limits on Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States.
Mr. Bush also sought to inspire renewed support for his Iraq strategy by recalling the years of national sacrifice during World War II, and the commitment required to rebuild two of history’s most aggressive and lawless adversaries, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, into reliable and responsible allies.
But historians note that Germany and Japan were homogenous nation-states with clear national identities and no internal feuding among factions or sects, in stark contrast to Iraq today.
The comparison of Iraq to Germany and Japan “is fanciful,” said Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He noted that the American and allied militaries had eliminated the governments of Japan and Germany, and any lingering opposition, and assembled occupation forces that were, proportionally, more than three times as large as the current American presence of more than 160,000 troops in Iraq.
“That’s the kind of troop level you need to control the situation,” Mr. Simon said. “The occupation of Germany and Japan lasted for years — and not a single American solider was killed by insurgents.”
Senior American military officers speaking privately also say that the essential elements that brought victory in World War II — a total commitment by the American people and the government, and a staggering economic commitment to rebuild defeated adversaries — do not exist for the Iraq war. The wars in Korea and Vietnam also involved considerable national sacrifice, including tax increases and conscription.
This no doubt falls on blind eyes and deaf ears but it is nontheless, accurate.
Yeah, JD, blame me for you starting a war that kills a bunch of people. Nice try.
It's not about blame for the origins of the conflict, it's how either side views it now.
For Republicans, continuing to invest in Iraq, militarily and financially, is done so out of a belief that the cause (correctly or not) is just and winnable.
For Democrats, continuing to invest in Iraq, militarily and financially, is done so out of a belief that the issue will provide them with an 08 election win.
Both parties are willing to expend lives, military and civilian, but the Dems do it out of a political power play. A motivation that is far less moral than anything you could pin on the Repubs.
timmah - Where did I attempt to blame you for the start of this war? I simply pointed out that your side of the aisle has been calling this a quagmire since the sandstorm during the first few days of this war, and has continued doing so through this date. That you would now whine that President Bush is utilizing your rhetoric is laughable.
ef, you're nuts. I've been against this war since 2002. The 2008 is fait accompli. The withdrawal will take months and won't be done in time for the election anyway.
As for JD, you didn't personally accuse me of starting the war, you accused me of not caring about the brown people your war has already killed and will kill. The idea that the Left doesn't care about the Iraqis, when the Right is one that set the stage for the killing, supports more killing, and thinks the killing should continue for the indefinite future.
That is the reprehensible position. Take your Goldsteinian "you don't care about the brown people" and put it away until you can make some sense with it
"Left doesn't care about the Iraqis, when the Right is one that set the stage for the killing, supports more killing, and thinks the killing should continue for the indefinite future."
That describes their fate quite nicely, had we not done anything.
Ludicrous. There were a helluva lot less people dying in Iraq before you and yours unleashed "shock and car bombs" on them. this is why polls show a bare majority of Iraqis would rather have Saddam and air conditioning and running water than the Americans', the freedom to be killed on the way to the market, etc
Sure thing, timmah. What percentage of those could afford an air conditioner prior to the war? How many in the country had consistent electricity and running water, before their infrastructure became one of the most popular targets of the "freedom fighters" ?
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