There's something muddled here. On the one hand, it's preaching to teh choir: of course most Americans want out of this war, not to mention a near unanimity in a forum like this one. On the other hand, there's this "we" who are prolonging the war because we don't give a damn.

I keep thinking that the many here who think that if the Democrats shouted more loudly or started impeachment hearings, we'd be out of there just aren't old enough to remember the Vietnam war (which may be why a shlocky film like "Hair" can seem surprisingly fresh). How about Vietnam? It became vastly unpopular. But one forgets that Nixon still kept it going for five years. One can almost forget, too, that his impeachment hearings had nothing to do with whether he lied in prolonging the war (as with his "secret plan to end the war"), whether he committed war crimes by extending the war with bombings in Cambodia, or whether the administratin had defended or covered up atrocities as at My Lai.

Sorry to break the news, but presidents have a lot of power once war gets off the ground. We do have to keep shouting and screaming, and Senator Kennedy has a great quote in the paper today. We can get those investigations of intelligence coverups, cherry picking, and torture going. But will it make Bush do anything different? I doubt it, but at least it will be forever Bush's war, and we'll win more seats in 2008, and it'll be more likely to be known as Bush's war even after he leaves office and we "lose."

The only good knows is that we have a chance here, and also that the escalation isn't as parallel to Vietnam's as one often says. That was pretty much LBJ's hope of gaining ground. Here it's more like Nixon's postponement of any action period in hope someone else would inherit the loss.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

J. McCutchen

I think there's another coming up this March and United for Peace and Justice has a possibly more constructive action planned for next month. A Saturday March on Washington (1/27) will be followed by a Monday March on Congressional Offices (1/29)

I continue to think that far too many Americans view the Iraq fiasco much like a college football game, where we all have to root for the home team, above all else. Never give up. Never concede the game. That isn't hard to do when no one you know, none of your relatives or friends is threatened with life altering injuries or death. So, I support the reinstatement of the draft. Once there is a draft all of our families and friends are equally threatened - that tends to clarify ones thinking.

Please, lets put our energy into stopping the foolish fiasco in Iraq, not into protecting our own loved ones by opposing a draft.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Ps, Haberarts,
I don't think "Hair" was schlocky at all. I think it was a great film. But we're all entitled to our opinions.

I'm not sure the draft as such is the answer to Congressional responsibility in oversight. A declaration of war is a solemn thing, but they managed to avoid it by calling it an authorization for the use of military force.

Ironically, if a draft were reinstated, a number of active military friends of mine would not re-enlist. For an assortment of reasons, they perceive draftees, at least with traditional service lengths and draft criteria, as a danger to their physical safety.

This view is complex. It was one thing to be a WWII draftee given the perceived national threat and consensus national response, but a very different thing in Vietnam. FTA was on Vietnam shirts, not WWII or even Korea.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

J. McCutchen

It is not only pointless. It is counterproductive. It is the Greatest Strategic Disaster in US history.

This isn't the sixties and the war against islamic fascism isn't Vietnam.

And just where are we fighting "islamic fascism"?

In Iraq? 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

In general, I think demonstrations on national issues have been overtaken by the events of other, especially Internet-based forms of communications. Civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties did have substantial effects, but I tend to think that political organizing and grass-roots efforts, coupled with more widespread electronic news gathering, had swung the pendulum by Vietnam.

Personal touch is an issue. I have friends coming, going, and in the theater. At one point, I might have been going myself for some infrastructure work. Still, I don't know how many people think often about friends on IED disposal duty, or hosing blood out of medical evacuation helicopters.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

People who gave a damn enough to mobilize a movement about Vietnam were not motivated by the sort of cynical "America First" politics espoused here.

We actually wanted American aggression to be defeated in Vietnam and fully understood that this meant a victory for Vietnam. It was a positive movement looking to a better future.

People who care in that way don't actually look forward to jihadis and death squads winning in Iraq. The enthusiasm here is for ridiculing Bush. It doesn't translate into being serious about organizing demonstrations to promote a defeat for both America and Iraq.

The people who are organizing demonstrations about Iraq are simply not motivated in the same way as the people who organized the Vietnam protests.

Referring to "the war" can get misleading about what needs to be discussed. Iraq is a campaign within a theater of operations, a theater that is part of the national security strategy of the United States.

Attacking Iraq was one part of that strategy, and a part I consider extremely ill-advised. There are real, if sometimes overdramatized threats on the national level, and the wisdom of the overall strategy still needs discussion, with Iraq in context as a real but unpleasant part of it.

No, I don't think the site is dedicated to opposition to Iraq operations, or even progressive positions -- if one distinguishes progressive from liberal to left-centrist.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

and you wrote about which protests? in particular urging others to go? Funny, I don't recall those columns...

Sure, 1969 in Washington. Big. "Mainstream." But endorsed by Democrats? uh... RFK was already dead, so was MLK. Who do you mean? George McGovern? Eugene McCarthy? Both symbols of the left-most part of the Democratic party. Teddy Kennedy and McGovern both associated themselves with the Moratorium by speaking on October 15 proposing that all troops should be withdrawn three years hence... by 1972.

But even before the '69 Moratorium we had to have a Tet offensive didn't we?

"1968 was the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War for the American Army. Approximately 11,000 Americans were killed and 45,000 wounded."
(http://www.vietnamdiary.com/tet_casualties.htm)

Sure. We oughta' wait for that again.

And if we wait for "mainstream" democrats to get on board? well that would be waiting for Hilary Rodham Clinton.... "our front runner" for 2008 and a real peacenik. Or Mr. Lieberman -- sure, he'll be on board soon won't he? Anti-war leadership all the way. Maybe Joe "send more troops" Biden?

Gimme a break.

