Posted on 01/19/2007 7:03:28 AM PST by SJackson
Perhaps even more than the secular left, the religious left has insisted that every U.S. military action, actual or proposed, over the last 30 years is a disastrous reprise of the Vietnam War. And these activivist prelates work very hard to ensure that the calamitous collapse of non-communist Indochina is reenacted in other regions, with the U.S. and its allies in full retreat. The desired result, no matter how murderous for the actual inhabitants of the abandoned country, will be a victory for "peace."
Over 5,000 years of recorded history should provide some other war situations from which to draw historic parallels. But religious activists of a certain age first cut their teeth in the streets and upon the campuses, hurling epithets at Lyndon Johnson and, later, Richard Nixon. Reliving the anti-Vietnam war protests is an easy return to the exhilierations of their youth.
As a chief example, National Council of Churches General Secretary Bob Edgar not only protested against the war as a young activist. He went on to serve in the infamous 94th U.S. Congress that actually refused further aid to a drowning South Vietnam in 1975.
In his official ecclesial response to President Bush's proposed "surge" of troops in Iraq, Edgar imagined,with questionable accuracy, that President Ford had proposed a similar surge in Vietnam.
"He wanted hundreds of millions of dollars for something called the Vietnam Humanitarian Assistance and Evacuation Act of 1975," Edgar recounted. "My recollection is that the administration wanted to send 20,000 more ground troops to secure Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam."
Actually, Ford's legislation asked, without specifying 20,000 or any other number, that the U.S. military be permitted to assist with the evacuation of refugees from onrushing communist North Vietnamese troops. All U.S. combat troops, of course, had withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973, and Congress had prohibited any reintroduction of U.S. forces. This, of course, meant that the U.S. could not uphold its pledge to South Vietnam in the 1972 Peace to intervene if North Vietnam violated the agreement. By 1975, North Vietnam had 350,000 troops in South Vietnam, surging towards Saigion.
Communist North Vietnam's "surge" into South Vietnam is not what Edgar recalled, of course. Instead, he remembered his own supposedly heroic role in fighting Ford's request, with Tip O'Neill whispering advice into his ear. "But, at last, the fall of Saigon made Ford's request a lost cause," Edgar noted triumphantly. "We were determined not to allow any more money to be spent on more troops for a war we were not winning."
Edgar observed, with relish, that a contemporaneous White House photo captured the architects of "the proposed troop surge" in South Vietnam: President Ford, with his then chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Dick Cheney. Aha!
"The architects of the waning days of the Vietnam War are many of the same planners who pushed our troops into the current war in Iraq," Edgar complained. "Apparently history has taught them nothing."
And apparently Edgar, from the vantage point of his time warp, is unable to detect any differences between Vietnam in 1975 and Iraq in 2007.
Edgar is not alone, of course, in his preoccupations. In a column for Jim Wallis' Sojourners, Reformed Church in America general secretary Wesley Granberg-Michaelson also waxed on about Vietnam and Iraq.
"In early 1970 Senators Hatfield and McGovern introduced legislation to cut off appropriations for U.S. combat military involvement in Vietnam by a date certain in the future," remembered Granberg-Michaelson, who was then a young aid to Senator Hatfield. "The point was to establish a specific date that would terminate the combat role of the U.S. military."
Granberg-Michaelson insisted: "I recall this history simply to point out that this would seem to be the only realistic option for Congress today, in my judgment, if it wishes to oppose the president’s policy effectively."
He admitted that this is "risky business," but necessary if the U.S. is to withdraw from a "moral quagmire."
In his riposte to President Bush, United Methodist Board of Church and Society general secretary Jim Winkler eagerly summoned up Martin Luther King's warnings about the Vietnam War.
"As we remember the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are reminded of his prophetic words decrying the Vietnam War," Winkler remembered. "Dr. King stated that given the widespread destruction caused by that war, the people of Vietnam must have seen us as 'strange liberators.' So, too, is the United States viewed today by the people of Iraq."
Winkler and other religous left officials are organizing a January 27 rally in Washington, D.C., in which "America Says NO More Troops." The website is www.americansayno.org. In another recent commentary, Winkler demanded that all U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq by the end of THIS month.
"I propose a January 31, 2007 deadline for the removal of all U.S. troops, spies, torturers, contractors, thieves, and diplomats," Winkler wrote, generously. He also demanded that the U.S. apologize to Iraq and "place $1 trillion into a reparations and reconstruction fund as a first installment to help rebuild Iraq." The fund, Winkler suggested, "should be placed in the hands of nongovernmental relief organizations such as the United Methodist Committee on Relief."
Winkler summoned up Vietnam one more time as he concluded: "Either the U.S. leaves Iraq now or one day the last helicopter will depart from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad leaving behind those Iraqis who collaborated in the occupation."
Presumably, Winkler believes the Iraqi "collaborationists" should be rounded up and punished for their supposed crimes, just as tens of thousands of anti-communist South Vietnamese were executed or incarcerated by their "liberators."
For the religous left, peace and justice around the world always demands the defeat and withdrawal of the United States, no matter the situation. Every crisis spot across the last three decades, from Latin America, to the Middle East, is, in their imaginations, only a recreation of Indochina's drama during the 1960's and 1970's.
