Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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Deja Vu
[Read the article: The "antiwar left" takes over America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At the risk of boring the younger generation yet again with stories of the halcyon days (not), I'd have to say that the same sort of thing went on during the last unpopular war.
Anti-war demonstrators were routinely depicted as a bunch of no-account, bearded, be-sandaled, long-haired, unwashed, ungrateful, unruly communist kids who needed a job if not a beating until we polled 20% or so of the population. At that point, sympathetic articles started to appear. Suddenly, the media noticed graybeards and moms with strollers in the anti-war crowds. After the Tet business, there was a publicly-aired whoops moment for Walter Cronkite, and the right-wingers retired temporarily to lick their wounds. The Nixon/Kissinger machine went on without the people for another seven years. Things got ugly. People got tired of the whole mess, particularly the nastiness in the streets.
I'd make two points about the historical parallels, and then I'm done.
1) The media consolidation which we know today didn't exist then, nor did embedding. The anti-war message got out more easily than it does now, and was harder for the warmongers to control. The country was full of institutions and important people who weren't part of the imperial satrapy, and the Israeli lobby had no role to play at all. It still took seven more years to end the damned thing.
2) After the war, the right wing not only continued its program of attacking the intellectual foundations of liberalism, and liberals themselves, it also began a campaign of revisionist history about the war which continues today. When people tell you what happened during that period, and focus on disgustingly privileged college kids who avoided heroic service, people who spat on returning soldiers, our military victories dishonored by political perfidy, the lazy and corrupt South Vietnamese who were unworthy of our help, or the heroic generals handcuffed by the vain and ignorant Johnson Administration, please realize that this is a foretaste of what's to come in Iraq/Iran, and plan accordingly.
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But why, WHY?
[Read the article: Joe Lieberman's dishonesty: The Iraq tragedy in a nutshell]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unprincipled swine resonates with me, but it doesn't explain much. Assuming for the moment that Lieberman, or Cheney, actually has an honest world view which is shared only with fellow believers, what might it be?
In Cheney's case, I think it's fairly uncomplicated, and I think Juan Cole today came a close as anyone has to spelling it out. Briefly stated:
America must remain powerful. It cannot remain powerful without controlling the flow of oil. The U.S. government must do whatever is necessary to retain that control. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a delusional sissy. Since I'm not going anywhere no matter what the sissies think, I have a couple of years left to get our foreign policy apparatus and military so deeply committed to this struggle that none of the sissies will be able to stop it and disengage our forces once I leave office. Since God has already thanked me, they can thank me later.
When it comes to Lieberman, the situation appears more complicated. Personally, I doubt that he's capable of being honest with anyone, even himself. Does he really see himself as a pious Jew, concerned with the moral degradation which adherents to his form of orthodoxy believe are indistinguishable from secular civilization? I doubt it, since he partakes himself -- not in orgiastic sex, or the minor euphorias of drug use, to be sure -- but he doesn't seem to mind a little graft, a little influence peddling, let alone the ego blandishments and the comforting, if false deference that most polite people pay to a U.S. senator.
As for his hawkishness, this may very well be partially influenced by his instinctive concern, as a Jew, for the future security of Israel, but the evidence seems to suggest that a much larger part of it comes from his need to stay close to the sources of power. So far he's managed that neat little trick quite nicely, thank you, but I think myself that he's finally gotten on the wrong boat, and is now very far from shore indeed. Like McCain, another unprincipled swine, the need to transform himself yet again may come upon him too swiftly this time even for such an experienced and unscrupulous political chameleon as he has proven himself to be. In any event, one can hope.