Interesting cross post from Martha on Viet Nam / Iraq comparision in casualties....

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Martha,

I think the US has evolved somewhat since Viet Nam (although it's hard to see right this moment). I do remember those times well though, believe me....

If the attack on Iraq bogs down, or more likely, if when the US does take over, the guerrilla and suicide attackers come out of the woodwork start sending 100s home in body bags, then perhaps there will be a change of heart.

The US media is all but reporting the war as won tonight, so we'll see if the Iraqi resistance folds or this is just more propaganda. I know thatthe US is taking 10 or 20 times the casualties reported, however Americans will believe anything that is shoveled at them form their TV set, and so they are getting a very one sided view.

I guess only time will tell...

Wizard <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<








US Casualties?????

Wizard, you are correct--the U.S. has evolved quite a bit since Vietnam. However, you missed my point. The example was given only to demonstrate how much death of others many Americans are willing to tolerate in the name of one thing or another. In Vietnam, many were willing to tolerate the body bags because a substantial number of people actually bought into the so-called "domino theory"--the idea that if Vietnam fell to communism, other countries in the region would follow suit. Having lived through that period, I witnessed how easily people's thinking could be manipulated by using the boogie man "communism". Of course, the current theory du jour is the domino theory in reverse (i.e., spread democracy to Iraq, and it will spread to other countries--yeah, right!), but the "boogie man" being trumpeted is terrorism. And although you and I certainly do not buy into this garbage, I have friends and family that actually swallow this horseshit! Sad, but true.

To demonstrate just how torqued the thinking has gotten, let me tell you about my discussion with my older sister, a very well-educated professional person whom I would not normally classify as a right winger. A close friend of mine who is originally from Iraq was recently visited by the FBI. Now, my friend is a naturalized American citizen--has been a citizen for over a decade, I know! I spoke with outrage of their treatment of this poor woman because the FBI beat on her door late at night and scared the peejeebus out of the woman! My older sister's response? "I don't care what Arabs or Muslims the FBI visits--just so long as another building doesn't get blown up!" I told her that I was far more concerned about the survival of our Constitution and keeping our civil liberties intact--concerns that she basically blew off. At this point, she went on to tell me that since our troops were in Iraq, she now supported the war and proceeded to bash anti-war protestors! (Now, I find myself in an odd position because I personally do not agree with my sister, nor do I agree with the anti-war protestors. I want the war to end as quickly as possible with as little death as possible, but I also recognize that one cannot start and stop the war on a dime.) Ironically, my older sister's undergraduate degree was in political Science (she also has a masters degree in judicial administration) so one would naturally think that she would care more about little things like the Constitution! My older sister's attitude is not much different from the attitude of many of my relatives--only their attitude is much further to the right than hers. Except for an aunt and uncle in Jackson, Mississippi, just about all my relatives were Clinton and Gore supporters so it is not as though this thinking is way off from where others are. But fear has engulfed the lives of these people! And of course, the media's constant barrage of terrorist alerts and discussion of future terrorist attacks only serve to reinforce this fear. My own impression is that those of us who do not live in fear of our shadow actually are in the minority these days.

As to any analogy to Vietnam, most historians will tell anyone that to draw analogies from history is to learn the wrong lesson--something that is certainly true with respect to the war in Iraq. To tell you the truth, in the case of Iraq, the more appropriate analogy (at least, from the war standpoint) would be the Balkans because like the Balkans, Iraq is not really a very homogeneous society (by comparison, Vietnam was fairly homogeneous)--the Kurds in North Iraq, the Sunnis in Central Iraq, and the Shiites in Southern Iraq. And this doesn't even begin to categorize the subgroups (or tribes) or the minorities in that country! My point is that Americans have a great capacity for tolerating the spilling of someone ELSE'S blood. This is particularly true today because there is no military draft in place. Many will argue (and believe me, I have heard these arguments) that our soldiers volunteered for what they are doing so no one should be all that upset about the risks they face. After all, no one held a gun to their head and forced them to volunteer for the armed services! In other words, in spite of the massive anti-war demonstrations, most people are pretty disconnected from military casualties because there is no compulsory service, as there was during Vietnam.

