The Fog of Peace: Vietnam Myths and the March of Folly in Iraq

[marmar]

by Bennet Kelley at HuffPost:
The Fog of Peace: Vietnam Myths and the March of Folly in Iraq
Posted August 26, 2007 | 09:25 PM (EST)



It's a little known fact that while most of us are sleeping soundly, the far right gathers to rewrite history. With the Bush administration throwing in the towel on finding weapons of mass destruction, these right wing night owls now claim that the absence of WMD is irrelevant since "there were lots of reasons" to go war. In due time, they may even tell us what those reasons were.

These same night owls, however, have done a masterful job with the Vietnam War, recasting it as a mythic crusade against communism that we noble Americans would have won had we simply let the military do its job. This historical fantasy is anything but harmless, since the same themes are echoed in President Bush's latest "stay the course" argument and right wing comments about Abu Ghraib.

The first part of this mythology is to dispel the notion that Americans committed any wartime atrocities. Just as the Swift Boat veterans disputed Senator Kerry's claim of atrocities in Vietnam, conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh sought to deflect attention from Abu Ghraib by dismissing it as equivalent to a fraternity initiation that extracted "information that actually ended up saving lives."

The reality is quite different, as the trial of Abu Ghraib ringleader Spc. Charles Graner's plainly displayed a picture of torture. In addition, such torture did little to save lives since General Taguba's report found that over sixty percent of the inmates were not even a threat and intelligence and FBI officials concede that such abuses yield little of value.

These actions are also counterproductive on a macro-level since, just as historians concluded that U.S. abuses as part of its Vietnam "search and destroy" strategy played into the hands of the Viet Cong; Abu Ghraib has turned Iraqi's against the U.S. and undermined our moral authority worldwide.

The biggest part of the right wing Vietnam mythology is that the United States could have "won" in Vietnam but for meddling politicians. The beauty of this mythology is that the night owls rarely feel the need to say anything further since it is understood that America always wins its wars. Ann Coulter recently advanced this theory to argue that we should just "let the Marines do their job" in Iraq and now President Bush claims that the mistake in Vietnam was not escalation but withdrawal. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennet-kelley/the-fog-of-peace-vietnam_b_61881.html