[Mb-civic] MUST READ: From Vietnam to Iraq: How to stop the war - Stephen Bergman - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

 From Vietnam to Iraq: How to stop the war

By Stephen Bergman  |  November 25, 2005

WITH INCREASING frequency, writers are likening the Iraq war to the war 
in Vietnam. The latest, Melvin Laird, was secretary of defense during 
the Nixon administration. Perhaps it is time to look at how we stopped 
the Vietnam War, and see if the same methods might work now, or if not, 
why not.

In those years the Nixon administration realized that it could not win, 
and set out to end it. The killing would go on for years, but a divided 
country was turning against the mission. There were three major reasons:

The student resistance movement and the draft. The fact that every male 
student was eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam created great 
anxiety and, with time, organized resistance to the war. One of the 
first nonviolent protests was in 1967 by students at the University of 
Wisconsin who prevented Dow Chemical, makers of napalm, from job 
recruiting. The university called in the police. All hell broke loose, 
with injuries on both sides. The brutality solidified the resistance; 
the students there and elsewhere went out on strike. By Kent State in 
1970 there were countless acts of nonviolent resistance, violent police 
actions, and redoubled resistance. Marches on Washington, hundreds of 
thousands strong. Many returning soldiers joined in, as did families and 
loved ones of students and soldiers alike.

The media. TV newscasts at that time showed an incontrovertible truth: 
Real bleeding bodies were brought into everyone's living room. Screams 
of the wounded were heard. Dead bodies were seen sprawled in the 
graceless horror of death. Both American and Vietnamese casualties were 
shown. There was a nightly tally of the dead and wounded. Coffins draped 
with flags were were given air time. When Walter Cronkite stated that we 
couldn't ''win" this war, something in the mainstream trembled, and 
shifted. TV and print news, not owned by mega-corporations, was 
independent and brave. The Pentagon Papers were published despite 
obvious legal risk. Reporters, both TV and press, like Michael Herr and 
Sy Hersh, would never ''embed" with the military. Accept censorship? 
They went out on their own.

Leaders. Both within and outside of Congress there were great leaders 
who spoke to the link between racism and classism and the obscene images 
on the TV and in the papers. Congressional leaders stood up -- McCarthy, 
Fulbright, Ted Kennedy, McGovern among many -- and, in his most 
impassioned moment, a young sailor named John Kerry, back from Vietnam, 
asked a Senate committee, ''How do you tell someone that he's the last 
man to die for a mistake?"

What is the message in this, from Vietnam to Iraq?

The draft. Introduce legislation to institute the draft. At once, no 
exceptions, not even gender. Mothers, fathers, and their children would 
be in the streets. There might be a violent response. The resistance to 
the war would focus. Many returning soldiers and their families and 
loved ones would join in.

The media. Corporate controlled, it is probably beyond repair. Some of 
the alternative and foreign media are often more reliable truth-tellers. 
But there is one question for the TV commanders to which we must demand 
an answer: Why are you not showing the bloody bodies of the wounded and 
dead Americans and Iraqis?

Leaders. The only leader of national note is a dead soldier's mother, 
Cindy Sheehan. The Congress, with few exceptions -- Maxine Waters, 
Barbara Lee, Russ Feingold, and now John Murtha -- is as quiet as 500 
invertebrates. In this silence is opportunity. Most Americans see Iraq 
as a mistake. If a leader of some stature stands up and asks, again, 
''How do you ask someone to be the last person to die for a mistake?" 
there will be an audible sigh of national relief. A simmering movement 
will ignite. This requires courage, probably from someone outside of 
Congress -- Wes Clark or John Edwards come to mind. It may seem risky to 
take that stance, but that person might well be elected president in 2008.

Stopping a war is difficult, especially given the hubris, spin, and 
tragic incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration. Yet even 
Kissinger and Nixon were able to manage it, however clumsily and with a 
great cost of lives on both sides. We Americans can stop it in time to 
save many thousands of wounded and dead. Now.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/25/from_vietnam_to_iraq_how_to_stop_the_war/
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