THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER VIETNAM ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT
A virtual reprint from Tuesday, May 10, 2005
[NOTE: This doesn't show up on Firefox for some reason, but shows up fine on Internet Explorer. I wrote this blog mostly before Firefox, so I apologize. The link is for the entire week's archive, so scroll down for the original. HW]
I'm not going to go long, here. There are a lot of pieces that anyone who CARES to poke around can find.
But the simple fact is that, as I predicted, Afghanistan is heating up. The Taliban are re-forming, and they've watched us long enough to begin to understand just how to hit us and where. This has been their practice with invaders for thousands of years, so it's not exactly a surprise.
Worse, Iraq is turning into that "quagmire" that was predicted by those with a grasp of history and pooh-pooh'ed by those with none.
Remember, we live in a country so damned stoooooopid that the "Swift Boat Veterans" and their minions were actually able to cast the obscenity of Vietnam as a noble war. And we are filled with underage citizens who believe that revisionism.
Take it from one who was issued a draft card, and spent a sleepless night before the draft lottery (my number was 351, the one lottery I ever "won" by losing): Vietnam was an unjustified war that we got into through lies, propaganda, and were tarnished and corrupted by. The destruction of the core of our military because of the corrosive effects of gross mismanagement and political interference has not been much spoken of, but the decent military men (including my first father-in-law, a veteran of the 8th Air Force, who flew his 25 missions over Germany in a B-17 during WWII) took early retirement, and left the Pentagon to the Ollie Norths and their vile ilk.
Now, Iraq is out of control, but it's hard to find that out: nearly all reporters are confined to the hotel in the "green zone" and rely entirely on Goverment PR handouts for their "news."
Huge chunks of the country are beyond our control, and now even Baghdad is only controlled in a few neighborhoods. And the Iraqis are as badly supplied as they were during the sanctions. Perhaps, if you count basic services, they're even worse off.
We know that the infrastructure is damaged and getting worse. The flow of gas, electricity, sewage and fresh water are virtually non-existent in large sectors of the country. The "insurgents" (a vile characterization, considering it's THEIR country, dammit) have expertly taken out the oil infrastructure, denying the US their "cash cow" to pay for the war.
At home, the mere whisper of "supporting our troops" allows blatantly fascist and formerly unthinkable "riders" like the REAL ID act to be attached, without debate to appropriations bills (for $82 billion this time) without opposition to said bill.
What happened to the so-called Republican virtue of getting the government out of our lives? Guess it doesn't mean doodly-squat in a "nation at war."
Nixon went insane (and ultimately got caught) over secrecy and security issues relating to that war (his rationalizations that domestic spying and burglarizing Ellsberg's shrink, etc. are clear, in retrospect: National Security uber alles).
Now, by comparison, old Tricky Dick looks positively virtuous. The war profiteering, the handing out of cash to cronies; the indentured servitude of reservists impressed into endless, involuntary combat service (where you get to go to Iraq, hunker down, and wait for them to try and kill you without any ability to engage in "proactive" action) is the worst case scenario for any soldier in any theater at any time. It is a prescription for insanity, as our K-Mart managers and our shoe salesmen and our other weekend warriors slowly bake in the heat of the Iraqi oven to further Bush's vainglorious and now demonstrably fraudulent war.
Remember, Iraq was going to cost us $8 billion, they were going to throw flowers at us, and the fellow at OMB who (correctly) predicted that the war would cost at least $200 billion was fired for his presumption at reality.
Where is the cry for impeachment now? If a blowjob (or, as rationalized, "lying under oath") is impeachable, then where is the outrage for a criminal war of aggression enabled by lying that has murdered over 100,000 human beings, many of whom were women and children?
How come Saddam is still alive? How come Osama's still on the loose?
Iraq is Vietnam all over again, even more corruptly, even more corrosively.
And they are suppressing all dissent in advance, not wanting a return to Kent State, et al.
But not to worry: in the current, poisonous atmosphere, if they gunned down students today, there would be little outrage, and even less upset.
