Fear is the foundation of most governments.
-John Adams
Thursday, January 05, 2006
WHY DON'T THE PACIFISTS ENLIST?
DEPT OF DOOMED TO REPEAT DEPT
"This century will go down as the bloodiest century in all of human history. We'll have lost 160 million people, killed by conflict. Is that what we want in the 21st century? I don't think so. If we want to avoid it, we have to learn from our mistakes in this century. Vietnam was one of those." -Robert McNamara
"We didn't go there as journalists with antiwar sentiment. With the country at war, my country at war, I want the country to win, whatever the definition of win is," says Rather. "But I was increasingly struck by the difference between what was being said in Washington or Saigon about what was happening on the ground ... and what the reality was.
"The reality was, it was a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day death struggle." -Dan Rather
"We couldn't win the war in Vietnam, not because we lacked military power, but because we were allied with a corrupt regime in South Vietnam that had lost the confidence of the people there. And because we were trying to argue that we could defeat the guerilla forces there with napalm and with strategic bombing and using chemical warfare -- it just didn't work. Finally we decided, after many, many years, to withdraw." -George McGovern
A comforting, simple lie told of the Vietnam war and America's subsequent pullout as the country fell to the big bad Communism:
It was liberals. It was the media. It was the peaceniks. It was the liberal media peaceniks who lost the war.
How very comforting.
Surely no fault to be found in the misguided Domino Fallacy. No fault found in attempting a traditional war against guerilla insurgents on their home turf -- lessons from 1791 Haiti never learned. Hell, lessons from French entanglement in 1950s Vietnam largely ignored. And, naturally, no blame directed toward Truman's backing of the French after breaking WWII promises to recognize pesky Vietnam's independence.
-It must have been those liberals, the ones asking why children burned. Or the traitor of My Lai, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., who interposed his chopper betwixt much needed collateral damage civilians and our own brave fighting men. Or those loony leftists with the gall to ask difficult questions in a free society concerning the reasoning, method and purposes behind commanding certain other citizens to fight, kill and die.
Certainly not the pacification-destruction of villages along with forced relocation. Or training special squads that grew from petty thugs into warlords. Or body counts used as a measure of progress. Or defoliating the jungle by dropping highly toxic chemicals willy-nilly.
-It must have been the media, erroneously reporting by showing death and destruction in all its bare horror. That dissident Walter Cronkite, pathetically shedding tears on a news station, saying that the war could no longer be justified. How dare they risk life and limb to embed themselves amongst our troops and then have the audacity to actually report things.
"By lying about the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War, the media managed to persuade Americans we were losing the war, which demoralized the nation and caused us to lose the war." -Ann Coulter
"The North Vietnamese communists have themselves conceded that the anti-war protestors are to thank for the communist takeover of Vietnam. The Jane Fonda's [sic] and Tom Hoydens are directly responsible for the bloodbath that followed in Southeast Asia." -FrontPageMagazine
Certainly we should avoid blaming the North Vietnamese communists for planning and executing the takeover; They wouldn't have thought of the idea were it not for Jane Fonda and Tom Hoyden.
-It must have been the peaceniks -- that long-haired overwhelming political force, no policy gets done in Washington without first consulting the pacifists. It was those pesky foes at Kent State with the temerity to perish when shot. It was the returning troops, a little too eager to discover the reason America had largely abandoned them to mental problems and mystery illnesses and crippling wounds and drug addiction and traumatizing memories.
Not the prospect of a prolonged conflict with a vaguely-defined goal. Not thousands of Americans being forcibly sent overseas. Not the completely random and amazingly "successful" bombing runs, many of which found their way to neighboring countries. Not the "hearts and minds" mantra that never took into account living, breathing people.
"Just as in Vietnam, our troops are being subverted. The very same neo-communists bastions of anti-American pacifists in this country are doing it all over again." -Marie Jon'
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The big question: Does it seem reasonable that, if citizens were to see many terrible things being done at the behest of a government meant to serve and answer to them, they should demand greater transparency and very seriously ask very difficult questions concerning the conduct of their military supported by their monies?
The other big question: Would it be reasonable to expect that a society which guarantees freedom of the press deserves to receive information -- no matter how terrible it may seem, or how much our own honor may appear to suffer, or how dispirited we might become therefrom -- because such instances offer clear choices of what kind of country we wish to navigate toward: one dedicated to openly admitting our own deficiencies and working to correct them, or one attempting suppression of any criticism, allowing abuses to go unchecked?
