No war has ever demanded more bravery from our people and our government – not just bravery under fire or the bravery to make sacrifices, but the bravery to discard the comfort of illusion – to do away with false hopes and alluring promises. Reality is grim and painful. But it is only a remote echo of the anguish toward which a policy founded on illusion is surely taking us. This is a great nation and a strong people. Any who seek to comfort rather than speak plainly, reassure rather than instruct, promise satisfaction rather than reveal frustration – they deny that greatness and drain that strength. For today, as it was in the beginning, it is truth that makes us free.”
Robert F. Kennedy said this on February 8, 1968, and it can be said again today. He also said that “a military victory is not within sight Ö that in fact, it is probably beyond our grasp; and that the effort to win such a victory will only result in the further slaughter of thousands of innocent and helpless people – a slaughter which will forever rest on our national conscience.”
Kennedy was assassinated less than four months later. He was proven right – thousands more did die as the Vietnam War continued on through 1975.
American men and women of that generation still live with what happened then. And history – what U.S. teachers teach and politicians acknowledge – records the Vietnam War as a war waged in deception, as a war that never should have happened and as a war that never could have been won by the United States. Yet today, nearly 32 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Robert Kennedy’s speech still applies. Despite this truth, the Iraq War is four years old.
The Iraq War, though, is not simply “a slaughter which will forever rest on our national conscience,” as Robert Kennedy said about Vietnam. It is rather a slaughter committed by each U.S. citizen – not just the Bush Administration and their supporters.
Do Iraqis kill Americans? Yes. Do Iraqis kill Iraqis? Yes. And do Americans kill Iraqis? Yes. And it is all wrong.
But nothing has been done to stop the killing. Writers have written. Men and women have protested. Politicians have made promises. Moreover, American soldiers in Iraq have been fighting to end the war.
And again, nothing has been done to stop the killing.
The war will be blamed on us – the citizens – because we have allowed ourselves – collectively – to be manipulated by our representatives. In 2002, public support was generally in favor of the war and especially of the President, who managed to say Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Osama bin Laden and Sept. 11 in the same sentence in many of his speeches leading up to the October 2002 vote to give him sole power to declare war. Thomas Paine once said, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” The American people connected the dots President Bush laid out. Moreover, this past year the American people voted in a Democratic congress, which ran on an anti-war platform, with some understanding that they would pull the troops out and that the war would be brought to a close. President Bush has sent more than 20,000 additional soldiers to the Middle East and he will veto any resolution to reduce the size of the war. Yet again, the American public has been had.
When the Iraq War will be looked back on 30 years from now, history will view the war as it views the Vietnam War today. Yet, some things will be different. There is no presidential candidate promising to end the war immediately, as there was in 1968. There is no U.S. news media reporting the horror of the killing in Iraq, as there was in the Vietnam War. There is no great writer saying no to war, as there was in the Vietnam War. And there is no legitimate student movement in opposition to the war, as there was in the Vietnam War. In the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. government was forced to bend to the will of the U.S. people. Robert Kennedy said, “It is truth that makes us free.” These are the truths.
Tom McNamara is a University undergraduate. Please send comments to [email protected].