I'm afraid a bunch of marchers in Washington don't mean much to the Congress. A member of Congress doesn't know which of those people in that mass are her own constituents, and even if they find out, it often turns out that the marchers just represent the usual suspects - groups and constituencies who have opposed the war from the beginning, and who don't carry a lot of political weight in Washington.

I believe a more effective tactic at this point is to organize a broader-based campaign to call and write your Congressional representatives...

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I wonder if most Americans are against the war in Iraq as people here mean the term. There is no doubt that Bush's conduct of the war is despised. Most Americans seem to be skeptical that at this point anything can be done to stop the Iraqis from killing each other so "why throw good money after bad." However, if the "surge", though too late, were to seem to work how fast the polls would reverse? Alternatively, if Iraq were to collapse and it resulted in chaos would Bush and the Republicans get the deserved blame or would those who advocated withdrawal?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

DWG, you are so fucking confrontational. I didn't write about them because I wasn't at TPM yet.

I don't believe you attended a single demonstration. I don't remember seeing you there.

Get off your high horse.

We did not hate America. The greatest gift that teh GOP's endless money and media control gave to the right was the creation of that lasting spin. Besides, the antiwar protests before the Iraq invasion and at the GOP convention in 2004, while arguably useless, were never tainted successfully even with that spin. (But I think they were useless anyhow and that Howard B.'s focused political agenda is exactly right.) 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Bush will do exactly what Nixon did with the North Vietnamese 34 years ago today with his Christmas bombing of Hanoi--kill as many Iraquis as ruthlessly as he can-- and there are not anywhere near enough votes in either the House or Senate to impeach/convict or stop funding for the next two years and twenty-five days. .

The greatest gift the antiwar movement gave to LBJ and Nixon was to allow itself to be hijacked by the hate Amerika crowd between November, 1967 and January, 1973. Mr. Arthur Dent on this thread being reflective of exactly that anti-American sentiment. Few people know that the first Mayor Daley, the ogre of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, had actually urged LBJ in private to begin withdrawing U.S. combat troops in 1967. He would not make a public protest, however, because in his mind that would be unpatriotic, given all the perceived crazy radicals who were against the war. There is absolutely no excuse for how the Chicago police behaved during the convention, but the tactics of Hoffman, Rubin and Dellinger, and the Weatherman, did not hasten an end to the war. Instead they made it all too easy for the majority of voters to equate dissent with treason and violence. If 50,000 business leaders in suits and ties had politely dropped off letters to Congressmen and Senators calling for withdrawal in 1968, instead of 50,000 hippies and others the media, however wrongly, lumped together with them marching down Michigan Avenue appearing to want a confrontation with the cops, the war may not have ended any sooner under Johnson, but that police riot would not have happened. And it was that police riot which turned enough voters in crucial Missouri against Hubert Humphrey to give Nixon his electoral victory. Humphrey lost votes when he seemed to side with the police immediately after the convention, and he lost votes when he appeared to incapable of effectively controlling events in Chicago.

Street demonstrations are a complete waste of time, and will be similarly hijacked by those whom many voters consider anti-American. Last spring's experience with the immigration reform marches should have taught people just how counter-productive those demonstrations can be. If you want to stop the war, your time, energies, and resources would be far more effectively spent in financing and executing primaries against any candidate for House, Senate and President who does not publicly commit to a fund cut-off by a date certain in 2009.

One of the disturbing this about the way some people here discuss the war is that they seem to blame the Iraqi people for the disaster we inflicted on them.

The horrors there are a direct result of the US invasion.

Previously, there was a terrible regime which killed and tortured dissidents (like dozens of other countries world wide, including regimes we have both supported or installed) but since March 2003, Iraq is a nation in which mass murder is a daily occurence.

Blaming the Iraqis for that is very typically American and utterly wrong.

I get really tired of hearing about all the rationalizations for the lack of demonstrations and other protests of this illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. It simply isn't enough to be intellectually opposed to the war. It requires action in opposition. The "establishment" to dust off an old phrase genuinely fears sustained public demonstrations against not only the war, but any number of its ill-conceived policies. Thus, they are well pleased that there has been so little public demonstration of the vast opposition to the war.

In my opinion it matters little what rationale is provided for failing to take part in, encourage, help in organizing, etc... demonstrations in opposition to this war. I view it as a moral obligation to do so whether or not demonstrating actually "does" something to make a difference. How can people live with themselves and essentialy consent to this huge, ongoing war crime without demonstrating when they can in opposition? Having said that, I also believe there is plenty of historical evidence to suggest that such demonstrations do have a very substantial impact on policymakers--but only when they are sustained. The media coverage of major demonstrations will also now be very different than it was pre-war or earlier in the conflict. Chickenhearts that they are, they either downplayed or entirely failed to cover the truly massive and widespread opposition to the war, particularly before the invasion. They just refused to cover it, therefore, the impression that many had was (and remains) that nobody really is too fired up against th war.

The lack of a draft means that young people and their parents feel little or no threat of being asked to lay down their life for no good reason so that eliminates having a built in militant anti-war faction in the population. It does not, however, relieve the rest of us from our responsibility to oppose the war loudly, publicly, so the whole world can see--not once, but time after time. Isn't it the job of responsible, mature citizens to protect the lives and future of our young men and women? I can think of no better way of doing so than to stand firmly and publicly in opposition of putting them in any risk that is not completely necessary for the maintenance of our nation secutity. Nothing about this evil war was necessary at all. It was and is nothing more than a criminal enterprise, in violation of international law and, I would think, US law as the entire thing was based on a pack of known lies.

Repeatedly demonstrating large scale opposition to the war also galvanizes the opposition and helps to expand it which is another political benefit. It heightens the tension between the public and the bloodthirsty, callous adminstration and other supporters of the war and further erodes the position of all the politicians who continue to support the illegal and immoral war in both parties.

