Reprinted from To The Point Analyses
The year was 1968. I had just earned a master's degree in history at Georgetown University, where I had also helped found the university's chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Unfortunately, there was no time to celebrate, because within days of getting the degree I was on U.S. Army bus, along with about 30 others, heading from Washington, D.C. to Fort Holabird in Baltimore. At that time there was a military draft induction center there, and according to my low draft lottery number, my time had come.
At Holabird we piled into a classroom-like setting and were given a lecture by a rather over-muscled middle-aged sergeant with a buzz haircut. He told us (I am paraphrasing from memory here) that "the Vietnam war was absolutely necessary. If the commies got their way the domino effect would see all of Southeast Asia go Red. There was no way you could negotiate with Hanoi and so it was time to increase the intensity of bombing over North Vietnam." I remember that he ended by telling us that "there were no innocent civilians in Vietnam -- when they call their soldiers part of a people's army, they mean it." Only later did I realize he was extrapolating on the position laid out by the infamous General Curtis "Bomb Them Back to the Stone Age" Lemay. When the sergeant had talked himself out, he began distributing the written intelligence and aptitude tests that were part of the pre-induction process. As he was doing so he asked if there were any questions. I was the only one who raised his hand.
You have to keep in mind that I was 23 years old, a radical, and not afraid of authority figures. So I asked him, "Why should any of us here believe a word you say about this war when all you have given us are opinions standing in for facts?" He looked at me in a murderous way and said. "What is it about these forms that you don't understand?" A good number of the boys (I was the oldest among the prospective inductees) in the room laughed -- at me. What the heck can you expect from cannon fodder.
I eventually beat the draft and forgot about the above incident. That is, until I read John Bolton's 26 March 2015 op-ed "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran" in the New York Times (NYT).
Part II -- 2015: Bolton's Bombs
John Bolton is a neoconservative veteran of the George W. Bush era. His claims to fame, besides a real talent for temper tantrums, include serving as President Bush's Under Secretary of State for Arms Control. In this capacity he undercut international efforts to limit such things as biological weapons. He also served as Bush's ambassador to the United Nations. It would appear he was chosen for this post mainly because he despised the UN. Under George W. Bush the times were truly Orwellian. Finally -- and this is what took me back to 1968 -- Bolton's op-ed demonstrated that he can't tell the difference between his own opinion and fact.
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