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Israel/Zionism See other Israel/Zionism Articles Title: The Bushes and the yellow ribbons (Vietnam syndrome -- I had forgotten that quaint turn of phrase. Thought it meant amerikans living under the deserved shame of having ruined everything with their feckless Viet involvement, but apparently it only meant the antiwar sentiment this generated and the perpetually Kissinger-imprinted government hated. "Isolationism" 50 years after FDR -- NN) Yellow Ribbons and Endless War “By God,” Bush said in triumph, “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” George H.W. Bush made this statement a quarter of a century ago while celebrating the terrific poll numbers his quick-win war on Iraq was generating. Remember the yellow ribbons? I think Bush had a point. “Vietnam syndrome” — the public aversion to war — still has a shadow presence in America, but it no longer matters. America’s official policy is endless bombing and endless war. No matter how much suffering it causes — more than a million dead in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan — and no matter how poorly it serves any rational objectives, our official response to geopolitical trouble of every sort is to try to bomb it into compliance with our alleged interests. The cancerous “success” of this policy may be the dominant historical event of the last three decades. Endless war is impervious to debate; it’s impervious to democracy. Greg Grandin, writing recently at Tom Dispatch about Henry Kissinger’s extraordinary contribution over four decades to Washington’s war-no-matter- what consensus, pinpoints a moment at the onset of Gulf War I that gave me deep pause. At that moment, war had lost its controversy, its raw demand for public sacrifice. Suddenly war was little more than entertainment, as cozily unifying to the American public as professional sports. War and television, one might say, had signed their post-modern peace treaty. Back in 1969, shortly after Richard Nixon was inaugurated (on a platform that included ending the war in Vietnam), Kissinger and Nixon launched — in deep, dark secrecy — their bombing campaign against Cambodia. This campaign was a war crime of the highest order, devastating and utterly destabilizing Cambodia and creating the preconditions for genocide, as it allowed the Khmer Rouge to come to power. Fast-forward a few decades. Kissinger was no longer in government, but as a high-profile pundit, he was still a major player in American politics, and he pushed the war button at every opportunity. So when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Kissinger was an early proponent of a military response. Eventually, of course, George H.W. Bush launched Operation Desert Storm........... Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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