Demonstrations make clear that a significant number of Americans DO care and DO oppose this war which is helpful and provides hope to millions around the world who look to us for leadership and whose faith in the decency of Americans has been sorely shaken in the past 6 years. The bottom line is this, at some point in time the American involvement in the criminal destruction of Iraq will come to a halt. Who among us wishes to explain that while it went on we did nothing? No one I would hope. Writing letters or posting on the web is a good thing, but it isn't enough. The demonstration in Washington on 1/27 is a good opportunity for many to show their opposition. For those of us who cannot travel that far we can be on the streets wherever we live. I certainly will be there and with my whole family in tow. Who else will be there? I don't know, but I cannot be silent and it's important to me to be counted among those who were on the street to publicly and visibly demonstrate opposition to the slaughter and destruction our government has caused and continues to cause.

goodness. touched a nerve did we? ad hominem will get you no where.

I see -- so you never wrote or published anything anywhere before TPM? That would explain it....

or perhaps AIPAC was never interested in protesting military action?

Please define this term: "the war against islamic fascism." Other than republican talking points, which are cirucular and require a genereal igonorance of reality, how can you correctly use "islamic" and "fascim" in the same sentence? What centralized islamic leader are you talking about?

On the other hand, using the "Bush agenda," --of subverting Constitutional protections, flouting valid laws, and trying to build a theocracy in our country-- and "fascism" together make eerie sense.

Jan Knaus

It seems to be a growing theme for both Democrats and Republicans. I had Gov. Vilsack use it on the Daily Show and Sen. Levin on one of the TV shows. It seems to presume the Iraqis invited us in and they owe it to us to stand-up and let us leave. Thus by us not setting a timetable the Iraqis won't take over in a timely manner.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Application of military force may remove a "problem" but is never the solution.  That is what should be protested.  We "won" the military phase of the war at which point the military should have disengaged and political/diplomatic efforts should have been our "course to stay" to win in Iraq.  Instead of political solutions we got military operations like the one in Fallujah.  Until military options like "The Surge" are taken off the table, our troops are withdrawn and all our efforts in Iraq are focused on political/diplomatic solutions there are going to be many more Iraqi civilian casualties (due to the ethnic cleansing/genocide which is occurring) and many more dead, maimed and wounded US military personnel.

I am in favor of reinstituting the draft.  For a couple of reasons.  First, on principles, I have always felt defense of our country in "war time" should be a "shared sacrifice".  But secondly the apathy about the continuing carnage in Iraq shown by many Americans is a direct result of the fact that they don't have loved ones in the line of fire.  The defense of this country falls disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor and ethnic minorities.  If everyone's children were part of the defense of this country there would be large mass protests in the streets over the Iraq War and it's aftermath.

The American people sent a very clear message in November...it is time to leave Iraq.  Whether it is slower and measured or quick, we want to start winding down this war.  And a "surge" is not part of that process.  Bush can (and will) ignore the mandate of the people because he is a lame duck, has no regard for democratic principles and ignores the fact he is employed by the people.  The Congress isn't made up of lame ducks though and if they don't do something they will be replaced by a new bunch of politicos in '08 who will actually do what the people asked them to do...and if getting the will of the people to be heeded means impeachment (or "firing") of the president, so be it.

oleeb, I'm not rationalizing not attending demonstrations: I did attend them, and it sounds like the others here did, too. We're arguing that they failed to build a groundswell for political change. Maybe the same time in 2004 organizing against Rove's legal and illegal suppression of voters would have won. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Let me add something else about demonstrations. People asking us to scream more are treating them as an essential, pragmatic part of the political process. In practice, they're a sign that the political system has broken down, and we're prepared to dedicate years to change it. Think of the civil rights movement. The huge march that everyone remembers, with King's speech, was only part of many years of such mobilization, all this came about because we couldn't work through racist politicians and others, and it didn't bring a final answer. Blacks don't get a fair shake now. It was, in short, part of a process.

Ending the war in Iraq isn't like building that kind of change. It has to be done as quickly as possible, it has to connect to the discontent with Bush that the public feels now, and it has to pay off in new political leadership in the next election. So investigate the politicians you despise and back the ones bringing change.

Arguably, the Internet on the one hand and the centralized media control coupled with astroturf politics on the other have made certain conventional kinds of grassroots politics obsolete, but that's one I'd rather leave open for now.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Therefore, attending one or a handful of demonstrations several years ago was not enough and continued, sustained demonstrations against the war are required. That is something one could and should have known at the time. Without them, we are just playing parlor games from our comfortable perches. Hitting the streets is without question effective and without question a necessary ingredient in bringing the war to a quicker end. There's just no getting around it. If you don't like some of the people who show up then bring more of your kind, if you don't like the organizers then get involved and shape the organization. There's really no excuse for not hitting the streets until the war is brought to a halt.

Should there be protests?  If there is a "surge" I say yes...but under those circumstances only as part of a larger strategy of impeaching the president, anything less will be "symbolic" and mean nothing.  The Americans spoke clearly in November...and ending the Iraq War was their message.  In fact a supermajority of Americans want to see this war end.  The American people are the employers of our polticians and if they refuse to do what we ask them to they should be removed.  A "surge" will run contrary to what the American people showed we wanted at the ballot box and should be responded to with protests calling for impeachment and removal of the president.

Boo!! The Boogie man will get you! Prattling about "Islamic Fascism" is just a hair more realistic than boogie man threats. I wonder why no one was going on about "Christian Fascism" during WWII or even during the IRA activities.

Hoppy in Sacramento

If your goal is to disrupt cities, including workers having nothing to do with the policies involved, you've certainly lost any support I have had, and you are certain to get backlash.

What do you do when police have gotten wise to the tactic and avoid mistreatment, just mass arrests for blocking traffic? Certainly in DC, there is experience to do that.

