History is haunting us. That ghost called Vietnam now casts a
looming shadow on the presidential election of 2004.
With the recent discussion of Sen. John Kerry’s endeavors in a
Swift boat during America’s most criticized war
– and President Bush’s lack of endeavors in that war more than
30 years ago – I see that America’s old ghosts have not been laid
to rest.
History is haunting us. That ghost called Vietnam now casts a looming shadow on the presidential election of 2004.
With the recent discussion of Sen. John Kerry’s endeavors in a Swift boat during America’s most criticized war – and President Bush’s lack of endeavors in that war more than 30 years ago – I see that America’s old ghosts have not been laid to rest.
And with the death toll of American military personnel rising in Iraq, we obviously haven’t learned those vital lessons history could teach us from our Vietnam War experience.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the politicians in Washington sent young Americans to fight in a jungle war that we had murky reasons for getting into. In recent years, the politicians in Washington sent young Americans to fight in a desert war that also, it’s becoming clear, we got into on false pretenses.
Was Congress duped about Vietnam in 1964 when President Johnson reported the American Navy boat Maddox had been fired upon by torpedoes from the North Vietnamese? If it wasn’t a lie, it was surely a big case of self-deception by that Texan president.
Was Congress duped about Iraq in 2002 when President Bush reported Saddam Hussain kept weapons of mass destruction he planned to use against Americans? If it wasn’t an outright lie, it was surely a big case of self-deception by that Texan president.
History is haunting us.
There’s a lesson we, as a nation, need to learn. Like malicious wraiths, wars started for unjust reasons will come back to torment us.
Consider an idealistic military officer, a young man with a law degree who fought in an unjust war Washington politicians got us into. He led men into dangerous territory where enemy guerrilla soldiers hid, a bullet-shot away, amid densely-packed vegetation.
In those turbulent times, certainly with secret ambitions for the White House, he spoke with sincere passion these words under the Capitol Building dome:
“This unnecessary war was unconstitutionally commenced by the President, who may be telling us the truth – but he is not telling the whole truth. He has swept the war on and on, in showers of blood. His mind, taxed beyond its powers, is running about like some tortured creature on a burning surface! Stop the war, Mr. President. For the love of God, stop this war!”
That young officer and lawyer had led men into battle in the Black Hawk War, an unjustified attack in 1832 on the Native Americans of Illinois and Wisconsin.
As a Whig Congressman from Illinois, he spoke out against President Polk’s unjustified war with Mexico. That conflict started after Polk gave Congress an inaccurate report of an attack by Mexican soldiers on Americans in Texas in 1846.
That congressman, Abraham Lincoln, would later be elected as the first Republican President of the United States. He’d lead the nation through four bloody years of a Civil War ignited, in part, by Manifest Destiny expansion initiated by the Mexican-American War.
History is haunting us. When will we learn its lesson?
Another young military officer with a background in law also spoke, under the Capitol Building dome, against an unjustified American war. He had seen first-hand the atrocities of war when he led men through jungle rivers. In the turbulent year of 1971, perhaps with secret ambitions for the White House, he spoke passionately to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the national nightmare of Vietnam.
That young officer, John Kerry, entered politics and became a senator for Massachusetts. And now, in the election of 2004, Kerry and the Democratic Party have made his four-month-long Vietnam experience the central reason for his selection to the Oval Office.
Unfortunately, the passionate Kerry of the Vietnam era is no where in sight. The senator now campaigning for the White House is a different breed of bird.
Kerry the dove is gone. He’s been replaced by something resembling a hawk. We have in him a candidate who voted for America’s wars with Iraq in 1990 as well as in 2002. And, most disturbing, he says he would still vote in favor of our current war despite the fact no WMDs were ever found in Iraq.
Both Bush and Kerry trouble me as our main choices in the November election. Bush doesn’t seem to have a clue how to build a solid peace between our nation and the Iraqi people. His arrogance in administrating is also disturbing.
And Kerry – courageous as he was under fire in Vietnam – seems to have lost the spine to stand up for his original convictions. His discrepancy of views makes me wonder about his true motives for serving in Vietnam.
Was his military service simply to gain hero status for political posterity? If so, this puts into question his anti-war stance. It’s painful to think the ideals he displayed as a young man were only carefully calculated for campaign gain.
With the election just two months away, we find ourselves as a nation stuck once again debating a war 30 years in our wake. The serious questions of today are being ignored – to our national peril – in this vitally important presidential year.
We must draw our attention back to the here and now. We must focus on our current crisis with Iraq. Each presidential candidate must detail his best plan for implementing a lasting peace.
History is haunting us.
History is warning us of the errors in judgment our leaders have made in starting a war for inappropriate reasons.
Let us lay to rest the ghosts of Americans killed in all our wars by learning the lessons history teaches. It’s telling us to manifest peace in place of violent conflict.
