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TechnoratiBill Moyers Tells a Tale of Two Quagmires: Vietnam & Afghanistan
Bill Moyers, who was at the side of President Lyndon Johnson at the time when disastrous decisions were being made to escalate the U.S. presence in the quagmire that was Vietnam, used his experience to speak Friday night to President Barack Obama about what could be an equally disastrous decision to escalate the U.S. presence in the quagmire that is Afghanistan.
"Our country wonders this weekend what is on President Obama's mind," Moyers began, at the opening of a remarkable hour of television. "He is apparently, about to bring months of deliberation to a close and answer General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan. When he finally announces how many, why, and at what cost, he will most likely have defined his presidency, for the consequences will be far-reaching and unpredictable. As I read and listen and wait with all of you for answers, I have been thinking about the mind of another president, Lyndon B. Johnson."
The presidential adviser turned journalist, who will retire his "Bill Moyers Journal" television program in April, then turned to decades old tapes that were recorded as Johnson was making the decision to surge hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers into a war that would kill almost 60,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese.
One point of the program, he explained, was to offer viewers "an insight into the mind of one president facing the choice of whether or not to send more and more American soldiers to fight in a far-away and strange place."
But another point was to offer Obama and his aides a caution that only a few wise and worldly senators provided Johnson back in the mid-1960s -- chief among them Oregon's Wayne Morse, about whom Johnson says on one of the tapes: "outside Morse, everybody I talk to says you got to go in..."
Moyers was not making crude or casual analogies.
"Granted," he explained early on, "Barack Obama is not Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and this is now, not then. But listen and you will hear echoes and refrains that resonate today."
The tapes of Johnson were indeed eerie and resonant, especially those where the former president says of the battle to which he is about to commit what he calls "the flower of our youth, our finest young men": "I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damned mess that I ever saw."
But even more powerful was the recognition that the man playing them was a witness to history who had learned from his experiences. For Moyers, there was something deeply personal and yet profoundly public about the statement he was making; before it aired Friday, he told me he saw the program as "one of the most important I've done in years."
So it was.
And the most powerful part of a remarkably powerful program came at its conclusion, when Bill Moyers looked into the camera and said:
Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.
And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.
And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.
We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.
It is possible to go to the "Bill Moyers Journal" website and view "A Tale of Quagmires."
It is possible, as well, to visit the same site and read the transcript of a wise and nuanced rumination that is arguably the best statement available on both the war in Vietnam and the war in Afghanistan.
37 Comments so far
Show AllBill Moyers was also in the White House when Kennedy issued orders to scale back involvement in Viet Nam.
It would be nice to hear Mr. Moyers explain his silence about the coup d'etat that removed JFK from office, it's difficult to take his news program seriously when he fails to address this core issue. And Moyers has never done a show on Peak Oil in the years he's been on PBS. Maybe one day PBS will also mention that the Warren Commission, the 1964 official report that claimed Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy, by himself, is complete disinformation, but they wouldn't get any more giant grants from big corporations that make weapons.
It is fascinating that "The Nation" "Democracy Now" PBS NPR Fox TV and the New York Times share the exact same position on the Warren Commission (that is supposedly was reality) and that none of them dare to challenge the Official Story of the removal of President Kennedy from office. And some people still wonder why the "peace movement" and "progressives" are so ineffective at shifting official policies.
A "limited hang out" is revealing part of the truth in a way that the audience thinks the whole truth is being exposed.
A much better guide to our history is James Douglass, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters," (2008: Orbis Books), available from book stores everywhere.
Bill Moyers decades-long silence about the removal of his former boss from office (JFK) says more than anything else on his show.
I've noticed a large SILENCE from the left on this issue. Is it only my imagination?
Charlie Jackson
Texans for Peace
http://www.texansforpeace.org
I love this country. Its easy to love the great and beautiful land, mountains, and water; they don't make mistakes or knowingly cause pain. What I love most about us is US! There is a goodness and strength and wisdom out there that keeps me hopeful, keeps me calm, and keeps me believing. Deep down we are a people of goodwill, a nation of fair-minded men and women, and chorus of hearts yearning for....
