4 posts tagged “democrats”

For those that would rather revise than learn from history, it is apparently never too early to set about its rewriting.  Right-wing hawks are already explaining away the error of making war in Iraq—as has been done with the one in Vietnam. Their revised version of the Iraqi quagmire shifts responsibility away from George W. Bush and his Republican enablers and onto those that understand the folly of it all.  How so?

These right-wing ideologues are determined practitioners of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda technique of telling a lie over and over until it becomes an unchallenged version of history. Their portrayal of the Vietnam War as a cut-and-run disgrace is a good example. The revisionist’s telling and retelling starts with dissembling the reason for our entry in and withdrawal from Vietnam, and begs the question as to the lesson to be learned.

The confabulators insist that our exit from the Vietnam War was an avoidable defeat that damaged our nation’s long-term vital interests.  They blame the loss on those that saw the war from its start to have been an unnecessary, life wasting, resource squandering, and reputation damaging blunder made worse by continued bullheadedness.  Perchance it sounds familiar?

Though reason would suggest that victory or defeat in any war should be measured in terms of why it is launched, those that have revised the history of the Vietnam War avoid mentioning its purpose.  Our entry into Vietnam was supposed to block the advance of communism as foretold by the Domino Theory.  What is the latest explanation as to why President Bush took us into a preemptive war in Iraq?

The Domino Theory , that led us into Vietnam, contended that if a former Southeast Asian imperial possession were to become communist there would be a step-by-step advance of this doctrine across the South Pacific right to the shores of God only knew where. So when the French had their disaster at Dien Bien Phu and pulled out of Vietnam we went in to stop the dominoes from falling.

In portraying defeat as being at the heart of the Vietnam debacle, revisionists disregard the real and historic fact that we left and the dominoes never fell, an indication that we need not have gone into Vietnam in the first place.  Thus, the mistake was not in getting out, but in ever getting in.  Might we now be staying in Iraq to avoid getting out?

Just recently President Bush made a diplomatic invasion into Southeast Asia and says that while he and the First Lady were on a sightseeing ride through Hanoi, “Laura and I were talking about how amazing it is that we’re here in Vietnam.”

Even more amazing is the now-versus-then observation that Bush offered on this same historic visit to Vietnam: “the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately and it is hard work in Iraq.”

Hum, if “they” includes him and us, what should be made of someone’s willingness to launching a preemptive war that is taking longer and proving harder to stop than to start, and was to do one thing but now is to do another?  And would the lesson from history suggest that it is better to end it sooner than later and maybe in the same way that Nixon did with the one in Vietnam?

In practical terms, Nixon declared victory and brought the brave troops home—neither seen as a hasty decision nor heard from the deck of an aircraft carrier.  Following his 1969 election, President Nixon announced his Vietnamization program.  It was to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese and start withdrawing American forces.  By the early 1970s the troops were coming home at a rate of over 12,000 a month.

By early January of 1973, Nixon suspended American offensive action in North Vietnam and by the end of the month the Paris Peace Accords were signed by the governments of North Vietnam, South Veitnam, and the US.  Nixon contended that our military purpose had been achieved.

Bush’s last ditch effort in Iraq looks like a mirrored image of the Vietnam misadventure: Iraqization with a surge in place of a withdrawal.   Maybe it only looks confusing if one is on the outside trying to peer into this new looking-glass war.  But rest assured that the Decider is getting well-targeted advice from the Mad Hatter, when he is not down in Texas hunting his friends.

But riddle the rest of us this Mad Hatter, if the dominoes that did not fall in Southeast Asia were to likewise not fall in the Middle East, will you and history’s revisionist make any noise about it?

Bigger news, divorce attorney retained but on hold --

In the run for Iowa’s first in the nation caucuses, Edwards and Obama lead with a tie in a poll of likely caucus participants. Clinton polled well down the list.  But the big news is that for the first time in this household of Democrats there may be a split at the caucus: wife for Edwards and husband for Obama.  Not good not good, with divorce attorney on hold (the same one considered during the last do-it-yourself remodeling of bath and kitchen).

The news story http://www.crgazette.com/2006/12/22/Home/iowacaucuspollleaders.htm

    Of course Barack Obama can win.  The people that would not vote for him because he is African-American are not going to vote for a Democrat anyway.

    Barack has already proven that a man with little experience in politics can win.  After only two years in the Illinois State Legislature he was voted to the United State Senate by a landslide.

A war with a “foreign devil,” like Saddam Hussein, may serve the purposes of a leader that desires to control the thinking of his people, but a bogus threat to their security does not assist that people in their effort to find a better way for themselves and the neighbors with whom they must live.

“They hate us and want to destroy our way of life” is not uttered to encourage a brave consideration of the successful sharing of our planet with others.  It is propaganda set to inflame the emotions and block a wider search for a better course.

And the media-merchants of derision and division---in greedy grasp for greater notoriety and larger fortune---even stoop to charge that an American that questions is guilty of hating his or her own country.

Regardless, with courage and in love of what stands for and with the resolve of the founders, we can see through this dank and distorting fog of words and find our better way and joint with all people of good will in stamping out terrorism and things that breed its inception.  To this end I suggest that we turn the larger responsibility for the Iraqi problem over to the people that face it most directly, the Eastern Arab World, and non Arab neighbors that share boards with .

The world’s number-one power should request that these nations hold a summit and take charge of establishing a peace in that allows these beleaguered people to find enough security to pursue their own special way of life.  The undertaking would be challenging, but not as impossible as for an outside force to impose its solution into the region.

By turning the problem over to those most directly affected, WE-THE-PEOPLE free ourselves from this quagmire and can directly focus our intellect and energy on the unending Constitutional tasks to, “establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”  In vigorous pursuit of these, we will be seen by the world for what we really are: a good neighbor that uses its incredible power and sense of justice to encourage and assist others in doing the same.

This problem is rooted in the old Geopolitics of exploitation within spheres of influence and a neo version of the same only makes things worse.  We do not need to find a way to peace, peace is the way.  And peace is not an inactive way, anymore than love is just the absence of hate---love is a powerful engulfing force that generates more of the same.

Were we to have as much courage in pursuing peace as we do in having others die for us in war, and if we committed as many material resources in its behest as we have in the destruction of differing others, we make peace quicker than it can ever be found in a war that somehow at its end must fortuitously stumble into it.

Yes, protect ourselves we must and we will, but the preemptive willingness to shoot first and ask questions later is no protection.  It is the assassination of all that makes life worthwhile in the first place.

We claim that WE-THE-PEOPLE are capable of government of us, by us and for us.  There has not been anything in the drinking water in that has made only the people of this continent special in this regard.  We are special because we know that humans are special and are endowed by their Creator with an inalienable virtue that must be respected by us all.