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Mr. President, Where Do We Go From Here?

By Michael Cascanet

"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."
- George Santayana

"This is like deja vu all over again."
-Yogi Berra

If anyone out there believes that the US learned anything at all from our numerous mistakes in SE Asia in the '60's and '70's, it's time for a reality check. All you have to do is to compare our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 and you will come to the conclusion that we apparently haven't learned a thing.

Before we sent a single "advisor" to Vietnam in the 1950's Vietnam was a country that had been colonized and occupied for hundreds of years by the Chinese, followed by the French and the Japanese. During WWII the Vietnamese were allies and supporters of the US against Japanese occupation. Following WWII Ho Chi Minh petitioned the US to support their independence from France which we denied. Despite our halfhearted support of France to reestablish colonial control of Vietnam against Ho Chi Minh's military efforts to gain Vietnamese independence, the Vietnamese defeated France at Dien Bien Phu in the 1950's and the US slowly stepped in. We had a lot on our plate at that time: the nuclear threat, Mutually Assured Destruction, the Domino Theory and the Communist Monolith (the Soviet Union and China). We escalated from "advising" to "training" to taking the bulk of the military burden from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford. We had a military draft system during the height of the Vietnam war which supposedly included all males meeting physical, mental and moral standards of the time. Never mind that the sons of the rich and powerful (Cheney, Rove, Bush, Wolfowitz) were able to get draft deferments or a slot in the Reserves.

Fast forward to the 21st Century after 9/11: of the 19 terrorists responsible for three aircraft hijackings, 15 were Saudi Arabian, 1 was Egyptian, 1 was Lebanese and 2 were from the United Arab Emirates. In response, former president Bush attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, established the Department of Homeland Security which has stepped all over our constitutional right to privacy and tried to justify torture as legal. President Obama was elected and chose to increase our troop levels in Afghanistan. In addition, despite his promise to draw down our military presence in Iraq, close Guantanamo and outlaw torture and rendition, the Bush doctrine of the Imperial Presidency continues. The Bush administration began and the Obama administration has chosen to continue a policy of hiring mercenaries (Blackwater and other civilian contractors) at a huge financial cost to augment our military. There is no draft now as there was during Vietnam but the majority of enlistees today come from the urban ghettos and the disadvantaged rural areas of the country.

The biggest difference between the Vietnam and Iraq era is that today we give token respect and appreciation to those who serve in the military. Why not? They're shouldering the entire burden while the average American isn't suffering or being deprived of anything at all.

Our undeclared war in the sandbox has cost us a trillion dollars and some 4,400 American lives. That's bad enough. The worst thing is that it was unjustified, illegal, unnecessary and it has continued without much thought for 7 years.

Michael Cascanet is a member of VVAW and a CPT,CA,USAR (Ret.)