I'm a Divider Now

It’s time for a change! I don’t mean George Bush and the Republicans in Congress; well not just them. I mean it’s time to marginalize the neoconservatives and the hard Republican right wing. There is no doubt that America is a conservative country, and I place myself to the right of center, a moderate conservative if you will. As I’ve admitted before, I voted for George Bush in his race against Al Gore; I was for a moderate intent on being a uniter not a divider. Got it; yeah, right.

Recently, I asked friends to suggest reading material for me and Allan Patterson of Washington State responded with a recommendation for Barbara W. Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. I read the book for altogether different reasons than the purpose of this posting. I had read her earlier work and was particularly impressed with her book about Vinegar Joe Stilwell, Stilwell and the American Experience in China.

But in The March of Folly I was unable to avoid reading Tuchman’s analysis of our Vietnam experience without reflecting on today’s crisis. It has never been my objective to compare what I consider the great blunder of Iraq with our earlier catastrophe in Vietnam. But I must say that while there are many more differences between the two follies than similarities, the old canard usually attributed to Mark Twain (who said everything Oscar Wilde and Yogi Berra didn’t) that `History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes,’ popped into mind - many times.

Since almost three and half years have passed since on May 2, 2003 President Bush landed on the desk of the USS Abraham Lincoln and under the banner `Mission Accomplished’ announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, I intend to begin blogging in earnest on the similarities between the two calamities in the not too distant future.

But something even deeper struck me in Tuchman’s writing: the depth and virulence of the right wing reaction to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and his leadership in WW II. It is Tuchman’s view that the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party as we’ve known it since WW II arose in Reaction to FDR. She does not dwell on this analysis, but I believe it is an accurate portrait.

Her principal early point on Vietnam is that John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, set what became the inevitable course for the nation in the conflict. This course was channeled so narrowly that no administration that followed was able to change the direction until the nation was completely humiliated. The domino theory was established by Dulles and stated by Eisenhower, and no amount of rationality was adequate to turn the ship of state sufficiently to prevent failure.

The Democrats, especially President Lyndon Johnson and the large majority in both Houses of Congress, are most responsible for the historic damage done to America in Vietnam. But it was their fear of the right wing reaction if they had not continued the madness that ultimately ruined Johnson and did much damage to Richard Nixon (who was able to find his own way to self destruction.) Despite the fact that our failure to achieve our aims in Vietnam never led to our loss of super power status as was the trumpet call of the right, no administration could get out of the war without be tarred as being weak and cowardly in the face of world wide communism. The Vietnam War was never in the vital interests of the United States. We could not prevail at any reasonable price, and the black wall near the Lincoln Memorial is the primary reminder of our folly.

Now we’re engaged in another war in which the words of the consequences of failure rhyme almost perfectly. Even George Bush has been forced finally to acknowledge that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, yet somehow we must persist. Why? Because if we don’t the hard right will punish all connected with appeasement.

What appeasement? According to our generals, there are fewer than a thousand al Qaeda agents in Iraq. The rest of the killing is being accomplished by sectarian warriors really not intent on doing 9/11 type damage to the U.S. They just want us out of their country so they can have it out. Meanwhile, we’ve lost our focus on the world terrorist organizations that do want to kill our citizens, wreck our infrastructure, and destroy us as a world power. Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, among others, are well beneath our radar screen as we waste time, lives and resources on a conflict which we started for no valid reason and that we can terminate in a reasonable time period, although not without impact on those we tried to help.

It’s time we turned our attention to these neoconservatives and evangelicals who bludgeon our politicians. We must challenge them, not from the positions of the supporters of the likes of Cindy Sheehan and other `crazy leftists’ such as Michael Moore but from the perspective of cloth coat Republicans and independents. These neocons and hard right Christians are the ones who must be beaten back. Republican administrations have been unable to stand up to them, and certainly the Democrats who are tarred daily by the talk show handlers who sic their baying hounds on the cowardly `liberals’ must know that the middle is standing with those demanding reason in the war on terror.

We must have divided government and backbone implants for our politicians. Vote Democrat – this time.

Blog on!

Wild Bill