Peace
Rick Nelson
I live in a rural area of the country. A few moments ago I just had two young Mormons knock on my door. When they asked me how I was doing I said not too well because 500 lb. American bombs are ripping to pieces innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. Their response was basically that there are always wars and that God works in mysterious ways. I asked why it is that during the Vietnam War religious people like the Berrigan brothers, who were Jesuit priests, and William Sloan Coffin, Jr. and Martin Luther King, Jr. had the courage and integrity to speak out against that war while so many religious groups like the Mormons remain silent today when American bombs are being dropped on people in the Middle East. Their evasive reply was that they do not become involved in politics. When confronted about the aforementioned religious individuals who did protest America's involvement some forty odd years ago they tried to claim that it was not their business to speak out.
It is bad enough when so many people today say nothing about American militarism. It becomes even more egregious when those who profess to be good Christians remain mute about U.S. transgressions overseas. Or perhaps it is the fact that those people whose lives are being snuffed out by America's bombs are of little concern to these [alleged] devout people of God because they do not practice the same religion as they do.
This is among the many reasons why I cannot remain "hopeful" about this country as evidenced by the total lack of indifference by, of all people, those who profess to place such faith in a God who would allow innocent people to be murdered for no justifiable reason. It would seem that their hearts are not exactly yearning for peace.
Erroll, The Churches with a few exceptions, are nothing more than hypocrites for the power elite. A lot of them are nothing more than churchianity, cults that dumb down the sheeple and are cheerleaders for the fascist, war profiteers. Just like in Nazi Germany, most of the churches backed Hitler. In Jesus's day they were called Pharisee's and Sadducee's and were more interested in keeping their power with the corrupt,elite than being truthful. Nothing has changed in 2000 years for a lot of these folks as they rationalize their miasma by quoting the Bible to suit their hypocrisy. They condone killing and illegal wars,by being military,Chaplins ( the epitome of hypocrisy!) and are like Judas that they are willing to sell their souls for 30 pieces of silver. When Robertson thought one of his sacerdotal duties was to call for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected President of Venezuela, he was not an exception, just another typical bible thumping wacko, like so many more millions that cannot think for themselves. Marx had it right when called it the opiate of the people.
I guess that spending millions to defeat gay rights bills in states far away from Utah is not considered political. These young Mormons should brush up on their own history and the involvement of Brigham Young in American politics.
"We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes."
The link to the Bill Moyers Journal transcripts of Lyndon Johnson's decision making process from 1964-1965 proves a crucial point that journalist Moyers' own bottom line analysis gives insufficient emphasis. Mr. Moyers laments how "a President pushing for critical [Great Society] change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart."
True enough, as far as it goes. But who was doing the pressuring back then? Who is doing the pressuring today? And while there may have been a general perception in post-JFK assassination America that the country was coming apart, domestic unrest in the fall and winter of 1964 was nothing compared to the turmoil that later raged in the streets in, say, 1968.
What comes through loud and clear from these tapes is how fearful Lyndon Johnson and his closest inner circle advisors were of being accused of "losing Vietnam" by the leadership of the Republican party - specifically, Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon - if the White House did not escalate militarily. When LBJ sought advice in confidence from key Democratic figures like Mike Mansfield and Richard Russell, projected partisan repercussions inevitably colored their thinking. Similar dire warnings were voiced by an unidentified adjacent Texas landowner and some New York banker, long time friends who apparently still had Johnson's ear, each darkly predicting that to appear weak and unmanly was the worst of all possible outcomes.
Joe McCarthy of course had wreaked havoc upon the Dems by accusing them of losing China, failing to go for victory in the Korean War, and being soft on Communism. That GOP Cold War spin attack scenario obviously still had legs in the fall of 1964. Johnson and his closest advisors appeared to fear such attacks more than they feared falling dominoes (did these guys really think that Malasia and India would go Communist if the VC captured Saigon?), or more than they feared drawing Red Chinese troops into a protracted land war in southeast Asia such as happened on the Korean penninsula.
Ultimately, what Johnson's closest advisors thought would work best for the next electoral cycle trumped everything else. LBJ did win in a landslide, but then lost everything in the quagmire of Vietnam to Tricky Dick Nixon, the demagogue Democratic insiders feared the most.