I still don't hear any response to my suggestions of local demonstrations; you keep pushing what comes across as guerilla theater.

I have seen "stop the city" protests in Washington blocking the access of medical personnel to George Washington University Hospital. The sooner such people are in stadiums, the happier I will be; the feeling I have for demonstrators that kept me from working, without knowing if I were involved in humanitarian or even antiwar activity, is utter contempt.

Picket all you want. As soon as you shut down legitimate activities, including the freedom of choice of other citizens, you are no better than Bush telling security forces to keep anti-Bush people out of the camera. You may be worse, because you aren't just going for media opportunities when you try to shut down a city.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I think you need to look a material such as David Caute's "Year of the Barricades: a Journey through 1968" to get a handle on the "why no protests" question. (Of course there have been protests, but nothing like the magnitude of the late 60s.)  Caute enters some interesting terrains - like how the seemingly xenophobic American could be influenced by a seemingly spontaneous international uprising against the status quo.  But culture works opaquely, and mass media culture does also.

Here's an opposite anecdote - in 1961 I and a small circle of friends learned that there was going to be a Fair Play for Cuba demonstration in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco.  So we showed up, all six of us, but there was no one there.  Christ, did we feel vulnerable with our two placards and "Hands Off Cuba" buttons.  It was scarey.  The SFPD was pretty brutal with demonstrators and it was obvious that the odds were we would be clubbed, being only six in number. Gulp.  As we were milling around deciding to wait or leave, we saw an old man walking towards us down Van Ness Avenue, bouncing a tennis ball off the wall of the Federal Building.  When he was in earshot, he told us "Don't worry.  I remember when they were trying to get that Villa fellow down in Mexico.  The couldn't touch him with a ten foot pole!" With that assurance, we all went home.

So there must be some type of Windows in history that support, or even allow, protest movements.   And windows that don't necessarily address the specific issues at hand, but arise out of a complex series of events that may not even appear to relate in any way to the issues at hand.  It's a question of timing.  Caute shows us an overarching perspective of worldwide crises in 1968 - Mexico City, Tokyo, Paris, Chicago, Prague, Berlin, and etc.  But crises of what?  If you look at each local event, the issues cover a broad range: The SF State demonstrations were over the firing of faculty members and the cry for ethnic studies cirruculum; the Sorbonne students seemed to be advocating anarchism; in Mexico, students seemed to want to use the Olympics as a platform to attack the Dias Ordaz government's intimacy with the CIA; Tokyo students were protesting Vietnam and the US bases in Japan; And of course there was the Soviet invasion of Prague.  So what was the "crises" all about.  Pomo theorists point to "the collapse of totalizing ideology."  Perhaps it was the consequence of the Cold War - people just got fed up with the quasi-ideologies of the National Security State.

One other thing.  In the old days protest movement formed, and eventually decayed from internal battles among its leaders over "ownership or the movement."  What I noticed as the first anti-Iraq war movements began to mobilize was that they began with ownership battles.  I thought that was remarkable.  I'm not sure what that means, but I suspect that it does relate in some ways to the questions you are raising. 

Neoboho

There are open racists in the Reublican party who advocate cutting off immigration for Muslims yet that doesn't stop Republicans from attending Republican events or espousing their positions. Your argument seems to be essentially that because someone once did some things you personally don't like at some demonstrations many years ago, that no one should demonstrate against this immoral war for fear of someone showing up that might say something that the right wingers won't like and then go howling about it for years as they have things like Vietnamese flags (as though that was a bad thing). And yes, Bush is a fool and a war criminal and yes, the US military needs to get out of the middle east right away amd yes, get out now!

Rather than leaping immediately on an impeachment bandwagon, start more focused investigations reasonably within the scope of Congressional committees.

Or, we can just get a rich Democrat to "investigate" whether Bush is diddling the maid in Crawford, and vote an impeachment based on that. Unfortunately, the latter would be more likely to result in an impeachment.

Hoppy in Sacramento

I felt bad about the NCO's role when I was there. Due to sensitive politics, the butterbars were given much of their duties and authority.  I heard the NCO dropout rate was pretty high - some even giving up retirement because they were so pissed-off about having their wings clipped.

I can't argue about your take on combat rediness.  When I took the graduation tests at the end of basic, the Sarge who was running us through the bayonet moves told us: "No forget what you've learned.  It doesn't work."

Neoboho

Yup. Forcing a free citizen to confront issues on your timetable is a fine way to get me to oppose the issue. If someone blocks my way, they are committing assault and possibly battery, and I reserve the right to defend myself from a perceived threat.

Maybe that latter attitude comes from doing news coverage of major sixties demonstrations, when, in a role that tried to be objective as possible, I had admittedly radical demonstrators try to beat my head on the wall of the Pentagon.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Howard,

"Ironically, if a draft were reinstated, a number of active military friends of mine would not re-enlist".

American soldiers are being constantly applauded because they have heroically chosen to accept danger as their patriotic duty. They are praised for fighting for us. Wouldn’t such a person, out of their heroic and selfless sense of patriotism, continue to serve when it was even more important to the welfare of our country? I hope you can excuse the bit of sarcasm that was in fact intended in that last sentence. I trust you know that the reasons a person joins up are a bit more complicated than merely choosing to be a soldier out of selfless patriotism, and that the reasons often don’t much relate to that reason at all even though the volunteer is patriotic, but wouldn’t any good soldier honor, and be proud to serve with, a draftee who was there performing just as honorably and bravely as himself.

. "For an assortment of reasons, they perceive draftees, at least with traditional service lengths and draft criteria, as a danger to their physical safety".

