Also today, Rueters has a report on the widening protests against war in Iraq. It mentions Vietnam three times, including this quote from a 56 year-old:
These comparisons are starting to show up everywhere. Hagel has said it. Literally thousands of news organizations and editorials have begun to make the comparison. However, while I don't believe that either war was justified, I have grown exhausted by these comparisons, and do not believe that they are beneficial to the anti-Iraq war cause. My reasons for this are many.
I dislike the comparisons to Vietnam because, like all allegory and historical analogy, they lack precision and rigor. An inexact analogy can go a long way toward obscuring important details about our current situation, which itself can lead to improper action.
I dislike the comparison to Vietnam because while history looks very unfavorably upon the Vietnam War, extensive American involvement in the war lasted for eight years. If this is another Vietnam, then there will be no withdrawal for another five and a half years.
I dislike the comparison to Vietnam because while it was very unpopular at the time, outside of Lyndon Johnson, conducting of the war carried with it no repercussions for its supporters. In fact, if anything, the long, painful rise of the Republican majority began at the time of the Vietnam protests. The negative political ramifications came for those who opposed an unpopular war.
I dislike the comparisons to Vietnam because I feel that they are rife among a generation of progressive activists older than myself. I am still young, just 31, but during my twenties, when I was first becoming active in politics, I remember being harangued on numerous occasions by Baby Boomer activists who complained that people my age were politically disengaged to a shameful degree. I remember being told by the poet Ron Silliman that perhaps young people needed be be threatened by a draft, so that then they would finally take appropriate action. Yes, this is the reason why I dislike the comparisons to Vietnam most of all.
Now that I have grown older and somewhat more aware, I realize that the Baby Boomers are by far the most Republican generation still alive today. I realize that as the cloud of radical conservatism gradually darkened our horizon in the form of the Republican Noise Machine, progressive activists of an older generation did almost nothing to stop it. Whatever successes progressives managed in the past, outside of the gay rights movement, since 1980 our victories have been few and have been quickly reversed. I grew up witnessing all of these failures, and maybe I am tired of older activists telling me how I should do things.
Why would we ever want to compare our actions now to our actions during Vietnam? The ideas, institutions, and methodologies that progressives developed during that time period worked in their day, but we have clung to them for far too long. We even clung to them in early 2003 when, on February 15th, we staged the largest coordinated protest in the history of the world (at least twenty million worldwide), which was dismissed as a focus group, and did nothing to dampen our spirit for war. Now, at long last, we are developing new, better protest techniques, and we are finally breaking into the national consciousness. The Iraq War is becoming the dominant issue, and Bush's numbers are collapsing in the face of it. First Survey USA, then ARG, and now Harris--Bush's three worst polls ever have been his last three polls. This is happening not because we are replicating what we did during Vietnam, but because we are finally developing ways to go beyond what was accomplished back then.
While progressives admire and appreciate those trailblazers who came before them, unlike conservatives we are not bound to follow in their footsteps. Iraq is not Vietnam, and we should not mistake it as such. The actions that succeeded in ending the war in Vietnam will not succeed in ending the war in Iraq. Even more importantly, the progressive movement cannot suffer another twenty-five years of ossification where we offer unrequited worship to the institutions and methodologies of our forebearers.
With all due respect to my older brothers and sisters in the movement, I just can't stand the comparisons to Vietnam, and I would beg you to stop them. If this is another Vietnam, then by the time I am 65 I shudder to think at how conservative the nation will have become. I grew up during a time period when progressivism was being routed. The last thing I want to hear from those who fought the losing battles for our side is that we are going back to the beginning of that era once again, and history is repeating. .
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