If Lyndon Johnson had instead said no to more war, this Monday morning quarterback is confident LBJ would still have beaten Barry Goldwater handily in the 1964 election. For certain, millions of Asian lives and thousands of American lives would not have been lost, trillions of dollars would not have been wasted. And I very strongly doubt that the south Pacific region and Indian subcontinent would have succumbed to the Red menace.
Of course, we will never know for certain. But let's not pretend that waging war and gambling away other peoples' lives should ever be a calculation undertaken because the boys in that tribe over on the other side of the mountain are waving their codpieces in the air and mocking our manhood. Been there. Done that.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
BILL: Until the ethos of the brave soldier/hired killer (archetype of Mars) is divested of its glamor and association with "manhood" there will always be young men willing to act as fodder for the next gambit which is ALWAYS about "the money." A variety of emotional causes and cues are used like props to get the numbers lined up and in uniform, but whether the boast is patriotic duty, attacking them over there rather than close to home, spreading democracy, or fighting the latest dreamt up enemy... it's always about profit for a few at the expense of so many. A deconstruction of the image of macho man as hero would be a good place to start if any society really wanted to heal itself of the dis-ease of war or the preference, at least on the part of our own wounded land, for force first. A man's gotta be hard, right? I'd like to live in a world where "having balls" meant doing the right thing, as opposed to a brute willingness to participate in a senseless bloodbath.
sioux says:
"A variety of emotional causes and cues are used like props to get the numbers lined up and in uniform, but whether the boast is patriotic duty, attacking them over there rather than close to home, spreading democracy, or fighting the latest dreamt up enemy... it's always about profit for a few at the expense of so many"
excellent passage...a casual study of investments among our congresspeople reveals direct ties between the machinery of war and their portfolios...this is the stuff of hangings and beheadings in other times and places...
unfortunately, without the physical or emotional means to care for ourselves, we are bound by fraudulent, historical land treaty to continue to fork over moolah for the right to breathe through another night...
paramount that local food and water and shelter be seen as natural, inherent rights, twinned to the responsibilities of conservation and community, and ownership and destruction of the natural order be seen as sin...
here's to planting local sustainable edibles...and entertaining the idea of life without a job...or a store...
peace to you, sioux
Sioux Rose
DUBET: Thank you for the acknowledgement.
For the record, I'd rather live the outside-naked-smoking grass-making love natural existence you often advocate on these threads. I think the capitalist exploitation of the natural world is in its last death throes, and it's plausible that more close-to-nature societies will again evolve carrying an ethos of pleasure and mutual cooperation as opposed to punishing creeds based on competition to the point of murdering alleged enemies left and right as their ultimate purpose! Your worldview would call for the new generations to experience a "Blue Lagoon" style initiation into adulthood.
By casting sex as a sin, the church gained enormous control over people; and the reverberations of that stain on our basic natures is seen in the corrupt sexual lives of so many "celibate" priests, and the profligate violence against women (the latest that awful gang bang of that young woman who signed up with Blackwater), added to the use of porn that so many "need" to "get off." The loss of the sacred is the significant omission on all the experts' balance sheets. One day the world will return to the vision that you entertain. Living with the detritus of weapons left behind will pose other challenges. Yet there has been that Spirit that has inspired the invention of a great many things across the arc of humanity's journey through this world; and that Force will still be present to guide the most love-based and intuitive towards those adaptations that will allow sustenance for some. If corrupt religions once again take hold, they'll probably refer to these "saved" ones as "the chosen," lest the human ego once and for all get placed into a cage that the finer angels of our collective natures receive their chance to sing, dance, and celebrate life and the world in which this gift was given to explore.
In other words, LBJ didn't have the balls to face up to conservatives. Too bad he didn't use some of his amazing political skill to end the war, even though it would have angered so many of his cronies. I've admired much of Johnson's domestic policy while still hating and despising him for his wretched foreign policy, which included outright lies (such as the Gulf of Tonkin). His domestic policy lasted until Reagan, while his foreign policy is still savaging the country.
