Reply #47: Just like Viet Nam--only FASTER [View All]

[DrBB]

We seem to have gone from 1962 to 1968 in less than half a year.

But as one who also lived through that time, the sickening sense of deja vu is nearly overwhelming at times for me too (I only turned 18 near the end of the draft, and my lottery number was in the high-300s so I didn't get called up, but I came of age politically under the shadow of Viet Nam--my older brother and I both attended anti-war rallies and we had schoolmates who went over and didn't come back). I don't think the current senior military personnel, many of whom served back then, are unaware of it, either. Seeing a lot of evidence of that, in fact. Joe Conason had a good piece recently about how this is peeling military voters away from the Chump.

The Powell doctrine: we would never go to war without a clear mission and exit strategy, a doctrine explicitly born out of the Viet Nam experience. Now blithely tossed aside--and Powell good-soldiering along with it, to boot. Nor are those Viet Nam echoes merely coincidental: the architects of this cluster-fuck are Viet Nam-era chickenhawks who want to do it over again and get it "right" this time.