KENNEDY/JOHNSON IN SE ASIA, BUSH/OBAMA IN SW ASIA Noam Chomsky to Michael Uhl August 7, 2013: …I think it’s a little misleading to say that the Iraq war movement faded. It was vastly greater than the Vietnam war movement at any comparable time. And though we don’t have documentary evidence yet, I think there’s good reason to suspect that it had a large impact. The US didn’t even dare to do the kinds of things that Kennedy and Johnson managed easily in Vietnam … until the latter part of the ’60s, when the war had gone far beyond anything in Iraq of Afghanistan. Noam Chomsky to Michael Uhl August 9, 2013 …The anti-Iraq war movement was far stronger than the anti-VN war movement at any comparable stage, and I think was quite influential in restricting US actions, leading to a severe US defeat, unlike Vietnam, where the US won a partial victory, gaining its major objectives. It’s true that a huge popular movement finally developed when more than half million US troops were in SVN and the war had spread to all of Indochina, with vast destruction. There’s no similar movement today, or any comparable crimes to elicit it. Hence the difference between the Ellsberg-Russo and Snowden-Manning cases …. In fact there wasn’t all that much support for Ellsberg-Russo, very little articulate support in the mainstream… Noam Chomsky to Michael Uhl August 12, 2013 …When JFK was authorizing use of napalm and chemical warfare to destroy crops and ground cover, and beginning programs to drive peasants into concentration camps (“strategic hamlets”) to “protect” them from the guerrillas the government knew they were supporting, protest was zilch. And so it continued. In October 1965, with South Vietnam virtually destroyed, hundreds of thousands of troops rampaging, the war extended to the North and also Laos and Cambodia, the first international day of protest was called. Boston’s a pretty liberal city, so we thought we could arrange a rally on the Boston Common, the standard site. We did. I was supposed to be one of the speakers. It was impossible to be heard because the rally was broken up by counter-demonstrators, mostly students, only reason we escaped was a huge State Police presence - hated what we were doing but didn’t want to see bloodshed on the Common. The next day the Boston Globe, probably the most liberal paper in the country, devoted most of the front page to denouncing the demonstrators as traitors. Congressional doves (Mansfield, etc.) did the same. The next International Day of Protest was March 1966. Don’t have to tell you what was happening in VN at the time. We realized that we couldn’t have an outdoor rally, so arranged for it inside the Arlington Street Church which was attacked and defaced by raging counter-demonstrators. Compare Iraq. I suggested before comparing it at any comparable stage of the war. But that was wrong, because Iraq never reached even close to any comparable stage. The only question that remains, I think, is how effective the huge anti-Iraq war protest movement was in constraining US actions to the level where they weren’t all that visible - except to Iraqis. To nail that down we’d need internal documents. But the indirect evidence is quite strong. The war was awful enough, but Bush et al never even tried to do what JFK and LBJ did without detectable protest, US casualties were kept low, reporters were embedded and independent ones rarely could publish in the US, even those of considerable renown. And note that to this day it’s being suppressed, not just here. Thus in England, “Srebrenica” is a Holy Word, ranked right next to “Holocaust,” particularly in leftish circles (Guardian types). Fallujah was quite similar, but worse. Not a word about it, and even the basic facts about the horrendous consequences, until today, are scarcely reported. Unlike VN, where at least basic facts couldn’t be kept off the front pages. I think “severe defeat” is appropriate. As the scale of the defeat was looming, the Bush administration did state its objectives explicitly (though the press didn’t report it much). In an official November 2007 declaration, reinforced in a January 2008 signing statement. Cited it at the time, and in subsequent books. They demanded military bases that could be used for combat and privileged access by US energy corporations. Both were rejected. That it was a defeat is recognized by serious analysts, like Jonathan Steele (his book Defeat) and David Gardner, ME analyst for the Financial Times. And others. Vietnam was quite different. The major goals were attained – by 1965, McBundy recognized in retrospect… [inthemindfield]
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 23:17:27 +0000
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