Ann Jones, humanitarian aid worker and author of Kabul in Winter recently wrote from Kabul, Afghanistan:
"I've come back to the Afghan capital again, after an absence of two years, to find it ruined in a new way. Not by bombs this time, but by security.The heart of the city is now hidden behind piles of Hescos giant, grey sandbags produced somewhere in Great Britain. They're stacked against the walls of government buildings, U.N. agencies, embassies, NGO offices, and army camps (of which there are a lot) -- and they only seem to grow and multiply…What's called security generates fear.
"How Lies Begat Illusions Begat Lies…you can't understand the Taliban without knowing about America's covert operations in the region in the 1980s. Back then, President Ronald Reagan's administration, mainly through the CIA, used the Pakistani Intelligence services to fund, arm, and train Afghan and foreign Islamist jihadis to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan subsequently used "channels built with U.S. money" to install in Afghanistan a friendly government -- the Taliban.
"Later, after the George W. Bush administration invaded the country and the U.S. ousted the Taliban, it installed Hamid Karzai as president and returned many of the old Islamist jihadis to power in his government. Thus, this peculiar, well-established fact underlies the current war in Afghanistan: the United States sponsored both sides.
"Only the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has called, year after year, for a moral accounting. Its surveys of Afghan citizens consistently find that the people want lasting peace, and to attain it, they would prefer some sort of truth and reconciliation procedure, like the one that took place in South Africa, to cleanse the country and set it on an honest intellectual and moral footing.
"As I write, 4,000 newly arrived U.S. Marines are trudging through the blistering heat of Helmand Province to push back the Taliban so local Pashtuns can turn out to vote next month for Karzai, their fellow Pashtun. What's wrong with this new Obama strategy? For one thing, in some areas the local Pashtun population has instead turned out to fight against the foreign invaders, side by side with the Taliban (who, it should be remembered, are mostly local Pashtuns). They're as fed up as anybody with the puppet Karzai. Like millions of other Afghans, they say Karzai has done nothing for the people. But saddled with history, Karzai remains the horse the U.S. rode in on."
the rest:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1343&Itemid=222
'quagmire'? No, business...
While I admire the work of Mr. Moyers, I think someone should tell him the choir has left the room.
I'm sure the program is well told, and has all the smooth production values and detailed nuances that his producers at PBS are known for. Perhaps some kid somewhere will be inspired by it, I don't know.
However, I won't be lulled yet again into spending an hour or so lamenting with Bill over this sad and sorrowful tale. No one cares and not many learned from it, it least enough to make a difference.
So, no mas, Bill. I want inspiration, not another tear-in-my-beer moment.
When Obama decides to 'end' the current wars, he will leave behind fortified embassies and bases, the Empire's latest front, which was and continues to be their overall goal anyway. That was the plan and the exit strategy: go in, bust the joint up, and gain a stronghold. 9-11 was their pretext. Bush or Gore, our destiny would have been the same.
No one seems to want to lament--at least in Bill's circle of peers of writers and broadcasters--about that. I vision, at some future date, old Charlie Rose interviewing Bill under a shade tree, flowers & lemonade on the table, manicured surroundings--lamenting more about the past "bad wars" as yet another new one approaches. They will chat about how we should carry it out, with caution, with respect to the people there, with dignity, with the best intentions.
I wonder what Molly would be saying today.
And so it goes.
Ouch!
I have nothing but affectionate respect and admiration for Bill Moyers.
But your trenchant comment is right on the mark. The sublime and inspired Charlie Rose image is the proverbial icing on the cake.
Well done, moonpie.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Molly would say we should (still) be out in the streets banging on our pots and pans!
Charlie Jackson
Texans for Peace
http://www.texansforpeace.org
One factor is the long-standing invisible government that displaces elected government and drives America's wars for private profit.
The other factor is the mass of average US voters who sees this murderous charade well enough, but don't care enough to object --no matter that their sons and daughters are the cannon fodder.
Of the two enabling factors, the latter is the more horrific, the more difficult to finally comprehend.
