Iraq: Bush's Vietnam? (Interesting comparison to LBJ in 67/68)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_3444.shtml

A nation is sharply divided over the president's job performance. Political opponents grumble about the economy. Growing numbers of Americans say going to war was a mistake.
The time was summer 1967, the president was Lyndon B. Johnson and the war was Vietnam.

The moment proved to be a tipping point in the Democrat's presidency. Months later, as the war raged and the public ranted, Johnson recognized he couldn't go on. He stunned the nation in March 1968 by announcing that he would not seek another term.

Today, comparisons of the Iraq war to Vietnam are growing louder and steady reports of American troops killed on the battlefield are having a corrosive effect on public opinion of President Bush.

One of the most telling numbers of late: four in 10 Americans, 39 percent, think the United States made a mistake by sending troops into Iraq - roughly the same number that said that about Vietnam in the summer of 1967.

[maha]

1. Partly the same, partly different

I hadn't remember the economy was in trouble in 1967, but then I was in high school and might not have noticed. So I checked. The stock market had hit a four-year low in 1966, but the GNP rose 5.4 percent in 1966. In 1967 the economy showed "signs of vigor," according to a history book I have at hand, in spite of some protracted strikes in various industries. This seems to corroborate my memory that the economy wasn't a hot-button issue in 1967 the way it is today. The cloud on the horizon was Johnson's humongous appropriation for military spending without an increase in taxes to pay for it, which would cause the economy to stall a few years down the road. But most people weren't all that worried about it in 1967, I don't think.

Another difference between 1967 and now is that LBJ, I suspect, really did have a conscious and really was torn up inside about the deaths in the war. Shrub, on the other hand, doesn't feel anything for anybody but himself.

But the final difference was that the news media was merciless in their treatment of LBJ. I remember that, clearly. The news media hounded LJB out of office. I wish I could send everybody back in a time capsule to see the difference between then and now. You would find it astonishing, I think.

[cliss]

2. Some other dissimilarities:

We've been in Iraq less than a year. How long were we in VietNam? I read recently that it was 16 years (shudder). I think the protest movement built up gradually. As more and more lives were taken, I believe people finally started saying they'd had enough. And as usual, it was the young people who really started brawling and insisting on a change.

I remember arriving in the US as a child when all this was going on. I was astounded at what I saw. Protests, marches, banners, furious people all over the place. I was not so sure about where I had ended up.

I wonder about today. People seem to well-behaved. They worry about their own lives, as others' lives are being sacrificed for corporate interests and money. They just don't seem so concerned.

Even Rumsfeld had the audacity to say that the Americans who were killed in Iraq was less than the number of people who get killed here in traffic accidents. That comment was quickly squashed.

I wonder what it's going to take to get people as riled up as they were in the late '60's. Because they will not stop until we demand it. Even as I write this, they have more plans in the making.

Notice how troops are being reshuffled? Some are being sent home, and others are being called for active duty.

[maha]

3. Length of war

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution -- August 7, 1964
Final evacuation from Saigon -- April 30, 1975

That was the war phase. We'd been messing around in Vietnam for several years before Tonkin, but officially that was not in a combat capacity. I have met people over the years who said there were covert U.S. military operations in Vietnam going back to the Eisenhower years, and these were people in a position to know, but it's not something that I can corroborate.

The anti-war movement may have been simmering away as early as 1965; I do not know. I was in high school then and fairly sheltered. By 1967 it was pretty visible, and of course by 1968 the whole world was watching. By 1969 I was in college and took part in a few small demonstrations, myself, but I was pretty far away from the main action. I mostly just observed.

One thing I hope people understand is that the anti-war movement was, IMO, remarkably ineffectual in bringing the war to an end. In fact, the movement's biggest achievement, other than getting Richard Nixon elected in 1968, was getting Richard Nixon re-elected in 1972. It backfired more than it worked.