When Walter Cronkite used his bully pulpit on America's most-watched evening news show to say it was time to leave Vietnam, mainstream America listened, having come largely to the same conclusion.
Lyndon Johnson may have been obsessed with "not losing" in Vietnam. But Walter Cronkite mattered. His willingness to say the war couldn't be won meant the American mood had changed. It never changed back.
Tom Friedman's capitulation is a parallel event. In a sane nation, it should have serious consequences. It certainly reflects a broad national consensus that Southwest Asia has matched Southeast Asia as a hopeless quagmire, a quicksand sinkhole from which even a well-run US military could never extract victory, let alone one being run into the ground by hopeless incompetents.
The tragedy now is that George W. Bush has neither the intelligence nor the integrity nor the heart to call a halt to the slaughter. And if the GOP stranglehold on the machinery of the American vote count is left unchallenged, the next occupant of the White House will certainly be no better.
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Harvey Wasserman is co-editor of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, to be published by The New Press on September 15. His HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES and SOLARTOPIA! are at www.harveywasserman.com.
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