And yet it is worse still because in hindsight it is obvious that the spread of the commie threat rationale was meritless, but the terrorist threat is the new crusading cause which is just as bad a rallying call. Johnson mentioned repeatedly his concern that other countries would "fall like dominos" on these tapes. Does anyone really believe that we are winning a war on terror?
They don't want to win the phony war.
That is why they keep flicking at any dominoes still standing.
There are few monuments and museums for Peace in Washington. And I'll bet that precedent foretells his decision.
"And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on"
.........and see their Military Industrial Cartel stock portfolios grow.
Moyers Journal on this 'eve of probable destruction' provides an excellent history lesson, that would remind George Santayana himself "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". But even if Obama has learned 'from history' he does not have the power to act on his knowledge.
This "Moyers Journal" TV show reinforces in a more emmotive manner what I already have learned from history --- that our country was already an Empire those 46 years ago, once JFK was out of the way --- that since Vietnam the Empire that hides behind America has only entrenched itself, now in the 21st century, as a truly Global ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire by hiding behind the facade of a two-party 'Vichy' sham of democracy, in which an insidious combination of accumulated elitist wealth, corporatist media, and gutless complicit politicians have led the world to the economic, environmental, and militarist death-spiral in which we are trapped today.
Unless a new Global People's Movement (qua Revolution) can confront this Global EMPIRE, our future path will make the inevitable path that Moyers so well documents in Vietnam look like a walk in the park.
The biggest lie of omission during the ramp-up to Vietnam which Moyers "Journal" does not recount, and which none of the anguished phone conversations of the principals reveals is the omission that it was not circumstances. or ideology, or the threat of 'communism' that led to the disaster of that last dress rehearsal in the Vietnam War --- but that the causal factor, the seminal driver of all our sorrows was (and still is) EMPIRE.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Unless a new Global People's Movement (qua Revolution) can confront this Global EMPIRE, our future path will make the inevitable path that Moyers so well documents in Vietnam look like a walk in the park."
How true. Its not about America now, its about an empire machine which has no borders or boundaries whatsoever.
As we crumble here, Earth is their platform; sea, land and space. That's pretty damn awesome.
A Global People's Movement? Perhaps that is our next "world war".
"...once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on."
This is key. In the cost-benefit analysis of war, the wealthy people who decide for everyone else - "the deciders" in Bushspeak - consider only the COST TO THEMSELVES. "Will I be re-elected? Will my personal fortune grow or shrink? Can I land a lucrative contract with a mulitnational if I support this war?"
The people who are sent off to die are not even assigned any value. Their lives are judged - by the elite - to be worth no more than the constructed "enemy's" lives. In many cases, the death of American (or Canadian) youth are even assigned a negative value; for the dediders, their own countrymen (but from the lower classes) are of more PR-value dead than alive.
As long as power is in the hands of the moneyed people, as long as our government is funded by these people and as long as these people represent the dominant majority in our government, we will be engaged in wars that make money for the military/industrial complex. Can we fix it by fixing capitalism? Capitalism represents the very foundation of the moneyed class. It is the direct descendant of the feudal system, replacing rule by "God's" representatives by the rule of 'the fittest', who, because they have a knack for amassing great stores of wealth by robbery and piracy, think they have a 'divine right' to rule social systems so that they can amass even more wealth. There is a system of government that can, if done properly, rule by consensus, and by seeing to it that wealth is evenly distributed. This form of government is called Socialism. This form of government has an ancient pedigree too. It is a form of tribalism, adjusted to accommodate large groups of people. It is a form of government which, when done properly, sees to it that the most people are represented by grass roots organizations. It is a form of government in which the female of our species are given great power to form consensus, because they are the most able to do so. If this does not sound like communism, it is because communism is a defective form of socialism. It is a male dominated and a male created form of socialism. It's high time we stopped letting the capitalist 'powers that be' scare the bejesus out of people by demonizing the word socialism. Soviet and Maoist communists did a great harm by dragging the concept of Socialism through the totalitarian mud. They should have read their Marx more carefully. Capitalism will disappear when it becomes obvious that socialism is a better form of government. Socialism cannot be forced upon a people by a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. It cannot be led by the concept that the end justifies the means. If it does not grow naturally and organically, it is just as bad, or worse, than a capitalist oligarchy or dictatorship.
