Curtains for the Light

Posted on October 30, 2003 in Crosstalk Occupation of Iraq

Joan of Arc writes:

Recently on television, I heard Republican pollster Frank Luntz say that Americans would continue to support the occupation of Iraq as long as they could see “the light at the end of the tunnel.” I turned to my husband and asked, “Do you think it occurred to him that using language leftover from Vietnam wasn’t the best way to frame the issue?”

My response is that they want us to think of Vietnam, to remember how the war was lost not there, but “on the streets of home” when “ungrateful” students spoke against the draft and our involvement there. Iraq is Vietnam for them and they want to prove to us that their way of fighting foreign wars that were not wanted by the American people in the first place nor by the people we supposedly liberated works. I share with Joan my reasons for doubting that this war is soon to end after the delivery of a multiple rocket launcher by the Iraqi underground into the middle of Bagdhad last week. The opposition, with whatever leaders, is ready to wage war indefinitely.

The irony of the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” did not become a satiric counter-cry about our involvement in Vietnam for some years. In the beginning, few voices — including that of Dr. Martin Luther King — spoke out against the war. It took time for ironies to sink in, for people to notice that we were doing more harm than good.

I do not doubt that timing played in the use of the statement this week. As wildfires rage across southern California, we know this one thing: that fire crews will be able to contain them, that the devastation will end. The Republicans certainly want us to think of human beings as being mindless like the flames in a conflagration and themselves as the firefighters who everyone loves and respects for their sacrifice. But, except in conditions that allow backburning, firefighters do not set fires. We have started this war in Iraq and we have called it a fire to degrade the enemy into a mindless chemical reaction and to suggest that we can put it out. If the enemy is a flame, what Bush seems to be talking about is genocide of some variety or another. I’d find another metaphor if I was him.

Many Americans want the way we fought the war in Vietnam to succeed somewhere. There’s considerable guilt about all the dead Americans, about the disappeared, and the maimed. We seldom think of the Vietnamese who likewise died, disappeared or took on lifetime wounds in what they felt was the defense of their homeland against foreign invaders. We only see our side and we only see ourselves as the good guys. We don’t want to see this war as destructive and vile. If that perception sinks in, if the war begins to seem unwinnable, Bush knows that we will jump out, posthaste.

So the talk now is of light, to take our eyes off the fumarole that continues to burn right in the heart of Bagdhad. The marketing strategists who have advise the resident on this matter have realized the importance of repressing other echoes of Vietnam. Last week, the Washington Post announced a shocking discovery:

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.

There is no reason for secrecy about these matters. In this democratic society, people have a right to see our rites for the dead and know the state of those wounded in this war as Andrea the Shameless Agitator has observed. The Bush Administration has studied Vietnam and found a way to promote all the wrong things based on the reaction to the war. “Light at the end of the tunnel” promotes hope, they reason; the sight of coffins despair. Without the necessary check of real and accurate news from the front, this war can continue to be waged. Their hope is that there can be no check and balance by the Fourth Estate (now untrustworthy) or the rising Fifth Estate (the InterNet) on the war. When the full facts come out, it doesn’t look good because the things being done with taxpayer money aren’t good.

Hawks might consider this parting thought: where is the honor in these secret funerals? We say that we value the contributions made by our “boys” over in Viet– sorry — Iraq, but the hiding of their glory suggests that we are secretly ashamed. I hold nothing against Vietnam veterans and, despite statements that I made in the spring, I hold nothing against the thralls who now “keep the peace” in Iraq at considerably more risk to their lives than policemen on the worst streets in the most violent cities in America. Even Alaskan snow crab fishermen — who reputedly have the most dangerous job in the world — have more benefits and future than our troops who are underpaid and will be undercompensated in the years to come if Republican plans come true.

If you love our troops as more than just pawns, then you must demand that they receive public honor, that they receive just benefits, that they be brought out of this ugly war and allowed to live, once more, with their families here at home. Let our victory be that we saw the Light and, to avoid another Vietnam, we ended Iraq before months of unwanted presence stretched into years and uncounted graves of Americans and Iraqis alike.

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Has anyone else made this connection?: National Guard troops are being kept in Iraq well past the departure of the regular army. Could Bush be trying to undo his legacy of cowardice by keeping the members of the present National Guard under fire? Is he suggesting that things were the same now as they were back then?

So why doesn’t he follow the example of Alexander the Great and lead his troops — undefended by a personal body guard — on the front lines?

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UPDATE: A reader provided this commentary on Bush’s reticence to discuss his now infamous carrier landing. A moment of glory becomes a decided embarassment. And what does Bush do? Blame the crew of the Abraham Lincoln!