In the past I have felt that your characterization of the Vietnam era draftee held a disparagement of him a person who had the necessary qualifications, as a person, to be a soldier, not just one who lacked the training to be as good a soldier as a volunteer. I hope I am mistaken and I feel certain you will correct me if I have been wrong or if you have changed your mind. I agree that a fourteen man rifle squad would be most effective if manned by fourteen battle tested veterans, also much more brutal, but a squad made up of three of those veterans and eleven relatively raw draftees would be much better than a squad made up of only three veterans.

Some countries in the past have arrived at the point where they perceived the need for a bigger army than they could induce to volunteer. Our country could reach such a point

This is a complex issue, no doubt. I am a person who was drafted at age nineteen, given 16 weeks of training, some further training as our unit was formed [something most replacements never got] and then sent to Vietnam as part of a rifle company during the time of our countries biggest commitment of troops. Seven months later I was a buck sergeant squad leader. I was almost completely unqualified for the job, but like they say, someone had to do it. Of course, most of my opinions come from that experience.

The army at that time was overstretched, to say the least, and there were many more draftees around me than there were “volunteers”. The draftees held many “lifers” to be people who could not make it in civilian life and so stayed in the military. When it came down to common sense and an ability to get things done, if you saw a person demonstrate those qualities you were more likely to be looking at a draftee.

As far as how the two groups compared in their response when the SHTF, I never saw a difference as a group. My platoon sergeant was the only person, to my knowledge, that I ever took an order from who had previously served in combat. He was a Korea War a veteran. We were very lucky to have him. Second Lts, as a group, were highly thought of. Captains, including my CO, were often considered to be way more interested in becoming a Major than in us. Nobody that I knew of worried much about winning the war. Any focus at our level was just about surviving the next encounter, which would almost certainly be when we were ambushed, or when someone stepped on a mine. One of the scariest times was when the medivac helicopters would be arriving. Hueys’ characteristic rotor thump would hide the sound of mortars being fired. When you were close to a Huey you couldn’t hear small arms fire. The Hueys were always attractive targets.

The draftees in Vietnam were as good at soldiering as the ones who had joined. The army we had then could not win that war. The army we have now could beat “that” US army but it cannot win in Iraq, so for this type of war an all volunteer army has solved nothing.

The draftees proved they were as good as the volunteers in Vietnam. If it is commonly believed in today’s army that draftees were inferior to volunteers in Vietnam, those believers have bought into a myth that somewhat dishonors those who didn’t want to go but who answered the call. Those who believe the myth did not serve with draftees in Vietnam, the last time draftees were in combat, so where did this myth arise from and why does it stay alive? [If it does]

"FTA was on Vietnam shirts, not WWII or even Korea".

I certainly heard the phrase. I said it many times. The only memorable time I remember seeing it written was on a latrine wall and signed,”Sergeant Berry Sadler”. I don’t know to what extent some soldiers in Vietnam began to refuse orders, and worse, but I think it was a tiny percentage and it happened mostly in later years when the vicious stupidity of staying in that war and being asked to kill while risking your own life became more and more obvious and a person was drafted while possessing that knowledge.

The possibility of stupid actions by people in power, both here and in other countries, could send the world into a great war. The stupid insertion of our army into a war it could not win has greatly diminished its ability to win the kind of war that it could win while at the same time making both kinds of war more likely. We have also largely lost our ability to put up a strong bluff.

You have agreed in the past that our current army is as large as we can build with volunteers under current conditions of incentives and maintaining high standards. Are you confident that events will play out so that we don’t need a bigger army in the near or distant future? How would you fill its ranks?

If a country faces an existential threat and believes it needs a bigger army to deal with it, are there significant historical examples of a country not resorting to the draft to fill its army’s ranks?

If the weight of opinion in this country was that we NEEDED a bigger army, the weight of the population would support it. The drafted soldiers would perform honorably and peer pressure and internal leadership at all levels would almost always take care of those who used dishonorable means to dissent.

A draft is only politically impossible now because everyone knows that we have been stupidly lied into two calamitous wars.

I, personally, would hope that if I was drafted into a war and knew it to be as wrong as I came to believe Vietnam was, or that I always believed Iraq to be, that I would have the courage to say FTA.

Why are we fighting the 60s all over again? The last time I checked, it was 2006 and the problem was that our "Decider in Chief" was fighting a reckless and unjustified war in the Middle East. Debating whether or not to take to the streets over Iraq kind of misses the larger point. Iraq is a symptom of what I worry is a much greater problem: the hard right has taken control of this country and won't let go. I think we should be wondering what we should be doing if, after the new Congress takes session and begins to exercise its responsbility of overseeing the executive branch, it gets nothing from Bush but the back of his hand, perhaps to the point it becomes obvious Bush has no respect for the Constituion. I really have a sick feeling that Bush literally thinks he is the Decider and he determines everything. Talk about your Constitutional Crisis then.

Ahh, that old argument, how well I remember it from '68. Wouldn't want anything like a war to inconvenience anyone, so sorry, please carry on.

'68 was when we shut down my high school in protest, and no, it wasn't because we were being drafted, it was because of......JUSTICE! It was an unjust, immoral war that was being perpetuated, in part, by the very fact that a lot of the people in this country were not being inconvenienced by it. So we forced the issue.

You see, you really cannot seperate your convenient, safe, isolated life from the horrors being done in your name. The connections will be made one way or another. It seems to me better to participate in the most effective and powerful protests you can.

It seems to me better to participate in the most effective and powerful protests you can.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

hoosier: You forget that many Dems are more or less in agreement with Bush's policy in the middle east. Ok, they want a little more peace process and a little less shock-and-awe, but the Lieberman-Biden-Clinton axis was and still is for this war. So the problem is much larger than "the evil right wing agenda."

Trust me: you ain't gonna see many Truman Democrats join MJ in antiwar protests.

Why don't we start demonstrating our feelings with the Democratic party? Where is our anti-war candidate? As long as we are going to vote for the enablers in both parties no demonstration makes a bit of difference. The American public is already ahead of both parties on this issue.

