Democratic Party faces the same challenge in Iraq that it faced in Vietnam

[IndianaGreen]

Not only does the Democratic Party has to come to grips with Iraq, but our entire nation has to recognize the horrible crimes that our government has committed in our name, and with our implied consent.

I am amazed as to how little things have changed since the Vietnam War. The issues we spoke about back then, are the same issues we are quarreling about right now.

I was a member of SDS. I was also a military veteran that hated the war and what the war was doing to our nation and to the people of Vietnam. We can easily substitute Iraq and Baghdad for everytime we read Vietnam and Saigon in the speech below.

Read it and think:

SDS Vietnam Anti-War Speech (1965)

By Paul Potter, President of SDS

MOST OF US grew up thinking that the United States was a strong but humble nation, that involved itself in world affairs only reluctantly, that respected the integrity of other nations and other systems, and that engaged in wars only as a last resort. This was a nation with no large standing army, with no design for external conquest, that sought primarily the opportunity to develop its own resources and its own mode of living. If at some point we began to hear vague and disturbing things about what this country had done in Latin America, China, Spain and other places, we somehow remained confident about the basic integrity of this nation's foreign policy. The Cold War with all of its neat categories and black and white descriptions did much to assure us that what we had been taught to believe was true.

But in recent years, the withdrawal from the hysteria of the Cold War era and the development of a more aggressive, activist foreign policy have done much to force many of us to rethink attitudes that were deep and basic sentiments about our country. The incredible war in Vietnam has provided the razor, the terrifying sharp cutting edge that has finally severed the last vestige of illusion that morality and democracy are the guiding principles of American foreign policy. The saccharine self‑righteous moralism that promises the Vietnamese a billion dollars of economic aid at the very moment we are delivering billions for economic and social destruction and political repression is rapidly losing what power it might ever have had to reassure us about the decency of our foreign policy. The further we explore the reality of what this country is doing and planning in Vietnam the more we are driven toward the conclusion of Senator Morse that the United States may well be the greatest threat to peace in the world today. That is a terrible and bitter insight for people who grew up as we did—and our revulsion at that insight, our refusal to accept it as inevitable or necessary, is one of the reasons that so many people have come here today.

The President says that we are defending freedom in Vietnam. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of the Vietnamese. The first act of the first dictator, Diem, the United States installed in Vietnam, was to systematically begin the persecution of all political opposition, non‑Commumist as well as Communist. The first American military supplies were not used to fight Communist insurgents; they were used to control, imprison or kill any who sought something better for Vietnam than the personal aggrandizement, political corruption and the profiteering of the Diem regime. The elite of the forces that we have trained and equipped are still used to control political unrest in Saigon and defend the latest dictator from the people.

And yet in a world where dictatorships are so commonplace and popular control of government so rare, people become callous to the misery that is implied by dictatorial power. The rationalizations that are used to defend political despotism have been drummed into us so long that we have somehow become numb to the possibility that some­thing else might exist. And it is only the kind of terror we see now in Vietnam that awakens conscience and reminds us that there is something deep in us that cries out against dictatorial suppression.

The pattern of repression and destruction that we have developed and justified in the war is so thorough that it can only be called culturaI genocide. I am not simply talking about napalm or gas or crop destruction or torture, hurled indiscriminately on women and children, insurgent and neutral, upon the first suspicion of rebel activity. That in itself is horrendous and incredible beyond belief. But it is only part of a larger pattern of destruction to the very fabric of the country. We have uprooted the people from the land and imprisoned them in concentration camps called "sunrise villages." Through conscription and direct political intervention and control, we have destroyed local customs and traditions, trampled upon those things of value which give dignity and purpose to life.

http://www.hippy.com/php/article-130.html

[madrchsod]

1. "ah but i was so much older then

i`m younger than that now."
former sds and refused to go. what has changed is the approach of the anti-war movement and the diversity of the people involved.i thought i would never see another war in my lifetime but i have and it`s a war that was based on a lie and a man`s hatred of his father. over 2000 of our soldiers and an uncounted number of civilians have died because of his cowardice. we have let to many die and now we are saying no more in our name. i guess we will have to wait and see if anyone is listening and if they are not, then it`s our responsibility to remove them in 2006

[welshTerrier2]

2. what a great speech !!

thanks for posting it, IG ...

the response has been underwhelming ...

it's easy for nit-pickers to pompously and academically point out the differences between Vietnam and Iraq ... but the similarities are there regardless of what they say ...

this sentence just killed me: "The incredible war in Vietnam has provided the razor, the terrifying sharp cutting edge that has finally severed the last vestige of illusion that morality and democracy are the guiding principles of American foreign policy."

that's the primary problem i have with today's "we're stuck there" Democrats ... they finally are challenging bush to "do a better job prosecuting the war" ... they finally have admitted their votes for war were WRONG ... they even have called for an investigation into whether the evidence for war was manufactured and manipulated ...

but, what's missing? can you tell?