To paraphrase George Santayana: Those who would forget Vietnam are doomed to repeat it.
Deja vu.
I'm not going to go long, here. There are a lot of pieces that anyone who CARES to poke around can find.
But the simple fact is that, as I predicted, Afghanistan is heating up. The Taliban are re-forming, and they've watched us long enough to begin to understand just how to hit us and where. This has been their practice with invaders for thousands of years, so it's not exactly a surprise.
Worse, Iraq is turning into that "quagmire" that was predicted by those with a grasp of history and pooh-pooh'ed by those with none.
Remember, we live in a country so damned stoooooopid that the "Swift Boat Veterans" and their minions were actually able to cast the obscenity of Vietnam as a noble war. And we are filled with underage citizens who believe that revisionism.
Take it from one who was issued a draft card, and spent a sleepless night before the draft lottery (my number was 351, the one lottery I ever "won" by losing): Vietnam was an unjustified war that we got into through lies, propaganda, and were tarnished and corrupted by. The destruction of the core of our military because of the corrosive effects of gross mismanagement and political interference has not been much spoken of, but the decent military men (including my first father-in-law, a veteran of the 8th Air Force, who flew his 25 missions over Germany in a B-17 during WWII) took early retirement, and left the Pentagon to the Ollie Norths and their vile ilk.
Now, Iraq is out of control, but it's hard to find that out: nearly all reporters are confined to the hotel in the "green zone" and rely entirely on Goverment PR handouts for their "news."
Huge chunks of the country are beyond our control, and now even Baghdad is only controlled in a few neighborhoods. And the Iraqis are as badly supplied as they were during the sanctions. Perhaps, if you count basic services, they're even worse off.
We know that the infrastructure is damaged and getting worse. The flow of gas, electricity, sewage and fresh water are virtually non-existent in large sectors of the country. The "insurgents" (a vile characterization, considering it's THEIR country, dammit) have expertly taken out the oil infrastructure, denying the US their "cash cow" to pay for the war.
At home, the mere whisper of "supporting our troops" allows blatantly fascist and formerly unthinkable "riders" like the REAL ID act to be attached, without debate to appropriations bills (for $82 billion this time) without opposition to said bill.
What happened to the so-called Republican virtue of getting the government out of our lives? Guess it doesn't mean doodly-squat in a "nation at war."
Nixon went insane (and ultimately got caught) over secrecy and security issues relating to that war (his rationalizations that domestic spying and burglarizing Ellsberg's shrink, etc. are clear, in retrospect: National Security uber alles).
Now, by comparison, old Tricky Dick looks positively virtuous. The war profiteering, the handing out of cash to cronies; the indentured servitude of reservists impressed into endless, involuntary combat service (where you get to go to Iraq, hunker down, and wait for them to try and kill you without any ability to engage in "proactive" action) is the worst case scenario for any soldier in any theater at any time. It is a prescription for insanity, as our K-Mart managers and our shoe salesmen and our other weekend warriors slowly bake in the heat of the Iraqi oven to further Bush's vainglorious and now demonstrably fraudulent war.
Remember, Iraq was going to cost us $8 billion, they were going to throw flowers at us, and the fellow at OMB who (correctly) predicted that the war would cost at least $200 billion was fired for his presumption at reality.
Where is the cry for impeachment now? If a blowjob (or, as rationalized, "lying under oath") is impeachable, then where is the outrage for a criminal war of aggression enabled by lying that has murdered over 100,000 human beings, many of whom were women and children?
How come Saddam is still alive? How come Osama's still on the loose?
Iraq is Vietnam all over again, even more corruptly, even more corrosively.
And they are suppressing all dissent in advance, not wanting a return to Kent State, et al.
But not to worry: in the current, poisonous atmosphere, if they gunned down students today, there would be little outrage, and even less upset.
To paraphrase George Santayana: Those who would forget Vietnam are doomed to repeat it.
Deja vu.
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