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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (1305)	11/19/2003 11:38:35 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Do you consider only Americans human beings? If so, then yes, the war largely ended in 1973. But many-many-many thousands died until it really ended in 1975, including some Americans. Couldn't be helped I suppose, but the real damage was done in the 1968-1972 period. That was after RFK was assassinated as a sort of bookend to his brother and the pro-war forces took over, matched gradually by a backlash against the war. In 1970, the right-wing cops opened fire on students at Kent State, kids who were protesting. That is when it became obvious we were on the wrong track, but even then right-wingers did not concede. To them it was okay to gun down our kids or send our drafted troops into jungle meatgrinders to shoot down anyone with slanty eyes. Because the cause of Vietnam was so great it was worth anything. To them it was anti-communist Armageddon being played out in a third world country with little strategic or monetary value. It was all about STRENGTH, the symbol of it all, their America. Well now we know that entire war was based on lies and had no serious, rational purpose at all. That is the lesson of Nam, the one bushies fail to see today. Iraq is a much smaller engagement, but it has way too many similarities, and it may not be anywhere near to being over. Hey I grew up worshiping Sgt Rock and playing with army men too, but somewhere along the line I realized that the only good war is the one which is over. And the only reason to go to war is because we are directly threatened like in WWII or taking out the Taliban. 9-11 was a terrible thing, but the attack did not come from a nation, just a cult. Timothy McVeigh proved we also have dangerous cults in this country. In fact, they can be anywhere, like little cancerous lesions breaking out. They come in all denominations, left, right, white, black, Arab, you name it. Bushies used that as an excuse to invade the #2 oil-fields in the world which happened to be owned by a noxious dictator. Fine, except Saddam was nothing but a speculative threat. No more of a threat than a rash of forest fires or an earthquake. And then only potentially. Saddam was contained and it could have waited for a carefully planned execution. But they couldn't wait. They had to have it NOW. And look at the result. Bush is spinning away today about Saddam equaling the war on terror, but in fact the two are not the same thing so the whole argument fails to convince in the end, especially since so many lies have been told in its implementation. Lies like we heard in the 60's about a faraway place called Vietnam. Now we get into the election season so spin is everywhere, but the cardinal sin of the Bushies was to abuse and use 9-11 for their own extra-zealous purposes, much of it based on greed. Iraq mayb gradually simmer down, but I have a feeling that people like us 30 years from now looking back will have a hard time calling Bush a great leader. He is, in fact, a lot more like Nixon that the Bush supporters would like to think about. He might even be worse.