Hurtling Forward Into The Past

by digby

The Vietnam Iraq analogies abound these days and for good reason. It would seem that many of those who failed to fight in the war of their youths, (and who grew up with the images of bravery and sacrifice of WWII) have spent their lives looking for a chance to have other young men prove their warrior bonafides for them once again — this time taking some sort of ghastly credit for it. President Bush has said he regrets not being over there with them:

Responding to one of the bloggers in Iraq he expressed envy that they could be there, and said he’d like to be there but “One, I’m too old to be out there, and two, they would notice me.”

(As Dan Froomkin pointed out, Bush is the Commander in Chief but he’s only spent 15 hours in country. But hey, he wouldn’t want them to “notice him.”)

And now after the failed propping up of governments, the escalation, the changing strategies, it appears we are looking at the “bombing of Cambodia” chapter, the consequences of which are likely to be as catastrophic as the original, if in different ways. Despite the jarring and somewhat desperate right wing “revisions” of the era, that decision was decisive in the awful events that followed:

In March 1970, while Sihanouk was traveling abroad, he was deposed by a pro-American general, Lon Nol. The Nixon Administration, which viewed Sihanouk as an untrustworthy partner in the fight against communism, increased military support to the new regime.

[…]

Meanwhile, with assistance from North Vietnam and China, the guerrillas of the Khmer Rouge had grown into a formidable force. By 1974, they were beating the government on the battlefield and preparing for a final assault on Phnom Penh. And they had gained an unlikely new ally: Norodom Sihanouk, living in exile, who now hailed them as patriots fighting against an American puppet government.

Sihanouk’s support boosted the Khmer Rouge’s popularity among rural Cambodians. But some observers have argued that the devastating American bombing also helped fuel the Khmer Rouge’s growth. Former New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg said the Khmer Rouge “… would point… at the bombs falling from B-52s as something they had to oppose if they were going to have freedom. And it became a recruiting tool until they grew to a fierce, indefatigable guerrilla army.”

We know what happened next. And we know that the single most likely outcome of a bombing campaign against Iranian “terrorists” will be the recruitment of many more terrorists. No matter what, the puerile idea that we will subdue the Iranians with our turgid,swollen “shock ‘n awe” is 100% guaranteed to fail. People simply don’t behave the way these neocons think they do (or say they do anyway.)

Perhaps there could be a scenario when such an outcome would be deemed worth it anyway. But this proposed campaign has nothing to do with national security. It doesn’t even have to do with nipping Iran’s alleged nuclear program in the bud. This is about the neocon slogan, “real men go to Tehran,” George W. Bush’s need to save face long enough to slither out of town and Dick Cheney’s inscrutable desire to blow up the middle east. Bombing Iran to “send a message” will only send one message: the United States is a rogue nation whose people cannot control its leaders.

How much innocent life will be lost as a result is anybody’s guess.

[T]he raids exacted an enormous cost from the Cambodian people: the US dropped 540,000 tons of bombs , killing anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000 civilians.

[…]In April 1970, without Lon Nol’s knowledge, American and South Vietnamese forces crossed into Cambodia. There was already widespread domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam; news of the “secret invasion” of Cambodia sparked massive protests across the US, culminating in the deaths of six students shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and Jackson State University. Nixon withdrew American troops from Cambodia shortly afterwards. But the US bombing continued until August 1973.

It’s hard to believe that this could happen twice in my lifetime, but it looks as if we’re going to do it. But history never repeats itself exactly and I fear that the ramifications this time are going to be much worse. After all, the people who are running this country right now are not the same people who, for all their faults, John F. Kennedy described as being “tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” The leadership during that time were not better people, and in some respects held beliefs that were more antithetical to democracy than what we see today. But they were deeper, more mature, more complex. The leadership who are running the country right now are either committed to a neocon, comic book version of reality or are afraid of their own shadows. They are operating from a completely different perspective.

Vietnam was a disastrous mistake that set this country back on its heels. Iraq/Iran is something of a different scale of error altogether and the consequences of our actions there could be far more dangerous for all of us.

In 1970 people took to the streets in massive numbers when they heard about Cambodia. Richard Nixon got re-elected two years later. The bombing continued until 1973. Nixon resigned in 1974. The Khmer Rouge went on to commit one of the most horrific genocides in history. And that was in a world which I just described as being led by deeper, more mature people than today (which isn’t saying much.)

Considering the recent passage of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, and the Democrats’ refusal to draw any clear line in the sand, is there any scenario we can imagine in which this recurring nightmare will have a substantially better ending this time?

.