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Classics of Liberal Thinking

by Michael Arvey

OpEdNews.Com
Sometimes we can clearly and presciently squint into the mists of the future by looking wide-eyed and steadily at the past. I've been thinking lately of presidents and wars, of Texans and the future. George W. Bush and Lyndon B. Johnson spring to mind.

Johnson, in the spring of 1927, matriculated at the Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos, a sleepy river town between San Antonio and Austin--the Hill Country, as it's known. I attended the same college in 1982-83. It was during Johnson's San Marcos years he began his first political forays as a debater and a journalist, and from where the seeds of his progressivism hit the wind. In 1964, he would launch his vision for a genuine civilization that essayed to better its citizens, his Great Society Program. It included aid for economic opportunity and education, protection of civil rights (including the right to vote), urban renewal, Medicare, conservation, beautification, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, promotion of the arts, and consumer protection. Unlike Johnson, however, President Bush has only a great nothing to his name: a so-called war on terror and a corporate scheme for the financial betterment of the already well off-- even euphemistically "reforming" Johnson's Medicare system for the benefit of business.  If it hadn't been for Vietnam, Johnson's legacy might be more well received today.

Sen. Edward Kennedy recently drew a firestorm by pointing out that "Iraq is the Vietnam for Bush." He's wrong, though, on the timing, and should have been advised to use the future tense. President Bush in his April 13 news conference indicated that he has a plan for Iraq; however, he didn't delineate any plan other than to deploy more troops, nor did he speak of exit strategies as he delivered his standard and repetitive fare of rhetoric:  freedom, enemies of civilization, terrorism. 

Bush's waffling and his illegal invasion reminds one of Jean-Paul Sartre's play, "No Exit." The play's setting is in hell, which outlines the compressed situation. Although the characters are not in a war, they are endlessly confined to their circumstance. To date, over 600 U.S. soldiers have perished in Iraq. Thousands more, maimed and wounded, have been confined to their circumstance. How many more must be sent to this fictional president's stage of delusions?

For the U.S.'s future in Iraq, we do have an inkling of what's to come. Bush has stepped on a red anthill with someone's else foot. We can anticipate many more deaths by conjuring our misguided experience in Vietnam. If he ends up reinstating the draft to supply human fodder for his endless wars, like Johnson, he will be subjected to an endless weapon of mass shouting: "Hell no, we won't go!"

Oddly enough, our old Communist enemy has morphed into the new terrorist enemy. Same rhetoric, different continent. What would the U.S. do without an enemy and military contracts? In a strange twist of circumstance, the U.S. has now become the invader, just as North Vietnam was in South Vietnam.

Before Johnson left the presidency and retired to his beloved Hill Country, he realized his folly, one which Bush may eventually come to recognize in himself. Yet even as late as 1968, Johnson told Congress "the prospects for peace are better today than at any time since North Vietnam began its invasion." The war lumbered on for another five years. Vietnam or Iraq, there is no winning such inflated disasters of intelligence, morality and imagination. In 1967-68, Johnson deluded himself about achieving a victory in Vietnam, and Bush's rhetoric echoes Johnson's: "We're making progress. We will not yield. We are going to win." Pathetically enough, the Democratic presidential contender, Vietnam veteran and former 60s protester, Sen. John Kerry, has expressed his full support for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, even requesting that Spain not remove its troops from the sinkhole. (He's also spoken disfavorably of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, a move that makes Chavez look as if he is being set up to take a fall if Kerry wins the 2004 election.) Even when things outwardly appear to change in the U.S., they forever remain the same. Empire.

Recent events in Fallujah find a fearful symmetry in North Vietnam's 1968 Tet offensive, both of which shatter the illusion of progress in the prosecution of such wars: the fiery ants won't shake off.

In his last speech in 1972 before he died, Johnson said: "If our hearts are right, and if our courage remains our constant companion, then my fellow Americans, I am confident we shall overcome." In 2004 and 2005, regardless of who is president, if our hearts are right, we'll see clearly backward and forward. Maybe, just maybe, if we're lucky, we'll overcome ourselves. And more importantly, George Bush.

Michael Arvey marvey@email.com writes from Colorado.