To Bluebell:
You are absolutely right. If we had a candidate for President playing the Gene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, or George McGovern role, we would be in good shape.
And, unlike the anti-Viet candidates, the anti-Iraq war candidate could be very centrist. It could be John Edwards (of the candidates, the onlr one who is currently unambiguously antiwar).
I suspect that whoever carries the antiwar banner will win the nomination.
The wordgame candidates can't win our primaries. I'm hopeful about Obama but I need to hear more.

I stand by those remarks. There were real problems of staff getting to GW Hospital because demonstrators were "shutting down the streets" over World Bank protests. In other cases, demonstrators did not restrain admittedly radical members that smashed small businesses. Again, I find this sort of demonstration an ego trip rather than a useful means of influencing policy, and it is an evasion of useful means.

Involuntary detention is involuntary detention. If demonstrators block my way--not symbolically in a picket like I can choose to cross--they are, in my mind, no different than police barring public facilities without legal justification.

How do you expect me to respond to being told that I must be forced to confront some issues that demonstrators literally don't know whether I'm immersed in just those issues (but not on the demonstrators' schedule)? As I've said repeatedly, local demonstrations that send a focused message can indeed send useful messages. Large-scale demonstrations that go outside places like the National Mall and try to shut down a city generate absolutely zero sympathy on my part.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Large scale demonstrations are part of the mix. They demonstrate the strength of the anti-war movement, and they re-energize people in the anti-war movement. It takes one day out of my life. I hope to see everyone in Washington, DC on January 27th at the United for Peace and Justice rally. Show the new Congress they better get their butts moving on getting our troops out of Iraq, or we'll move their butts out and replace them with representatives who will get the troops out.

Tom

...generate absolutely zero sympathy on my part.

Keep in mind that there is a zero percent change that the "surge" (escalation) will "work".

Tom

My local group, the Bryn Mawr (PA) Peace Coalition has been organizing local protests and going to large protests against Iraq since February 2003. So have thousands of other groups across the country. These tactics and others such as political pressure on representatives, letters to editors, etc. need to be embraced by more and more Americans. That is how you stop madmen like Bush.

Tom

Howard, I would recommend all of the above. If each American did what he/she is comfortable with doing we could end this war. No one person has to use every tactic, although I like to do them all. If more millions of Americans did more millions of things we definitely can end this war.

PS I mentioned this to Cindy Sheehan before she became prominent. Look at all she has done.

PPS "We''ll move their butts out" is meant to convey the clear message to Congress that those up for re-election in 2008 who do not cut off funding for all military operations in Iraq (except bringing the troops home safely) will be voted out of office.

Tom

Howard,

I agree, in general, but if we're talking about trying to stop needless killing I'm not sure where Gandhi, Thoreau, and King would have drawn the line about inconveniencing people while respecting them while you're trying influence a loony like Bush while trying to get Congress's attention, etc.

Tom

... in Rick Santorum's mind?

Tom

Third alternative: the Army was not of a size to meet the requirements and constraints placed on it for the Iraq mission. In other words, the invasion should not have been attempted given the force size, or, more realistically, the poorly considered requirements of a badly designed occupation.

All manner of units are being refocused into missions demanded by Iraq. I've had assorted reservist friends in, for example, field artillery units, activated and sent to Iraq to guard convoys--a traditional Infantry or Military Police mission. Air Defense indeed may have been overstaffed, but it's again been put on the base and convoy security missions.

To some extent, we are at risk. Even more than the manpower issue is the diversion of resources away from Afghanistan and other foreign campaigns, as well as domestic infrastructure protection.

-
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

“Even more than the manpower issue is the diversion of resources away from Afghanistan and other foreign campaigns,…

In Afganistan that IS primarily a manpower issue.

Oh dear Lord in heaven. Please take a course in Reality 101 before you come back.

Tom

If you attend any public events, such as ball games, or concerts, you are inconvenienced by the "mob" that is there. I assume you go carrying a club so those inconsiderate folks can't get away with inconveniencing you?

I felt just as you do many years ago, and I even supported the Vietnam war for a few years, getting upset about the demonstrations. But, I eventually learned that I was wrong.

Hoppy in Sacramento

By going to a public event, I have a reasonable idea of the inconvenience level. One might be associated with a symphony, while a soccer game with visiting British hooligans would be another.

I give an informed consent by voluntarily going to that venue. I do not consent to being blocked in a public place.

This has nothing to do with supporting or not supporting Vietnam or any war. It has to do with public disruption. In particular, there is a different between the sort of disruption for which there are sit-ins and public arrests of conscience, the type with mobs in one's face, and the sort complete with vandals uncontrolled by demonstration organizers.

What part of "I do not agree to have my freedom constrained by random people in places where I expect to be able to walk" is failing to communicate?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Certainly manpower, but also diversion of planning and intelligence staff resources, which I suppose is a manpower resource although specialized. I was thinking more of how Fred Franks, in his autobiography, demanded CENTCOM focus on Iraq while Afghan operations were at a peak. Think of generals' mindshare.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I hope, HC, that you aren't in the category of those curmudgeons who get all indignant when you try to give them a flier or pamphlet at the polls.
Half the people act like you are imposing on their precious privacy by handing them the list of teacher supported candidates or whoever.

I'd guess that, once upon a time, Americans appreciated those of both parties who stood out there in the November cold work our democracy.

No more.

But, we aren't a very nice nation anymore.

Someone should write a book: "If America Is So Great, Why is Everybody So Angry."

Canadians, on the other hand.....

I hope, HC, that you aren't in the category of those curmudgeons who get all indignant when you try to give them a flier or pamphlet at the polls.

