On Aug. 14, the New York Times published a piece by Frank Rich under
the headline “Someone Tell the President the War Is Over.” The article was
a flurry of well-placed jabs about the Bush administration’s lies and
miscalculations for the Iraq war. But the essay was also a big straw in
liberal wind now blowing toward dangerous conclusions.
Comparing today’s war-related poll numbers for George W. Bush with
those for President Lyndon B. Johnson, the columnist writes: “On March 31,
1968, as LBJ’s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek
re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.” And Rich
extends his Vietnam analogy: “What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not
victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or
triage) strategy that may echo Johnson’s March 1968 plan for retreat from
Vietnam.”
But Rich does not linger over the actual meaning of the “plan for
retreat” and the “long extrication” -- which meant five more years of
massive U.S. military assaults in Vietnam, followed by two more years of
military aid to the Saigon government while fighting continued. The death
toll during that period in Vietnam? Tens of thousands of Americans,
perhaps a million Vietnamese people. That “extrication” was more than
merely “long.”
Rich’s narrative does not just skitter past five years of horrific
carnage inflicted by the U.S. government in Vietnam -- and elsewhere in
Indochina -- after the spring of 1968. His storyline is also, in its own
way, a complacent message that stands in sharp contrast to the real
situation we now face: a U.S. war on Iraq that may persist for a terribly
long time. For the Americans still in Iraq, and for the Iraqis still
caught in the crossfire of the occupation, the experiences ahead will
hardly be compatible with reassuring forecasts made by pundits in the
summer of 2005.
Mocking President Bush’s assertion on Aug. 11 that “no decision has
been made yet” about withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Rich concludes:
“The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We’re outta
there.”
But of course Americans are not outta there. And President Bush
reasserted last Thursday that withdrawal of U.S. troops is contingent on
the U.S.-allied Iraqi forces achieving standards of performance and
self-sufficiency that are little more than mirages.
Yes, eventually, U.S. troops may leave Iraq. But, in the summer of
2005, for commentators to declare the withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Washington’s latest imperial war to be a virtual fait accompli makes about
as much sense as it would have in the spring of 1968.
Even after the commander in chief gives an order to begin systematic
withdrawal of U.S. troops -- and we’re very far from such a presidential
order today -- there is likely to be continuation of massive U.S. military
actions in Iraq. And even an actual sharp reduction of American troop
levels on the ground hardly ensures a drop-off of Pentagon-inflicted
violence. During the three years after July 1969, when President Nixon
announced that the burden of fighting Communist forces would shift to
Washington’s South Vietnamese ally, the White House cut U.S. troop levels
in Vietnam by more than 85 percent. During that same period, the tonnage
rate of U.S. bombs falling on Vietnam actually increased.
Today, while the U.S. warfare in Iraq continues unabated, the message
that “we’re outta there” is pernicious. It looks past the ongoing need to
demand complete U.S. withdrawal (if “we’re outta there,” why bother to
protest?) and stands aloof from the very real political battles that will
be fought to determine just how long or short the bloody “extrication”
process will last.
We’re not “outta there” -- until an antiwar movement in the United
States can grow strong enough to make the demand stick. And we’re not
there yet. Not by a long shot.
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Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For excerpts and other
information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com