The First President Bush said the Gulf War had ended "Vietnam Syndrome."
He meant that, after our victory, we would no longer have the succubus of the defeat in Vietnam destroying our willingness to use military force. In other words, we could forget about it--about the quagmire, the divisiveness, the palsied conscience that we as a nation had supposedly inherited. We--meaning we on the left--thought this was an absurd misreading of history, inasmuch as the US had never stopped projecting military force around the world, and had done it quite recklessly as well. But little did we know...what the son would do to resurrect Vietnam syndrome.
Reading the news reports of the Pres-o-dent's speech yesterday gave me a terrible fit of the blues. I recalled many conversations with my old dad in the early 1970s about the pointlessness of the Vietnam war. We know that Robert McNamara had decided well before the end of LBJ's presidency that the war was unwinnable; he went on a magnificently painful apology tour later in life. Nixon and Kissinger agreed by 1971 that the war was unwinnable, but cynically extended it to prevent the appearance of defeat. How many more died? Yesterday the pres-o-dent cynically listed the number of people who died AFTER the US withdrawal. How many of THEM would have died if we'd ended the war when we knew it was lost?
Most depressing to me was the fact that the assembled audience, all of whom should have known better, applauded this bloody nonsense. How many of their comrades died because of idiots like the pres-o-dent, idiots who never put their own lives on the line, by the way?
So this morning I picked up Peter Galbraith's fine piece in the latest New York Review of Books, and read this:
Here's the nut: the US presence in Iraq has created and subsidized the conflict between the various Iraqi factions, first by destroying any institution that unified the country, then by inventing a sovereign power for the factions to compete for, then by promising to maintain some semblance of order while they kill each other. Getting out won't end this bloodshed: Vietnam taught us that. So did Afghanistan, which we abandoned after our proxies brought down Najibullah, kicking off a decade of factional bloodshed that ended only with the rise of the Taliban. But we also know that, the longer the subsidized conflict goes on, the longer the post-withdrawal conflict will go on. Logic tells us: Get out at once. Even if it looks irresponsible.
He meant that, after our victory, we would no longer have the succubus of the defeat in Vietnam destroying our willingness to use military force. In other words, we could forget about it--about the quagmire, the divisiveness, the palsied conscience that we as a nation had supposedly inherited. We--meaning we on the left--thought this was an absurd misreading of history, inasmuch as the US had never stopped projecting military force around the world, and had done it quite recklessly as well. But little did we know...what the son would do to resurrect Vietnam syndrome.
Reading the news reports of the Pres-o-dent's speech yesterday gave me a terrible fit of the blues. I recalled many conversations with my old dad in the early 1970s about the pointlessness of the Vietnam war. We know that Robert McNamara had decided well before the end of LBJ's presidency that the war was unwinnable; he went on a magnificently painful apology tour later in life. Nixon and Kissinger agreed by 1971 that the war was unwinnable, but cynically extended it to prevent the appearance of defeat. How many more died? Yesterday the pres-o-dent cynically listed the number of people who died AFTER the US withdrawal. How many of THEM would have died if we'd ended the war when we knew it was lost?
Most depressing to me was the fact that the assembled audience, all of whom should have known better, applauded this bloody nonsense. How many of their comrades died because of idiots like the pres-o-dent, idiots who never put their own lives on the line, by the way?
So this morning I picked up Peter Galbraith's fine piece in the latest New York Review of Books, and read this:
...in April 1980, [Saddam's] regime had arrested Moqtada [al-Sadr]'s father-in-law and the father-in-law's sister--the Grand Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr and Bint al-Huda. While the Ayatollah watched, the Baath security men raped and killed his sister. Then they set fire to the Ayatollah's beard before driving nails into his head.And we're supposed to stay in Iraq until the people who nurture this memory are reconciled to the people who committed such atrocities?
Here's the nut: the US presence in Iraq has created and subsidized the conflict between the various Iraqi factions, first by destroying any institution that unified the country, then by inventing a sovereign power for the factions to compete for, then by promising to maintain some semblance of order while they kill each other. Getting out won't end this bloodshed: Vietnam taught us that. So did Afghanistan, which we abandoned after our proxies brought down Najibullah, kicking off a decade of factional bloodshed that ended only with the rise of the Taliban. But we also know that, the longer the subsidized conflict goes on, the longer the post-withdrawal conflict will go on. Logic tells us: Get out at once. Even if it looks irresponsible.
posted by jnerone at 3:45 PM
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