1. Have people giving out fliers
2. Have them in a tightly regulated area, where they are prevented from blocking anyone.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Yes, I agree tht there are good and bad tactics. I do not, however, share your opinion about major public demonstrations. Frankly, my opinion is that you're just flat out wrong about that. If you were to apply the same sort of worry and hand wringing over any tactic you could argue against it. MAjor demonstrations are blunt instruments and can do things that postings on the net cannot do including showing others how many people are against the war enough to show up in the street. All your thoughts amount to doing little or nothing to demonstrate massive public opposition to the war which equals standing by and letting it go on without any serious ojbection. Major public demonstrations literally demonstrate public opposition in a way no other form can. Localized protests don't accomplish much with massive demonstrations which they support. Wingers will always find something to harp about and criticize with big demos--who cares! And they would make it up if a few extremists didn't manage to show up. Think about what you write about backlash in terms of the civil rights movement in the 60's. Forcing the major confrontations with the status quo is the only thing that jolted people out of complacency enough to change the hearts and minds of millions of whites regarding race in America. When it comes to moral issues such as this, counseling moderation in order not to offend is simply advising to oppose just so long as it isn't effective. With all due respect, that just won't do.

Howard, you are communicating very well.  Of course your point is a valid one, and I would not deny that.  Another example of a similar problem:  My city holds a marathon race once a year.  During that race they block off all crossings of the route of the race, preventing people from crossing that street, but there are no other ways to get to the other side, so it shuts down that part of the city until the marathon is over.   Also, when a police officer or fireman gets killed on duty the city tends to have an elaborate funeral, attended by thousands, and a long slow funeral procession along a major freeway or two from the church to the graveyard.  The last one I recall trapped me so I couldn't drive to where I had an appointment until I was over a half hour late.  Both are comparable to what irritates you and both irritate me.  So, it isn't that no one understands your position, we do.

We simply have a difference of opinion about which is more important - your and others freedom to pass along or across a street unhindered, or the freedom of others to demonstrate for a cause that is deadly serious.

This is clearly a hot button issue for you.  Just as "illegal immigration" is a hot button issue for others, and Palestinian rights is still another hot button issue for still others.  I can accept that - no problem. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

I meant that the author of the article, Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr. was describing the collapse of the US armed forces in Vietnam from a perspective sympathetic to and knowledgeable about the maintenance of strong US armed forces rather than celebrating their collapse.

It is not me, but Col. Heinl writing in the Armed Forces Journal who explained, that fragging was aimed at preventing competent officers from getting their own people killed by forcing them to engage an "enemy" that had publicly announced it would not engage US troops who avoided combat. (Not mentioned in the article but the usual technique was to play transistor radios loudly while "patrolling" the jungle to indicate you weren't looking for any trouble).

As Col. Heinl explains fragging was not an isolated phenomena but related to "combat refusal", mutiny, sabotage etc as part of a broader anti-war movement that consciously engaged in sedition with the aim of ending the war by US defeat.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

"Frag incidents" or just "fragging" is current soldier slang in Vietnam for the murder or attempted murder of strict, unpopular, or just aggressive officers and NCOs. With extreme reluctance (after a young West Pointer from Senator Mike Mansfield's Montana was fragged in his sleep) the Pentagon has now disclosed that fraggings in 1970(109) have more than doubled those of the previous year (96).

Word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units.

In one such division -- the morale plagued Americal -- fraggings during 1971 have been authoritatively estimated to be running about one a week.

Bounties, raised by common subscription in amounts running anywhere from $50 to $1,000, have been widely reported put on the heads of leaders whom the privates and Sp4s want to rub out.

Shortly after the costly assault on Hamburger Hill in mid-1969,the GI underground newspaper in Vietnam, "G.I. Says", publicly offered a $10,000 bounty on Lt. Col. Weldon Honeycutt, the officer who ordered(and led) the attack. Despite several attempts, however, Honeycutt managed to live out his tour and return Stateside.

"Another Hamburger Hill," (i.e., toughly contested assault), conceded a veteran major, is definitely out."

The issue of "combat refusal", and official euphemism for disobedience of orders to fight -- the soldier's gravest crime – has only recently been again precipitated on the frontier of Laos by Troop B, 1st Cavalry's mass refusal to recapture their captain's command vehicle containing communication gear, codes and other secret operation orders.

As early as mid-1969, however, an entire company of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade publicly sat down on the battlefield. Later that year, another rifle company, from the famed 1st Air Cavalry Division, flatly refused -- on CBS-TV -- to advance down a dangerous trail.

"Search and evade" (meaning tacit avoidance of combat by units in the field) is now virtually a principle of war, vividly expressed by the GI phrase, "CYA (cover your ass) and get home!"

That "search-and-evade" has not gone unnoticed by the enemy is underscored by the Viet Cong delegation's recent statement at the Paris Peace Talks that communist units in Indochina have been ordered not to engage American units which do not molest them. The same statement boasted - not without foundation in fact - that American defectors are in the VC ranks.

Sedition – coupled with disaffection within the ranks, and externally fomented with an audacity and intensity previously inconceivable – infests the Armed Services:

At best count, there appear to be some 144 underground newspapers published on or aimed at U.S. military bases in this country and overseas. Since 1970 the number of such sheets has increased 40% (up from 103 last fall). These journals are not mere gripe-sheets that poke soldier fun in the "Beetle Bailey" tradition, at the brass and the sergeants. "In Vietnam," writes the Ft Lewis-McChord Free Press, "the Lifers, the Brass, are the true Enemy, not the enemy." Another West Coast sheet advises readers: "Don’t desert. Go to Vietnam and kill your commanding officer."

At least 14 GI dissent organizations (including two made up exclusively of officers) now operate more or less /31/ openly. Ancillary to these are at least six antiwar veterans’ groups which strive to influence GIs.