Well said George. My guess is that Socialism will have a resurgence when enough people are hungry. The Capitalists are masters of divide and conquer. One of their latest tricks was the Cash for Clunkers program. They threw a bone to semi to upper middle class people that had cash on hand to buy a car on short notice. The people that really need help couldn't buy a new car if the gov chipped in ten thousand dollars. Besides helping the auto industry, the C4C sliced another line between the classes.
There are myriad versions and definitions of Socialism. The basic premise as I see it is that a Socialistic society cares about everyone, because everyone is considered a brother or sister. Capitalism is based on caring about one's self, everyone else is a competitor.
Marx thought it would evolve organically as people would tire of fighting each other.
Unfortunately, the fight rages on.
The Cash for Clunkers program was disgusting. It did very little to further clean air emissions or our dependence on carbon fuels. When I see all the brand new gas guzzlers on the road, I want to vomit. So far, this is what distinguishes the Obama Administration: while the world is hemorrhaging, Obama is busy putting on bandages.
What Marx didn't realize is that capitalist greed is much larger than the world's resources. We don't have time.
Obama has proven to be no different than the other smiling puppets.
I think Marx knew what we were/are up against and that suffering would increase before the people would take action. So far there is too much comfort in the remaining middle class. When the middle sinks and joins the ranks of the lower, when there are but two distinct classes, uber rich and the pathetically poor, then change will be possible. The poor will storm the mansions and beat the inhabitants to death with the gold plated golf clubs found inside or drown them in hot tubs steaming in the winter's chill.
Capitalism is fed by the myth that the lower and middle classes will make it to the top. It isn't that americans are revolted by kings(myth), it is that they dream of being one. They have bought into a greed is good ethos, humanism discarded. When the bubble that encompasses the general well being of this perverted society bursts, then and only then will Socialism be understood.
Qatzelok
Excellent point which is all the more reason why those in the American [as well as Canadian] military today would do well to emulate the example of those many veterans who took part in the GI rebellion during the Vietnam War which manifested itself both at home and abroad at or near American military bases. The soldiers in today's military should ask themselves if they should simply go along with the program by allowing themselves to be used as cannon fodder by their governments or will they finally come to the realization that they, like their predecessors of some forty odd years ago, have a brain and can indeed say NO to the military war machine.
A superb effort by Moyers to relate the Vietnam error to this Afghanistan era, and thus influence and bring some sanity to Obama's up-coming decision on Afghanistan --- although it is really not Obama's decision anyway.
Another poignant comparison would be to relate Martin Luther King's Riverside Church speech "Breaking the Silence" ---- regarding the deep-connection between the increasing deaths of black and white working-class kids in Vietnam and the economic oppression/tyranny imposed on the same black and white working-class domestically --- compared to the sorrows of EMPIRE now, almost fifty years later, so visible abroad and at home in the 21st century.
As Hannah Arendt presciently warned from her experience with the Nazi and Soviet EMPIRES:
"Empire abroad (always) entails tyranny at home".
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Yes, that was a powerful show yesterday. I sat riveted to my screen listening to Johnson skirt issue after issue while he tried to talk himself out of doing what he did. As the conversations went forwarded a disturbing caricature emerged from various Vietnam antagonists asserting the the Alpha Male syndrome. Essentially distilled to its essence telling Johnson that pulling out would seem WEAK; of course, weakness is always in the eye of the beholder. But it always comes down to weakness vs strength for a superstructure like the US. Once in the 'weakness' camp, one cannot ever shed the caricature of being a wimp.
What matters is not so much the wisdom of the policy or its attendant cost, but rather appearing to the world that one is a Alpha Male, a shit kicker.
Fast forward present time. Looking deeper into the Obama syndrome which cast him as a deliberate and wise leader because of a desire to hold back before sending troops for a decision that is assured, This rationale is nothing more than a dodge and weave, but especially after his capitulation on issue after issue to the determent of non corporate policies which continue to squeeze the blood of of the working poor the juxtaposition of a sound bite, media blitz or marketing schema funding the currency of a bold and strong Obama, we can get a glimpse of Obama's chest extending outward in the face of perpetual war, troop deployments, which further sets the standard against him appearing weak against the oligarchy. Here is where Obama can shine. This is Obama's moment, much like Bush standing tall on a US Air craft carries with the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED sign hanging behind him.
