On War

The most salient issue in “politics as usual” is inertia around the war machine. We cannot know what resides in Mr. Obama’s heart in regard to continuing our fighting, bombing, killing…in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan… But there’s no easy answer here. The American public was coerced into supporting this misbegotten conflict, and while most see that we were duped, we are still ambivalent.

Mr. Obama is a cautious and cerebral man, trying to do what’s politically expedient. He’s trying to avoid mistakes that may compromise his presidency. He’s being influenced by the noisy rabble on the right and its ability to sway public opinion.

Republicans have a large stake in these wars. Aside from starting them, they have wholeheartedly supported their continuation, and will continue to so---by any Democratic president. The cynicism of the Republican’s position is that by wishing the worst for Mr. Obama, they also wish the worst for our country. The dilemma for Mr. Obama is that while continuing the wars will keep the right at bay, it assures that violence will continue and almost surely return to us. Continuation of war is politically safe for Mr. Obama; his opposition from the left is soft. Outrage from the right would be deafening if he pulled out, because staying the course validates the right! If Mr. Obama ended the wars and brought peace, Republican war policy would be exposed for the disaster that it’s been. The Republicans’ only hope for absolution would be terrorist attacks. Anyone who doesn’t believe that the Republican establishment will be overjoyed by terrorist attacks on this country while Mr. Obama is president is wildly naïve.

The irony here is that any Republican president could safely end these wars. The Republican establishment and noise machine will spin it as a triumph, and Democrats will be delighted with the only ultimate resolution. (Mr. Bush couldn’t stop them because that would have been an admission of mistakes.)

Half a century ago and half a world away, we find a Democratic president on the horns of a similar dilemma. At the close of WW II, Ho Chi Minh (our ally during the war) asked President Truman to help him keep the French out of Vietnam. Under advice from the State Department, Truman foolishly refused. (Roosevelt hated the French and had no intention of allowing them to re-claim their Southeast Asia colonies.) So Ho looked to the Soviet Union for assistance, setting the stage for the hottest of our many “proxy” wars with Russia. When the French left Vietnam in 1954, Eisenhower, proposing his "Domino Theory", took up the cause, delivering arms, "aid" and advisors to support Ngo Dinh Diem, a cruel and corrupt dictator. Fed by hatred of Diem, civil war intensified. Kennedy, hemmed in by his own campaign strategy of “out-Nixoning Nixon”, continued this woeful policy, but with great ambivalence.

Mr. Johnson assumed the presidency knowing that he was unpopular and considering himself an “interloper”. As such he was reluctant to reverse Kennedy’s position without himself being elected to office. Johnson agonized for sleepless months over his options, not wanting to commit to war, but still captive of the inertia of the cold war and “common knowledge” of Eisenhower's domino theory.

During the 1964 presidential campaign, Nixon and Goldwater were evoking wild enthusiasm from Republicans by pushing American commitment to expand the war. When Goldwater won the nomination and amped up his campaign, Johnson, pummeled by America's military naivete and captive of his patron's "bear any burden, pay any price", looked for some way to defuse his rival’s jingoistic support. In August, at the height of the campaign, a small incident occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin that gave Johnson the pretense to expand the war and show his mettle. Congress passed the resolution, and Johnson began bombing North Vietnam. Turns out, Democratic support for the war was tepid at best. Johnson won the election in a landslide because of broad apprehension over Goldwater; but having made his bargain with the devil, he couldn’t find his way out. Politically, it came to a Republican to extract us from that war.

There are striking similarities between the Vietnam debacle and our current dilemma in the Mid East. Perhaps the most striking difference is the contrasting character of the two “enemies”. Vietnam was a safe harbor for our military adventures because the Vietnamese were a gentle, agrarian society. We could safely dance there without bringing it back home. Our adversaries in the Middle East are not gentle, loving and docile people. This tar-baby has thorns; and it’s coming back after us. Killing these people does not slake their blood lust. Someone must extract us from this mess without using guns, bombs and missiles. Someone must use intelligence, diplomacy and a totally new approach to the problem. This is CHANGE, and it’s the essence of what our president “offered” us in words during his campaign. And it’s what we desperately need now.

In a 1936 speech, Ret. General Smedley Butler, twice decorated with the Medal of Honor, stated, “War is a racket….. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Nothing has changed.

For the past hundred years, time and again we (should) have learned that wars can only be won politically. Much as guns and bombs couldn’t defeat the Vietnamese without bringing on global war, military means won’t accomplish our goals in the Middle East. Our war machine is an enormous hazardous to us, as it will fall into the hands of reckless and naïve leaders whom we will be reckless and naïve enough to put into office. We’ll never know what would have happened if in 1964 President Johnson had said, “No” to war. But we know all too well what happened when he said, “Yes.”