Historian Howard Zinn Ties Dem's Viet Nam/Iraq War Postions

[radio4progressives]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/As_Iraq_votes_liberal_historian_looks_1215.html

As Iraq votes, historian, iconoclast looks to Vietnam; Says lack of position cost Democrats in 1968


(snip)

Raw Story: How do the Democratic positions compare now to their positions during Vietnam?

Zinn: Certainly when the elections were taking place in 1967, the Democratic Party still had not taken a position against the war. Only by 1968 when the election was coming up did we have an anti-war candidate. Johnson was out of the race because in fact he recognized that he somehow was missing history. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy understood by 1968 that the war was wrong and furthermore that the American people knew the war was wrong. And so they at least provided some leadership to the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, neither of them made it and the Democratic Party devolved into the hands of Hubert Humphrey who had been a supporter of the war, and Humphrey lost narrowly to Nixon... similar to the 2004 election because Humphrey did not give a clear support for what the American people wanted, which was to get out of Vietnam.

(snip)

read full text: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/As_Iraq_votes_liberal_historian_looks_1215.html

[shance]

1. That's interesting. So did Governor Dean. Just a week ago said this.

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

[Taverner]

2. damn Zinn hits the nail on the head!

[mike_c]

3. yep-- Zinn hits another out of the park....

NO ONE seems to have learned a damn thing from Vietnam. Well, no one in Washington, at least.