Juxtapose Obama paying lip service about the urgency of taking his time before putting peoples lives in harms way: very nice touch for the memory hole of the American public or pretender leftists like Nichols, but none of this lip service has little by way of bite for those faced with deployments. Yet this is precisely to yo yo and the scope and praxis for the Obama image handlers. As long as the rest of the herd line up in a straight line, the shot is sold to the gullible. Case close, war goes forward, the poor pay the bill in blood, long lasting injury, and psychological angst.
Hail the King!
In his seminal work The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam Jerry Lembcke points out [when he references American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam by John Hellman] that the "Puritans were the chosen people" and America was seen by American Protestant theologians as having a special role in "God's redemptive place" and that "America was the redeemer nation, the leader of the forces of light against the forces of darkness, the agents of Satan. America's destiny was to bring the light, first to the natives of North America and later, to Asia."
But this narrative, so easily accepted by the American people, was disrupted when, as Lembcke notes, "God's Chosen People had been defeated by the Asian "others" in Vietnam. One has to wonder if the military and the Obama administration believe it is their duty to save the people of the Middle East from themselves and if he believes, like George H.W. Bush did during the Persian Gulf War, that the United States will [supposedly] kick the Vietnam Syndrome.
It is long past the point that the United States stop thinking of itself as the Chosen People. It is not up to America to make the world in its own image. As Bill Moyers inquires, will Barack Obama reach an epiphany by rejecting what Lyndon Baines Johnson did in Vietnam or will he continue to believe that America 's role is to act as the world's savior by doling out its version of justice to the Muslim heathens.
Obama's enthusiastic embrace of Reagan rhetoric, in which Lincoln's "last, best hope" -- itself quite substantial in a world ruled by kings & emperors, despite the US's equivocal (at best) origins -- in the contemporary world & the responsible-bellicose tropes (very similar to Johnson's) reveal that the American rulers are as incapable of dealing with the 21st century realities as the Bourbons were at the end of the 18th & the tsars were in the early 20th century.
All soldiers should be returned home from foreign soil.
Granted, it would be a shock considering the rampant unemployment and that weapons are just about the only manufacturing industries left. The cycle of global violence must be broken, sooner is better than later.
Veterans could be given free law schooling. Many would be glad to help prosecute the creeps that were willing to send them and their uniformed fellows to their needless deaths, and the mental and moral destruction of others.
Ending these wars of aggression would be a good start.
This is a message from the Human Race:
We quote: 'Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war.'
We?
Who's we? We in the USA is so embarrassingly, obviously yesterday.
America is no longer a nation because it is no longer rational. Those who live on the American continent have no choice but to join the billions of humans out here and walk away from the insanity of it.
God, what an embarrassment to look at the words that the USA continues to use!
America is dead. The smell of its corpse (a big one, claiming to be God's or Jesus' or Democracy or whatever) fills the world and you talk of we?
Are you CIA, Pentagon, Republican, Democrat or stupid?
Not that it matters because they are all the same.
Listen, dear friends, Stop It!
I suspect that the Wall Streeters and other corporate elites rarely think in terms of "we the people of the USA," as they do not feel loyal to any one people or region of the world and expect to prey on the weak and vulnerable wherever they find them. However, they of course do all they can to promote the idea of "we Americans" to all the little people in the USA, as they expect such little people to be useful as their foot soldiers and peons in the empire. It becomes even more insulting when one considers that while the corporate elites are promoting such an idea they are simultaneously doing all they can to prevent the development of any solidarity among the people of the USA (thus precluding any possible benefits to the little people from adhering to a unifying idea), as they recognize that a divided people are a weak and politically powerless people, and that is how they like their prey. Therefore, it would probably be a good idea for the little people of the USA to stop thinking in terms of "we the people of the USA" and start thinking in terms of "we the little people of the world."
Oh, plenty of them use the phrase. They just don't think you-all are included.