Things are going seriously badly in Iraq this month. For the Iraqis, but also for the Americans. The number of US dead there has now reached 70 since October 1— and we’re still only at October 18.
For every one of these US service members killed, tens must have been wounded very badly indeed. God help them all.
And of course, Iraqis are being killed, in the many different forms of violence now roiling the country, in far, far greater numbers.
At the Iraqi political level, PM Nuri al-Maliki made a double pilgrimage to Najaf today– to see Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and to see Mahdi Army chief Moqtada Sadr. This, after the phone conversation on Monday with President Bush, which– one can conclude– must have left Maliki far from satisfied about the baselessness of the many recent rumors that Washington was considering replacing him.
On coming out from the meeting with Sistani, Maliki stressed that,
- “The Iraqi government is a government of national unity that came to power through the will of the Iraqi people… The Iraqi people are the only authorized party that can remove this government or allow it to continue.”
It seems clear by now that the big gamble the US occupation authorities made in the past siux weeks– that by “flooding the zone” in Baghdad with US troops, they could restore something of a sense of order there before the US elections– has failed. With 147,000 US troops in the country, they still haven’t been able to get a handle on the situation.
This evening, Bill and I watched the highlights of the interview that ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos conducted with Bush somewhere in, I believe Georgia or Florida, earlier today. Bush was more than usually flustered and inarticulate, and really seemed badly taken aback by the direct and simple questions that GS asked him– about Iraq, especially.
As the account on the ABC News website there says,
- Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
“He could be right,” the president said, before adding, “There’s certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election.”
Yes, indeed. If I were a Republican Party operative I would not find that reassuring.
Tet — the Vietnamese name for the Chinese Lunar New Year — occurs at the end of January or the beginning of February. Traditionally, like many other Asian peoples, the Vietnamese return to the ancestral family home for several weeks at this time of year. For this reason — since much of the Republic of South Vietnam’s army would be absent from their nominal duty stations and many governmental offices would have few personnel on hand, as well — the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the regular North Vietnamese Army planned their highly coordinated — and completely unexpected — attacks on most major South Vietnamese cities during this traditional Asian holiday in early 1968.
American elections, on the other hand, take place on the first Tuesday in November, about nine months later than the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations. Furthermore, as another notorious “October Surprise” in 1972 demonstrated, a simple Kissingerian phrase like “Peace is at hand” uttered mere days before an American election can result in complete national narcolepsy and the re-election of yet another lying American president determined to have a war that the country had supposedly written off four years previously during Tet of 1968. Therefore, I would caution against thinking that George W. Bush and the Republican Party — few of whom know anything whatsoever about the American War on Vietnam (or the American War on Iraq, either) — can’t figure out a suitable magical sound-bite days before Novermber 7th of 2006 to linguistically lobotomize the fabled Nation of Sheep into voting them back into office.
We really have to wait until November 8th before giving the American people credit for understanding much of anything that happens in some far away, insignificant country that most of them — including the current President of the United States — could probably not locate on a map. I mean, after all, from what recent polls tell us about the good people of Connecticut, the Party-of-Holy-Joe-Lieberman’s self-nominated candidate and unabashed Bush war enabler seems headed for election to a Senate whose Democratic Party members have promised him seniority and another shot at undermining the Democratic Party and any of its hopes for getting our dying troops out of Iraq forthwith. Yes, I think we had better wait a bit before presuming that George W. Bush has more to fear from us than we have to fear from him and those “Democrats” like Holy Joe Lieberman who say “we undermine President Bush at our peril.”
The soundbite will be something like ‘Saddam Hussein sentenced to death’.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=130487
Tet followed the New Hampshire primaries in which E. McCarthy made a strong show against Johnson. Tet, plus the entry of R. Kennedy into the Dem primaries, convinced LBJ to hang up his spurs and retire to Texas. The draft also made the Vietnam war much more contentious, prompting riots at the Dem convention in August. Humphrey had to defend an unruly platform that was pro-war and domestically liberal. The party split on the war issue, contibuting to Nixon’s victory in November.
The current WH occupant, convinced of Divine backing for his mission, has fewer qualms about setbacks (mere commas) than LBJ. There is no draft to make the young restive. The US casualties are fewer and confined to volunteers whose demise is carefully concealed from TV cameras. Mid-term voter turnout tends to be low. This year’s turnout may be dominated by people anxious to keep taxes low. Congressional districts are structured to favor suburbans and exurbans: pro-military, anti-tax, pro gun ownership, anti-abortion, partial to use of heavy armore (300 HP SUVs and pickups) and fond listners of evangelical preachers and conservative talk radio. These preferences override revulsion over uncovery of “bad apples” within the GOP.
Michigan’s 8th District seat race is a good example where GOP incumbent Rogers seems set to coast to victory over challenger Marcinkowski. Despite what polls indicate about dissatisfaction, Marcinkowski gets little traction on the issues. Rogers, meanwhile, is able to stir up alarm about imminent nuclear attack by Iranians. He cites an “independent” report by his own House Intelligence Committee to prove it.
The only resemblence I see to 1968 is that the election victors, whatever their party, will have to mimick the same “I have a plan” and “peace is at hand” postures of Nixon and Kissinger. Expect various slogans to come from the Baker ISG report. There will be months of toying with various gimmicks and time-tables to transfer power or project a “phased withdrawal.” But the sectarian strife will continue and the prospects of a peaceful exit will remain dim.
