Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2005 12:58:36 GMT -5
The Legacy of S.D.S. And Its Relevance To Today's Activists
It is perhaps inevitable that the emergence of a new generation of anti-war activists has resulted in a renewed interest in the largest anti-war organization of the 1960's, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). This interest has been further stimulated by the DVD release of SDS-oriented documentaries, "Rebels With A Cause" and "The Weather Underground."
There are, of course, some significant differences between US military involvement in Vietnam during the 1960's and 1970's, and the events unfolding today in Iraq. In the former conflict, the United States inserted itself into a civil war between the Communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the US-backed Republic of Vietnam in the south, with the justification that our military intervention was necessary to prevent the spread of Communism in southeast Asia. In other words, the US policy toward Vietnam owed much to Cold War liberalism (the greatest expansion of US forces in that region occurred during the Johnson administration) against the backdrop of US-USSR power politics.
In contrast, the Bush administration's military adventurism in Iraq lacks any substantive political basis. There is no extant super power rivalry and the absence of any counterbalancing force has apparently led American policymakers to feel they have a free hand to bring regimes "into line" that they perceive as threatening to economic interests in the United States. Moreover, the Bush administration generally succeeded in filling the void in political justification for the war by appealing to anger, emotionalism and fear in the wake of the terrible and tragic attacks in New York and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001.
While it can be argued that emotionalism and fear were hallmarks of Cold War policy, which they were, it must also be said that US involvement in Vietnam did not represent a significant break from policies that had existed since World War II. The Bush administration's decision to affect regime change in Iraq, however, was in some ways a break with policy in the Middle East insofar as the regime it sought to change was one the US had supported militarily and technologically in the past. This is not to say that the US has ever shied away from active involvement in removing regimes it felt were contrary to its interests and prerogatives, as the history of Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Chile and other nations demonstrates. Perhaps the closest Vietnam-Iraq parallel in this regard was US involvement in a military coup in Vietnam which resulted in the assassination of Diem in 1963.
Another interesting distinction between Vietnam and Iraq is that the former conflict was fought on the grounds of anti-Communism, while the latter has considerable religious overtones. The battleground isn't "democracy versus communism" but "western faith versus Jihad," with biblical passages regularly used by President Bush to justify almost any policy.
And finally, the Vietnam war took place concurrently with Lyndon Johnson's much-touted 1960's version of the New Deal which he called "The Great Society." Major domestic anti-poverty and civil rights legislation was promulgated, and it was only the increasing costs of the war which put the breaks on Great Society liberal initiatives. President Bush makes no pretense of either compassion or liberalism, and only two years after the war with Iraq began, the latest federal budget proposes wholesale gutting of domestic programs in order to keep funding our military adventures thousands of miles away.
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