Playing The Dead Soldier Card

[rateyes]

Full article here:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/7/85728/35558

I’ve been waiting for this; anticipating it, really… It’s taken over two years, but the rationale for the Iraq War has finally caught up with the last-ditch Vietnam War rationale.



Both wars started out with dire national security reasons behind them. George Bush’s doctrine of “taking the fight to the terrorists so we don’t have to fight them here” is simply an updated version of domino theory. (For those who are too young for the reference: The domino theory held that if the Communists took Vietnam, they would then take Laos, and then Cambodia, and then Japan and the Philippines, and soon no place in the Pacific would be safe, and we'd be fighting them on the beaches of California. We all know how that one played out.) The Vietnam version of the WMD Big Lie was that the North Vietnamese navy had attacked US ships at sea. (Google “Tonkin Gulf,” youngsters.)



When the Tonkin Gulf Big Lie was revealed, and the absurdity of the domino theory became clear to everyone, the rationalizing of the war morphed it into a mission to help the people of Vietnam -- all very noble, all so principled. (Sound familiar?) That lasted for a while, but as our methods gave lie to that reason (Key quote: “We had to destroy the village to save it.”), the Nixon Administration played the Honoring Our Dead Soldiers card. We had to win in Vietnam, they said, so that our dead soldiers will not have died in vain. Supporters of the war ignored the circular reasoning. (Since no one had died yet when the first US troops got there, what had they ded for -- other than to give later-arrived soldiers a reason to die?) The Nixon Administration kept playing the card, and playing it, and playing it, until it (the Administration) finally imploded from the sum of its Vietnam lies, and vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving poor Gerry Ford to mop up the mess.



Now we have Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, leading a protest in Crawford, TX of the Gold Star Families for Peace and other anti-Iraq-War groups of soldiers and their families. (I write “in Crawford,” but I can’t be sure they’re even being allowed that close to Bush. Those demonstrators can be a threat to him, with their sharp picket signs and their even sharper reasoning. The last I heard, they were being kept five miles from the ranch.)

So does a representative of the Bush Administration even bother to meet with the families of our war dead? Not on your life. Instead, they get a statement issued from the White House that, “We have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen by completing the mission.” And so we have arrived at 1969. This is not our final stop on the Return To 'Nam Express, but you might want to get off the bus here. The ride just gets bumpier.

<snip>

IRAQ IS ARABIC FOR VIETNAM!!

[mike_c]

1. there is nothing honorable about dying for fascism....

eom

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. How many tributes are spoken for the fallen in Colonial wars?

This is hardly a noble cause, the world knows it, and so do an increasing number of stupid americans.

[niallmac]

2. sort of like 'Well, yeah we lied to you and the war is a crock but

hehh heh OH WELL! We're there now folks so I guess we got no other choice but to keep up the killing. Too late now suckers. :banghead:

[rateyes]

4. What gets me is that so many Democrats

(I expect it from Repukes) remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution---and, still, IMO, violated the constitution by voting to give the president authority to go to war if he deemed it necessary--repeating our mistakes---that's insane--doing the same damned things and expecting a different result----insane.

[Qanisqineq]

5. very interesting for us "youngsters"

I did not know they went through all the same rationales for the Vietnam war.