Three well-established lawyer groups specialize in support of GI dissent. Two (GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee and new York Draft and Military Law Panel) operate in the open. A third is a semi-underground network of lawyers who can only be contacted through the GI Alliance, a Washing, D.C., group which tries to coordinate seditious antimilitary activities throughout the country.

One antimilitary legal effort operates right in the theater of war. A three-man law office, backed by the Lawyers’ Military Defense Committee, of Cambridge, Mass., was set up last fall in Saigon to provide free civilian legal services for dissident soldiers being court-martialed in Vietnam.

Besides these lawyers’ fronts, the Pacific Counseling Service (an umbrella organization with Unitarian backing for a prolifery of antimilitary activities) provides legal help and incitement to dissident GIs through not one but seven branches (Tacoma, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, Monterey, Tokyo, and Okinawa).

Another of Pacific Counseling’s activities is to air-drop planeloads of sedition literature into Oakland’s sprawling Army Base, our major West Coast staging point for Vietnam

On the religious front, a community of turbulent priests and clergymen, some unfrocked, calls itself the Order of Maximilian. Maximilian is a saint said to have been martyred by the Romans for refusing military service as un-Christian. Maximilian’s present-day followers visit military posts, infiltrate brigs and stockades in the guise of spiritual counseling, work to recruit military chaplains, and hold services of "consecrations" of post chapels in the name of their saintly draft-dodger.

By present count at least 11 (some go as high as 26) off-base antiwar "coffee houses" ply GIs with rock music, lukewarm coffee, antiwar literature, how-t-do-it tips on desertion, and similar disruptive counsels. Among the best-known coffee houses are: The Shelter Half (Ft Lewis, Wash.); The Home Front (Ft Carson, Colo.); and The Oleo Strut (Ft Hood, Tex.).

Virtually all the coffee houses are or have been supported by the U.S. Serviceman’s Fund, whose offices are in new York City’s Bronx. Until may 1970 the Fund was recognized as a tax-exempt "charitable corporations," a determination which changed when IRS agents found that its main function was sowing dissention among GIs and that it was a satellite of "The new Mobilization Committee", a communist-front organization aimed at disruption of the Armed Forces.

Another "new Mobe" satellite is the G.I. Press Service, based in Washington, which calls itself the Associate Press of military underground newspapers. Robert Wilkinson, G.I. Press’s editor, is well known to military intelligence and has been barred from South Vietnam.

While refusing to divulge names, IRS sources say that the serviceman’s Fund has been largely bankrolled by well-to-do liberals. One example of this kind of liberal support for sedition which did surface identifiably last year was the $8,500 nut channeled from the Philip Stern Family Foundation to underwrite Seaman Roger Priest’s underground paper OM, which, among other writings, ran do-it-yourself advice for desertion to Canada and advocated assassination of President Nixon.

The nation-wide campus-radical offensive against ROTC and college officer-training is well known. Events last year at Stanford University, however, demonstrate the extremes to which this campaign (which peaked after Cambodia) has gone. After the Stanford faculty voted to accept a modified, specially restructured ROTC program, the university was subjected to a cyclone of continuing violence which included at least $200,000 in ultimate damage to buildings (highlighted by systematic destruction of 40 twenty-foot stained glass windows in the library). In the end, led by university president Richard W. Lyman, the faculty reversed itself. Lyman was quoted at the time that "ROTC is costing Stanford too much."

"Entertainment Industry for Peace and Justice," the antiwar show-biz front organized by Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, and Dalton Trumbo, now claims over 800 film, TV, and music names. This organization is backing Miss Fonda’s antimilitary road-show that opened outside the gates of Ft. Bragg, N.C., in mid-March.

Describing her performances (scripted by Jules Pfeiffer) as the soldiers’ alternative to Bob Hope, Miss Fonda says her case will repeat the Ft Bragg show at or outside 19 more major bases. Although her project reportedly received financial backing from the ubiquitous Serviceman’s Fund, Miss Fonda insisted on $1.50 admission from each of her GI audience at Bragg, a factor which, according to soldiers, somewhat limited attendance.

Not unsurprisingly, the end-product of the atmosphere of incitement of unpunished sedition, and of recalcitrant antimilitary malevolence which pervades the world of the draftee (and to an extent the low-ranking men in "volunteer" services, too) is overt action.

One militant West Coast Group, Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM), has specialized in weapons theft from military bases in California. During 1970, large armory thefts were successfully perpetrated against Oakland Army Base, Vets Cronkhite and Ord, and even the marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton, where a team wearing Marine uniforms got away with nine M-16 rifles and an M-79 grenade launcher.

Operating in the middle West, three soldiers from Ft Carson, Colo., home of the Army’s permissive experimental unite, the 4th Mechanized Division, were recently indicted by a federal grand jury for dynamiting the telephone exchange, power plant and water works of another Army installation, Camp McCoy, Wis., on 26 July 1970.

The Navy, particularly on the West Coast, has also experienced disturbing cases of sabotage in the past two years, mainly directed at ships’ engineering and electrical machinery.

The trouble of the services – produced by and also in turn producing the dismaying conditions described in this article – is above all a crisis of soul and backbone. It entails – the word is not too strong – something very near a collapse of the command authority and leadership George Washington saw as the soul of military forces. This collapse results, at least in part, from a concurrent collapse of public confidence in the military establishment.

But many a thoughtful officer would be quick to echo the words of BGen Donn A. Starry, who recently wrote, "The Army can defend the nation against anything but the nation itself."

Or – in the wry words of Pogo – we have met the enemy, and they are us.

In Iraq it is the jihadis and death squads that are massacring the people, not the US troops. You cannot build a serious anti-war movement unless you actually want to defeat your own government and are comfortable with the other side winning. Nobody sane is comfortable about the jihadis and death squads winning in Iraq so nobody capable of doing it is trying to organize a serious anti-war movement, either within the US military or generally.