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| Regard the past, arrogant youth |
paraclete |
08/26/05 |
By Mike Carlton
August 27, 2005
THE new political correctness of the ratbag right decrees that nobody must compare the unhappy result of the Vietnam war to the wonderful march of democracy in Iraq.
Anyone who mentions the word quagmire can only be a pathetic baby boomer, dissolute and decrepit, pining for the bad old days of moratorium demos, Whitlamism, bell-bottom pants, Jane Fonda, etc.
This view is trumpeted most loudly by the thirtysomething know-alls of the right-wing blogosphere, whose ferocious enthusiasm for the Iraq war is matched only by their reluctance to take part in it. (Perhaps they have other priorities, as Dick Cheney once explained his decision not to enlist for Vietnam.)
But I was surprised to see the Herald's Washington correspondent, Michael Gawenda, hop into a spot of baby-boomer bashing last Monday.
"There are no lessons from Vietnam that apply to Iraq. And the Cold War, which was the context and the pretext for the American intervention in Vietnam, shares no similarities with the war on terrorism," he wrote.
"It's time all those old baby boomers, for whom the Vietnam War and those halcyon days of protest and love were the most intense time of their lives, got on with planning their retirements." Phew. I felt like curling up with a Greatest Hits of the ླྀs CD "and another girl to take my pain away", as the Rolling Stones used to sing.
And how nice to see them back at it again, too. Why, the daft old geezers have even written a song called Sweet Neo-Con, which is rude about George W.Bush and Condoleezza Rice.
Anyway. Groping about in the fog of senility, I did think of one or two lessons to draw from ancient history, a few parallels that might be seen.
Firstly, it is not a good idea to go to war on a lie or, worse, on CIA intelligence fantasies. President Lyndon Johnson did this with the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, exactly as Dubya did with Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, his nuclear program, his links to Osama bin Laden, his involvement in 9/11, etc. Discovery of the lie down the track makes public support for the war so much harder to sustain.
Secondly, do not believe that overwhelming technological superiority and firepower lead to a quick military and political victory. It did not happen against the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong, and it is not happening with the suicide bombers of Iraq, despite the airy promise that the US marines would be garlanded with flowers in the streets of Baghdad.
Thirdly, do not think you can rush headlong to impose a one-size-fits-all system of liberal democracy on people who have not known such a thing in all their history. Each time Dubya hails the new constitution of Iraq, I hear LBJ making the same sort of gurgling noises over the American sponsored constitution of the Republic of South Vietnam. I wonder where that proud document is now.
Finally and most importantly, have war aims and an exit strategy. Johnson just escalated. Richard Nixon's ploy was to declare that America's job was done, that South Vietnam could now defend itself, thank you and goodnight Saigon. We know how that ended.
Dubya - or his successor - will have to do much the same thing. The American people have begun to tire of young soldiers coming home horizontally for no visible result. Eventually, whoever is in the White House will announce that Baghdad is ready to command its own destiny, blah blah. Iraq will then either collapse into civil war or become a hardline Islamist theocracy in league with Iran. It will be the fault of Dubya and the neo-cons if the US is humiliated, with the war on terrorism no nearer an end. But by then we baby boomers will be safely tucked away in the sunset home. |
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