We can't handle the truth

It seems to have slipped past the window so fast that hardly anyone noticed it, what with the obsessive/compulsive coverage of the New Hampshire primary. Of course the US being what it is, anything that occurred more than a week ago is uninteresting and irrelevant no matter how interesting and relevant it is.

There is one subject that I've argued about on the Web more than any other. Long before there were blogs; in fact long before there was a Worldwide Web, there were content providers and bulletin boards and other places where the reprehensible right wing rabble could strut their views about how Nixon did nothing wrong and the Viet Nam war was a valiant struggle for American freedom against an enemy who attacked our Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. That Lyndon Johnson used that attack to gain the power to make a huge military commitment to a war that claimed as many as 2 million lives, many of them civilian, is not a matter of conjecture, but that the incident ever occurred is - or was until now.

I've been called a traitor, an idiot, a Communist, a Pinko and worst of all, a Liberal for maintaining that it never happened and those accusers have had their smug, war-loving way for decades. I would love to think that the NSA review of classified signals which now proves that it was invented would chasten them, but I'm sure it doesn't. The excuse is already emerging that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara truly had reason to believe that the bogus attack was real and the evidence "unimpeachable" so the undeclared and illegitimate war was as legitimate as our invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.

The sort of people that think Vietnam was glorious, necessary and all about Freedom aren't often persuaded by facts, particularly when the facts prove that they are and always have been on the side of needless death and destruction. The sort of people most of us are don't even care one way or another, whether out of Chauvinism, ignorance or preoccupation with the wonderful world of entertainment. It's with their help that America's foreign exploits over the last hundred years or so often have resembled the actions of some guy with an inferiority complex who goes looking for bar fights and tells himself it's really all about how somebody spilled his beer or smiled at his girlfriend.

Did the Bush administration try it all over again in the Strait of Hormuz? How can anyone know for sure? How can know anything in a country where people would rather believe than think and where nobody really cares? So I should feel vindicated, but I don't. I should be pleased to see the truth prevail at long last, but I'm not because the truth just doesn't matter.

A three hour tour

How far is it from Fantasy Island to Gilligan's Island? Our Iraq experience should give us a clue, but perhaps we'll have an even better fix if what Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center said last week at a meeting organised by The National Interest comes true. According to today's Times of London, Debat said:

"The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days."

We know what the Minnow's three hour tour turned into and we know how the "matter of weeks at most" Iraqi adventure turned out. Can we hope for anything better with a "three day blitz" in Iran? I think we can hope for worse - much worse. Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be carried out because they would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq, but of course we have plenty of nuclear weapons and a president that's desperate to win something by doubling up his bets.

Perhaps Bush is trying Richard Nixon's "madman theory" in the hopes that Iran will be afraid and back down, but it didn't work against North Vietnam and I don't know why it seems more likely to work now. Bush is beginning more and more to appear like the frustrated schoolyard bully who has turned everyone against him and out of desperation brings a gun to school.

cross posted at The Reaction

Why we lost the war.

George Will writes today, in anticipation of the September progress report:

"After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power."

Of course we know that this fanciful analysis led to extremism, scapegoating and persecution of the innocent, but what Will does not discuss is the fanciful analysis that has fed the still unbridged divide in the US that followed upon the Viet Nam war. We would have won that one of course, if only or if it hadn't been for Fonda, Hippies, flag burners, the Liberal Press, unpatriotic dissenters, etc. We would have "won" but for the lack of resolve and the "emboldenment" of the "enemy" by those who didn't swallow the false reports and fanciful predictions. We were so close to winning.

The fact that containing the spread of Communism by military involvement in civil wars has been largely unsuccessful since the end of WW II doesn't seem to enter the equation or dilute the argument that what every citizen of the world wants is American inspired and all they need is to have is elections for western liberal democracy to flourish. It was never that we jumped into untenable struggles with inchoate strategies without the slightest doubt of our heroism, it is always the fault of some convenient group who never believed the lies.

Nixon's plan to win was of course, to appear resolute, to escalate in secret and to give false progress reports while predicting that the Vietnamese army would soon stand up so that we could stand down and declare victory with honor. That's the same basic strategy of our Decider, Commander Guy, Warpresident: we win through resolve alone and lose through realism - and he still gets applause for it.


Will goes on to speculate that Petraeus' report will convince no one in the two opposing camps, but in typical Will fashion, he avoids having to admit that there is accessible reality outside of political scenarios. It's as though the deluded and the perspicacious are somehow equivalent and so objectivity is illusory. Perhaps George has been studying Zen or perhaps he's designed an interesting way to avoid taking responsibility for his support of the Neocon crusade.

Viet Nam ended badly because we had no plan for orderly withdrawal short of unconditional surrender of all opponents civilian and military and so it will be with Iraq. Of course it's interesting to note that Bush has finally made notice of the lessons of Viet Nam, the conflict he and his cronies avoided, by warning us of the bloodshed that will ensue if we leave, without taking responsibility for the blood already shed in our arriving and remaining. The precipitous end of our involvement in Viet Nam allowed chaos to ensue because we bombed countries into the stone age and destabilized every government in the area and created more enemies than we could count and didn't have time or the means or the plan to get our friends out. Sounds like a familiar story, doesn't it?

No one will be able to perpetuate this war long enough or be able to deploy enough force to change the indigenous religions and tribal affiliations and the ancient animosities they carry. Iraq will not be standing up for the Maliki Government or anything like it. This war will end badly and is likely to spread and of course to the next, remember-nothing generation, it will have gone badly because of the Liberals and their lack of resolve.