The greatest lesson from Vietnam is not the casualties inflicted on our military, nor our government's misguided support for a failed, corrupt regime, nor any of the other trite, superficial analogies that many anti-war protestors have attempted to draw. The greatest lesson lies in the susceptibility of a great many people to the propaganda spewed by our government. As body bags continued to roll home during Vietnam and even as many young men ran off to Canada or went to other great lengths to avoid the draft, public opinion for a good three years was that the Vietnam War was a "holy war" of sorts. I remember the mid 60's when the only real opposition to the Vietnam War was the micromanagement of the war by LBJ--not the war itself, but the way in which it was prosecuted! After the Cuban missile crisis (the seminal event that spurred the fear that allowed government propaganda to work during that period--9/11 is the seminal event that has permitted Bush's horsehockey to fly), so many feared the Soviet Union and eventual communist domination that there was a sense that we MUST win the damned thing because if we didn't, it would be the beginning of the end of our way of life! Now, I grew up in the South so my recollections may differ considerably from yours because Southerners tend to be a "rah-rah" group when it comes to war, regardless of the "righteousness" of the military involvement, but I did witness the shift in opinion about the Vietnam War. Some of it started when Walter Cronkite announced that it was a crock on the evening news. Some of it came about as friends and family became victims--either as casualties or as POW's. (an aside: I still remember, like it was yesterday, when the son-in-law of our neighbors across the street became a POW--it was quite devastating to all of us because we were close friends of theirs.) But the eventual death knell for that war actually came about with the release of the Pentagon papers and the fact that we had been lied to for a number of years! Do I really believe that it is possible for the government to carry on this sort of charade this time around? Of course not! The dynamics are very different, and there are certainly many of us that don't believe a damned thing that Bush and his cronies say anyway! However, we STILL have not had any meaningful investigation into the failures that led to 9/11. We STILL have failed to put into place appropriate safeguards to prevent future terrorist actions. People are STILL scared senseless when they raise the terrorist color a notch! And with the GOP in control and the masterful way that Bush has used fear and ignorance to fuel his extremist agenda, it is unlikely that any of this will change until we have a significant change in our government--not just the president but also Congress since a GOP-controlled Congress is apt to thwart the efforts of a Democratic president, regardless of popular support for it--something that certainly would occur as a matter of self-preservation.

The ONLY similarities that can be made between the Vietnam War and the current debacle are as follows: (1) lies and deception have fueled support for this war, even if that support is wafer-thin (and I do believe that many "support" the war as I do--i.e., for a short period, since we are now embroiled in this war, I will "support" the effort, but when the time and number of body bags becomes great enough, I'll be out there with the anti-war demonstrators!); (2) television media is again spoon-feeding us pro-war propaganda (and regardless of what numbnuts like Charles Krauthammer and Michael Savage may believe about embedded journalists, their presence over there has actually helped this propaganda effort along, although that could certainly change quite quickly, depending on the number of journalists that bite the dust and the attrocities that they witness); (3) we are again engaging in a war of aggression with potentially devastating consequences for the region (with Vietnam, our bombing of Cambodia enabled the Khmer Rouge to take control of that country and slaughter 2 million Cambodians--in this case, there is the potential for Musharraf to be overthrown in Pakistan, Mubarak to get the boot in Egypt, and of course, King Abdalla and King Fahd both have tenuous control of two contentious populations); (4) underlying the pro-war fervor among those supporters of the effort is a legitimate fear of an external menace (in Vietnam, the "menace" was the Soviet Union and the Cuban missile crisis--and yes, I realize that our "involvement" pre-dates the Cuban missile crisis, but the serious escalation of the war occurred with LBJ; in this case, the menace is Terrorism inflicted by foreigners--particularly, Muslim fundamentalists--and the seminal event was 9/11).

I honestly believe that people in this country are cynical enough after Vietnam to actively reject this war much more quickly than they did during Vietnam. However, I also believe that fear after 9/11 is so strong that such well-based cynicism is actually undermined to a large extent. With the proliferation of the internet as well as the 24-hour news television stations, the dynamics are substantially different. Certainly, it is far easier to organize a demonstration than it was 35 years ago. And you can never underestimate the pure, unadulterated ignorance of the masses! After all, 50 million Americans voted for Bush--and this was after he referred to Nigeria as a "continent", spoke of Boston as though it were a foreign country, used fuzzy mathematics to "sell" his ill-conceived tax cut (a tax cut that was trumpeted as something we could afford when the economy was booming and the SAME tax cut that became the centerpiece of his economic stimulus package after we entered into a recession!), failed to name the leaders of Pakistan, India and Taiwan--three leaders that had been mentioned repeatedly in the news prior to the question, butchered the king's English to such an extent that one could only compare his English skills to an illiterate hillbilly, and basically did everything on God's green earth imaginable to convince anyone with more than two brain cells between his ears that, in spite of who his father was (and I honestly believe that the elder Bush has a modicum of sense, although I didn't think much of his presidency), he was a raving moron! Bush also successfully escaped any major scandal during the 2000 campaign, although there was plenty of ammunition for such a scandal, including the fact that the man had a serious alcohol-cocaine addiction that he did not attend to until he turned 40 (and there are those who say he never really got "sober"--just look at the pretzel incident!). And don't even get me started on Bush's sexual proclivities, or his crooked business deals, for that matter! I suppose that it was understandable because people got an overdose with Monica Lewinsky--the biggest non-event in history. But if these 50 million people had paid any attention at all to the debates or attempted to ascertain for themselves the actual "experience" of George W. Bush, the jerk never would have arrived at the point where there was a question about Florida! But it does demonstrate how really STUPID most people are! And that is the one constant that certainly continues, regardless of technological advances, mass media, mass information, and our ability to get the word out!

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