Friday, August 24, 2007

The Misuse of History: Facts and Opinions are NOT the Same - Vol. 3 Issue 86

One can quarrel over various historical questions. For instance, if Hitler had died in WWI, would there have been a Nazi movement and subsequent holocaust? There is no answer, only informed speculation. When President Bush oddly invoked Vietnam in his VFW speech, he unfortunately ventured into an area where there are actual FACTS. Yes, I know; in “Bushworld” facts don’t matter. But just for a moment and for our own edification, let us revisit the tragedy of the Vietnam War. According to Mr. Bush, we left “before the job was done.” Really? Yet it was a REPUBLICAN President (Nixon) and Secretary of State (Kissinger, Bush’s secret advisor) who presided over our “retreat.” Here is what Bush said: “One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘reeducation camps’ and ‘killing fields.’ “ See, WashingtonPost.com.

As usual, the President and his handlers have it completely wrong. Those “new terms,” as he calls them, were not the result of our military withdrawal from Vietnam. To the contrary, those new terms were the result of our INVOLVEMENT in Vietnam.

I have always suspected that the assertion of this bizarre revisionist history would come from a national right-wing zealot. You know, someone like Pat Buchanan or David Duke. The idea that a President, of either party, would so twist the historical record, never occurred to me. My bad! Ancient history may have some speculative aspects to it. Was there really a Jesus? Did Claudius really have sex with animals? Etc. etc. But as President John Adams said, “FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS.” President Bush’s current “brain trust” apparently missed ALL of the definitive histories of our involvement in Southeast Asia. From Stanley Karnow’s amazing “Vietnam: A History,” to David Halberstam’s classic, “The Best and the Brightest,” to General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket;” there is no question that our involvement in Vietnam was a tragic blunder, FROM THE BEGINNING. Apparently, the Neocon godfather, Norman Podhoretz (Wikipedia), has been spending time at the White House tutoring our hapless Commander–in Chief. Of course, Podhoretz is Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams’ father-in-law; After all, what are a few felonies among friends? The truth is this: no matter what mumbo jumbo the old right-winger and McCarthy informer whispers in the naive and pliable President’s ear, the disaster of Vietnam was not that we finally left (after 56,000 American dead), but that we went there in the first place. No one will question why we invaded Afghanistan, but Bush’s Iraq adventure will live in infamy as a prime example of a great power gone wrong. The Neocon McCarthyites will eventually have to answer for their lies. Until then, we have Countdown and The Daily Show.

Semper fi,

Savant