What’s the use in working for a change in government when you’re locked into contempt filled stereotypes of the United States public like “pro-military, anti-tax, pro gun ownership, anti-abortion, partial to use of heavy armore (300 HP SUVs and pickups) and fond listners of evangelical preachers and conservative talk radio” or “nation of sheep” before you even try? Specific races like Marcinkowski/Rogers and Lieberman/Lamont/Schlesinger have their own unique factors; sweeping generalizations oversimply them. Similarly, Nixon won 60% to 37% in 1972; I really don’t think one Kissenger soundbite cause THAT big a swing to him. Me, I’m taking heart in the very dedicated effort at campaigning for government change that you can find in places like dailykos.com and mydd.com.
I think Juan Cole made a good point about Bush’s frame of reference relating to the Tet offensive. You have to remember that Bush often speaks in code, and most of the time he only interacts with like-minded people. Certain words, phrases and historical references have very different meanings in right-wing conservative mythology than they do in common usage.
While I agree with all of the commentary so far, I also think that any public discussion of the Iraq War with reference to Vietnam — even if poorly correlated — is a very good thing.
Molly Ivins has a new piece, “Iraq Follows Vietnam Model”. She says it much better than I can. Worth googling to read.
While I agree with all of the commentary so far, I also think that any public discussion of the Iraq War with reference to Vietnam — even if poorly correlated — is a very good thing.
Molly Ivins has a new piece, “Iraq Follows Vietnam Model”. She says it much better than I can. Worth googling to read.
I served almost six years of active duty military service in the United States Navy from August 6, 1966 to February 2, 1972. The last eighteen months of that service, I spent as a translator/interpreter for the Military Advisory Group in the now defunct Republic of South Vietnam. Three years after I returned home to a clueless America still listening to Richard Nixon’s pathetic promises, the “army” of that same fictive Southeast Asian “country” collectively dropped its weapons and trousers and ran off in its undershorts. So much for “standing up” the fallen-down colonials. To this day, Henry Kissinger claims that “we really had it won” but for all the back-stabbing pacifists in America. To this day, the influence-peddling Henry Kissinger still advises the government of the United States in its (mis)conduct of the nation’s foreign policy.
Decades of miserable experience for America and the world have happened because the American public that could vote when I couldn’t overwhelmingly swallowed a complete ration of undiluted bullshit from its government and news media — as lazy and corrupt today, if not more so — as forty years ago when California Governor Ronald Reagan bullied so many of us poorer college students into enlisting in the military rather than risk branding as pinko-commie “draft evaders.” Now, with no — yet — conscription and with America’s youth completely uninterested in what happens to their future national inheritance — if not their payroll taxes — voters continue to assume that only their own pathetic little localities matter when the entire country faces a looming tsunami. Just the other day our Republican Congress and Republican President signed away the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus which has proven the bedrock of our laws since the thirteenth century. And many prominent “Democrats” in the House and Senate went along without a whimper. Many of these same people will win re-election, too. We gotta keep from burning those flags or letting queers get married, you know. The real important stuff needs “debate,” you know.
I never agreed with anything my parents’ generation and my society thought (and they didn’t think much) about Vietnam. My mom would ask: “Who will protect us against our enemies if you don’t?” I would ask in return: “Who will protect me against my own government if you don’t?” The black professional boxer Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali) spoke for most of us younger Americans when he refused military induction, saying: “I ain’t got nothin’ against no Viet Cong.” No American truthfully did. Yet we still got Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and eight more years of bloody, stupid war for no conceivable national interest. No American has any cause for having anything against any Iraqis or Afghans, either. Yet we still get Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and five (so far) more years of bloody, stupid war for no conceivable national interest.
And I had to live long enough to see it all happen again. So I have my reasons for remaining skeptical of what off-year American elections, or even presidential ones, will do to effect real change. As with the case of Holy Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, candidates for national government office can still apparently sell the line of crap that stupid, self-destructive war in Iraq constitutes “only one issue” out of many equivalent others: like getting the municipal garbage cleaned up more regularly. Any electorate that can injest that bogus bilge without barfing has almost no serious understanding of the momentous disaster now engulfing not just Iraq, but America as well. “Just one issue,” my ass.
I’ll believe that America has woken up — at least a little — when I see every single national officeholder who had anything to do with either instigating or enabling this historic bungle summarily fired and run out of Washington tarred and feathered, hanging upside down from a rail. In truth, though, everything I see, hear, and read tells me that only marginal tampering around the edges of our failed mediocrity of a government will take place on November 7, 2006. Yes, a few stray beams of sunlight may filter dimly into the ambient darkness here and there, and, of course, I applaud those. Fifteen or twenty House seats and a handful in the Senate may also nominally switch political parties, and I, of course, consider that something of a temporary improvement.
Nonetheless, these cosmetic alterations — however welcome — hardly seem adequate to the monumental challenge facing the country. You don’t put out a raging five-alarm fire with a handful of garden hoses. I just don’t see the SCALE of national concern that any real change will require. I haven’t seen it since the mid-1970s when the people through their elected Congress (1) revoked the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, (2) cut off funding for the stupid American War on Vietnam, and (3) forced the resignations of a corrupt Vice President and law-breaking President for not ending forthwith a stupid, needless war that the American people didn’t want and would no longer tolerate. When I see those three things happen again — like next year — I’ll believe in American democracy again. Not before. Again, the immediate and necessary program: (1) No vague, smarmy, blank-check legal authorization for endless war against somebody somewhere at any time; (2) no more of our blood and money; and (3) none of the perpetrators left in office. I need a REAL reason to believe in America again. I’ve heard all the worthless promises in my life that I’ll ever again uncritically accept. Find a candidate who will run on that sure-fire winner of a platform and I’ll even vote for him or her. Just no more bullshit.