The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.McGovern, of course, was the anti war movement's last hope. His choice of Tom Eagleton sank his bid for the White House. The GOP had therefore wasted a lot of effort sharpening daggers. But --I suppose they considered it good policy to stay practiced.
There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.
Who was the real loser of '72?...
We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield - he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.
On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."
Nixon soon ran into problems. In the summer of 1973, under Nixon's orders, the Air Force bombed so-called communist positions in Cambodia. Congress tacked onto an appropriations bill a section cutting off funds for Nixon's illegal operation which clearly violated Cambodian sovereignty. Meanwhile, a federal district judge in Brooklyn issued an injunction to halt the bombing immediately. These events and the emerging revelations that the opposition had broken into the Watergate Buildling to bug Democratic phones touched off major constitutional struggles of lasting political and military implications.
Certainly, Daniel Ellsburg played his role in Nixon's eventual demise. But, regrettably, Nixon resigned before a definitive court opinion or his impeachment and trial could have established inarguable precedent. Even the articles of impeachment deal primarily with the concept of "obstruction" and less with the very substance of Nixon's imperial and imperious regime.
We all know the US was wrong to have been in SE Asia. But we have not established case law to keep us out of similar acts of vainglorious imperialism in the future. Thus --we are stuck with the GOPs half-baked, sophomoric dreams of US empire.
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