PACKET EDITORIAL, Oct. 1
By: Packet Editorial
It’s getting harder and harder these days to listen to all the rhetoric about Iraq without hearing echoes of Vietnam.
It isn’t so much in the justification for U.S. involvement although there are some striking parallels between our determination in the 1960s to rid Vietnam of communism and our resolve today to rid Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction (and, while we’re at it, rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein).
In both cases, no overt act by a hostile power thrust the United States into war. Unlike World War II, or even the Gulf War, no attack on Pearl Harbor or armed annexation of Kuwait made the deployment of American forces inevitable. Rather, the justification for taking up arms rested in the stated belief of our political leaders that failure of the United States to intervene would lead to unacceptable consequences a communist foothold in Southeast Asia, a nuclear-armed, out-of-control despot in the Middle East.
When the case for war is open-and-shut, it’s easy to dismiss the voices of dissent. But when it’s not, when the commitment to place American forces in harm’s way is based on suppositions, no matter how well- or ill-founded, that cannot be proven, the situation becomes far more complicated. And when popular support must be predicated on faith that our political leaders are telling the truth (and know what they’re doing), a certain amount of skepticism is inevitable.
Many Americans will still rally to a call to arms under these circumstances. But many will not and their voices deserve to be heard.
The echoes from the Vietnam era the ones that really trouble us most are those that resonate from supporters of U.S. intervention in Iraq who mistakenly characterize opposition to this policy as treason. As more and more Americans, including some prominent Democratic officeholders, raise doubts about the Bush administration’s saber-rattling gestures in the direction of Baghdad, they are finding themselves accused by the president’s defenders of undermining our national security, appeasing the agents of international terrorism and giving aid and comfort to a villainous enemy.
It’s the old "My Country, Right or Wrong" mentality, popularized by supporters during the Vietnam War, now being recycled for the roughly 37 percent of the nation’s population born since the last American helicopter left the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. And it is as cynical and decidedly un-American a sentiment today as it was a quarter-century ago.
One needn’t buy into Samuel Johnson’s view of patriotism ("the last refuge of a scoundrel") to recognize that folks who wrap themselves in the American flag and brand anyone who disagrees with them a traitor have a very warped sense of the principles on which this country was founded. It is our right to disagree with the government and to do so publicly that lies at the heart of our constitutional guarantee of free speech. The Founding Fathers believed strongly that those opposed to governmental actions or policies had not only a right but an obligation to speak out against them.
The issue here has nothing to do with who’s right and who’s wrong in the ongoing debate about what actions the United States should take, if any, against Iraq. There is no shortage of legitimate arguments on all sides of this debate, and it’s not our intention here to take any of them. In fact, it is precisely because there are so many legitimate arguments out there that the bogus ones the reckless, name-calling, integrity-impugning ones have no place in the public discourse at this critical juncture of our nation’s deliberations.