Regretably, the history "lessons" that the religious left supposedly learned from Vietnam end with 1975. They ignore the subsequent mass murder, prison campus and totalitarian horrors that were visited upon a communized Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Just as Americans have largely rejected the spiritual guidance of the religous left's declining churches, so too they are likely not to follow the religous left's supposed history lessons.
Religious left??? Boy that is an ox and a moron at the same time. That must be those religions that allow the homosexual ministers. I guess they just tear out those chapters and verses in the Bible that speak of homosexuals.
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
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situational ethics - moozlims call it Taquiyya
Edgar of the NCC practices it.....aka 'bearing false witness'.
"Religious left??? Boy that is an ox and a moron at the same time. That must be those religions that allow the homosexual ministers. I guess they just tear out those chapters and verses in the Bible that speak of homosexuals."
The 'religious left' are devote's of the new secular religion of environmentalism, not any association with Christianity as no leftist Christians are in any way serious about their faith. They cherry pick the bits and pieces they like and ignor the rest. That is not religion or faith but simply philosophy.
It is almost as if there is an element of Western society, in the US and elsewhere in the world, that *wants* Iraq to become America's next Vietnam. They want it *so bad* they will push and push and push until it is so.
Currently the situation in Iraq bears little resemblance to Vietnam. Except, of course, there is a war on.
Why would anyone in their right mind wish a huge military failure on their own country is beyond me. Whatever happened to "my country, right or wrong"?
Failure in Iraq would visit untold abject misery upon the US and other Western democracies. It would not be easy to recover from this: if indeed it be possible to do so.
It is like wishing one's self a terminal bout of Cancer.
It just plain does not make any sense.
There are similarities.
The press delcared the war a loss, despite a clear victory on the field post-Tet. Dissimilar in the sense that for political reasons the joint chiefs request for more troops to finish things up fell on deaf ears.
The road to victory was perceived to be negotiations with the enemy while engaged. This worked in Korea. It worked in Vietnam in the sense that an agreement was reached, and we withdrew. That's the study group strategy, negotiate with Iran and Syria so we can leave. Peace with honor.
Standing up the locals was a key component in that strategy, and ongoing. Cutting off funding to assure their defeat is already being discussed.
And one more thing: so *what* if the war is all about oil? We see little evidence of that, but let's pretend for a moment that the war is not about terror, not about delivering democracy to the oppressed, but instead it is all about taking Iraq's oil.
Last time I checked, cars in America and elsewhere in the West need petroleum products in order to operate. If we all ran out of gas tomorrow, wouldn't *that* be inconvenient?
Alternative fuels and energy technologies won't appear overnight: and they will cost every household a significant amount of money. So until then, I guess it is a long walk to the yoga class, to the supermarket and back, to work, to the daycare with kids in tow, to Memphis from Portland to see the grandparents...
...and in the meantime, take on another job so that you can afford a new car: one with expensive alternative technologies because you can be sure that the automotive industry will not produce anything cheap or affordable out of the kindness of their hearts. After all, they have shareholders, too: like Grandma whose blue-chip pension fund keeps her alive at just-over-subsistence level...
So let's pretend it *is* all about oil. Why is it a bad thing to take by force something you need away from an evil, selfish despot who may decide to choke off your supply anyway? And until he does, he will make sure you pay thru the nose for it while he rapes and pillages his own people.
OK, so it's about oil then: fill 'er up.
I've no problem with war for oil. Two nations in that region have nurtured the ambition to control the regions reserves over the years. Now only Iran is left, that's not such a bad thing.
Conquest is a long and time-honored Tradition.
So all the bleats that the nay-sayers have are really quite self-defeating. This is why I have difficulty -- no, I really struggle -- to understand the mesmerization some people have with cramming a Vietnam situation into the Iraq venture.
The similarities you mention, noted and agreed: these are self-inflicted injuries that some in the US and the West are doing to themselves and others. It really is sapping America's ability to conduct warfare as efficiently and humanely as possible. The enemy must love these folks: a fifth column that they don't even need to pay or fund or even organize.
It just doesn't make sense. (shaking head slowly, eyes screwed shut tight) It. just. does. not. make. sense.
Baffling.
The Religious Left is actually very pious. They just replace God wth Anti-Americanism.
> The Religious Left is actually very pious. They just replace God wth Anti-Americanism.
And they will end up replacing God with Allah as an inevitable, "unforeseen" result. Only they are too thick to see it.
> Rush had a great observation on Barack Osama Obama the other day: "God-like to the Godless"...
In my view, Obama is a very significant threat that the Right is at risk underestimating. Naturally, I am not as up-to-the-play as some, because I live offshore in New Zealand.
But viewing the situation from here, independently and detatched from the hype, the Right has yet to a) find credible reasons why Obama is not the right man for the job, and b) find an even more credible alternative. Bush is gone next time: who is his natural successor?
The best the Right has managed to do is to observe that, like millions of people living anywhere from Turkey to Saudi Arabia and all parts in-between, Obama has "Hussein" as a middle name, and his surname rhymes with "Osama".
It's like criticising someone for being called "Earl", or "Sittler-which-rhymes-with-Hitler". Not a particularly persuasive argument at the best of times: that's stuff that should stay in the playground IMHO.
Obama has substance, style, and a sense of presence. He is a serious threat and very much in danger of occupying the Oval Office.
Just my $0.02 FWIW.
Win the WOT and we will have won the Vietnam War. Lose it, and nothing else will matter.
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