THEY NEVER, NEVER, EVER HAVE QUESTIONED BUSH's MOTIVES FOR WAR ... somehow, even if he lied, even if he's inept, even if they wouldn't have agreed there was adequate justification for war had they known the truth, they still won't publically question his motives ... by failing to do so, they leave on the record for the American people to see, an implicit acceptance that he went to war because Saddam was evil; he would have harmed us sooner or later; bush was protecting America; his intentions were honorable even if he lied to get a buy-in from the Congress ... his intentions were honorable !!!! that's the Democratic Party's message to America ... it's a disgrace ... every damn one of them has failed to tell the American people the truth ...

and the truth is that American foreign policy, for a very, very long time, well before bush came along, has been only an "illusion that morality and democracy" sits at its core ... the truth is that greed, corporate greed, sits at its core ... we assassinate, we destabilize, we oppress, we install puppet governments ... and we do this all with American soldiers and spies and all kinds of lies ... and only a few, a greedy few, reap the rewards ...

[IndianaGreen]

3. There is a possibility that Iraq could become a Democratic war

I mentioned this in another post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2224447#2224547

I said that Vietnam began as a Democratic war, but when Nixon was elected he turned it into a Republican war when he decided to "finish the mission" by seeking "peace with honor." You will quickly recognize that Bush and others in both parties have been using the "finish the mission" and "we broke it, we fix it" and their many variants, to justify their opposition to what a Democratic 2008 hopeful referred to as a "precipitous withdrawal" from Iraq.

What if someone like Hillary is elected President and she follows the Nixonian path of trying to "better manage" the war in order to have a "stable" and "democratic" Iraq in place before US troops are withdrawn? Will those that see everything through a partisan lens drop their opposition to the war to rally around a Democratic President? I suspect many of them will.

We have people like Kerry and Feingold calling for a phased withdrawal. Kerry should know better considering the number of casualties we took in Vietnam because of the phased withdrawals there. As you pull troops out, your remaining troops are under increased pressure simply because the insurgents are not withdrawing in kind. It was no accident that most of the names on the Vietnam War Memorial are from the period in which the US was in peace negotiations and phased withdrawals of troops, the "Vietnamization" we talk about when we hear "Iraqization" from the current crop of political leaders.

I wish more people understood why some of us are so resolute in our demands for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq. Nothing we do will change the ultimate outcome! Unless we put Saddam and the Baathists back in power, there is nothing to prevent Iraq from turning into another Iran before it becomes engulfed by a civil war.

How many names do we want on a future Iraq War Memorial?

[karynnj]

5. Kerry's plan is probably designed around his knowledge on that

Kerry calls for changing the role of the soldiers as well - giving the policing and search and destroy missions to the Iraqis. Americans in would be in a safer, less confrontational role. Kerry is talking one year - not the roughly 4 years in Vietnam.

The other thing to consider is Bush is President. A call to get out immediately would be a no go. Kerry seems to have some pretty sound ideas that would reduce the target on the US and a plan to get out in 12- 15 months. He is also pushing a demand that Bush say what his overall plan is. This works 2 ways, Bush may take some of Kerry's ideas (no credit though) and start to get out if he feels the politic cost is too high or at least it becomes an issue for 2006.

[Kolesar]

4. I think Vietnam was more of a shattering wake up call than Iraq is

We, the truly righteous liberators of Africa, Italy and France had to come to grips with the smash-mouth imperialist history of ours. I am talking about the US murdering leaders in Central America and installing puppets, plus the genocide of the Native Americans and a world of unseemly misdeeds.

I think Vietnam was different in that we adopted a satellite state to serve as a proxy in our war with the Soviets. In Iraq, it was the dumbest President in history storming through the front door.

My father was one of those men who liberated Africa, Italy, and France. His epiphany was at the conclusion of an episode of PBS Frontline, where they chronicled the reign of terror that followed our invasion and withdrawl from Cambodia. He remarked that it was a terrible thing we did to that country.

My father died a week after the coup in December 2000. I vowed that when I squared things up for my mother finally had time, I was going to become an activist and do something. I have, and I do a lot more than posting on DU.