A Gadfly in the Ointment [View all]

[H2O Man]

“There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again -- now.”
Eugene O'Neill; A Moon for the Misbegotten


There are a number of important issues being discussed by members of the Democratic Party as we begin to prepare for the most important mid-term elections of our lifetimes in 2018. The hurricanes, climate change, and the government's response to national emergencies; the cruel DACA move by the administration; the Trump-Russian scandal; and North Korea. I thought it might be interesting to take a few minutes to discuss the general topics involving North Korea today.

Within the DU community, there are some members who remember the WW2 era, more who lived during the Korean war, many from the Vietnam era, and everyone has been alive during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were, of course, other military actions in between these; likewise, the military is also participating in other, unlisted countries today.

I would speculate that most people recognize that there are differences between, say, WW2 and the military invasion of Grenada under Reagan. People can – and do – have different ideas about what position the Democratic Party should take on each war. And that's a good thing. It has been an important factor within our lifetimes.

Any rational person who lived through (or has studied) the Cuban Missile Crisis knows it is a good thing that John F. Kennedy was president. In 1964, before the experience of aging mellowed Barry Goldwater, it was better that LBJ won. The Vietnam war hurt our Party in 1968's primaries, though VP Humphrey likely would defeated Nixon if he had parted with President Johnson on the war, even a week earlier than he eventually did.

Things are not always as they seem. LBJ would almost certainly rank high among the great presidents, had it not been for Vietnam. George McGovern was a WW2 hero, and an honorable Senator, yet he lost by a wide margin to a crook named Nixon. The Vietnam war had a huge impact upon our society, including – obviously – domestic politics.

In the 1980s, as terrible as Reagan-Bush were, there was a strong anti-war movement, protesting the US participation in the wars in Central America. This was connected with Democrats, including numerous church groups, fighting the administration's attempts to deport “illegal” immigrants, many from those war-torn lands of Central American countries the US military was systematically devastating.

In the Bush-Cheney era, many good Democrats did not fall for the lies about WMD in Iraq, and opposed the US invasion and occupation there. The longer the war continued, the clearer it became that the administration had intentionally lied our nation into that war. In 2008, Senator Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination largely because of his early opposition to the war in Iraq. More, he won the presidency, partly because the American people believed he would do his best to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe that President Obama did attempt to end US participation in both of those wars. I think that he learned that there were limits to presidential powers beyond those he was aware of as a candidate. Perhaps he could have done more if the public was demanding an end to the insanity of those wars. But the issues relating to those wars seemed to fade from the public discussions, and somehow the US would extend its participation in military operations that never saw public debate.

In 2016, a gadfly in the ointment of the republican primaries promised to end the US military role in Afghanistan, and to re-invest in American infrastructure. While his chronic lying makes it impossible to determine if he ever intended this salve, it is apparent that he is now surrounded by generals who favor the continuation of the failed military occupation. This is the flip side of having advocates of the military industrial complex providing stability within what is otherwise a dangerously unstable administration.

Serious discussions about ending these wars should not be “the dog that didn't bark” during the upcoming congressional campaigns. They have not made America safer. Quite the opposite: the world has become a much more dangerous place since 2001.

I'm curious what other forum members think about this?