The Wall Street Journal Editorializes--BRING ON ANOTHER VIET NAM
The Wall Street Journal and the occupation of Iraq
I have extracted only a few paragraphs from a report by WSWS.org. Click the link above to read it all.
In the Balkan states of Yugoslavia and Greece, after a rapid conquest of the countries, the German Nazi regime was confronted with an intractable war against resistance movements. Nazi efforts to suppress guerrilla activities progressed from detaining suspected partisans to reprisal killings of civilians and wholesale massacres. Mark Mazower, an author on the Nazi occupation of Greece, noted in his work Inside Hitler’s Greece: “One of the basic assumptions behind German occupation policy was that ‘terror had to be answered with terror’ to force the population to withdraw support from the insurgents.” (Inside Hitler’s Greece, Mark Mazower, Yale University Press, 1993, p. 173)
In a fashion similar to that of the Bush administration, the Nazis characterized the resistance fighters as terrorists and criminals. Mazower points out, ‘[R]egarding the guerrillas as inhuman, criminal or racially inferiors undoubtedly helped to erode the [German] troops’ moral and legal inhibitions against the use of ‘harsh and ruthless measures.’” (ibid, p. 160). If the Wall Street Journal has its way, US imperialism is on the path to using just as harsh and ruthless measures in what it calls the “Sunni-Baathist heartland” of Iraq.
Underpinning the Journal’s call for stepped-up repression in Iraq is the right-wing mythology as to why the US was defeated in Vietnam. According to this myth, US administrations were intimidated by the antiwar movement at home, which tied the hands of the military and prevented it from carrying out a “total war” to defeat the Vietnamese. The majority of the American people, the right-wing claims, did not oppose the war. They simply lost confidence in the determination of the government to win it.
The Journal editorial asserts: “The lesson we draw from American wars is that the public will accept casualties, even in large numbers, as long as it feels the cause warrants it and that its leaders have a strategy to succeed. As late as May of 1967, long into the war and after more than 10,300 US deaths, 50 percent of the American public still supported the conflict in Vietnam” (emphasis added).
The Journal confidently reassures its readers that with a sufficiently concerted war against the Iraqi guerrillas, “there is every reason to believe” the US will eventually defeat the “Baathist-terror counterattack.” It takes comfort in the fact that the Iraqi guerrillas, unlike the Vietnamese, have neither the backing of a rival great power nor the ability to cross borders into “foreign sanctuary.” And it is convinced that the American people “won’t turn against the US commitment in Iraq merely because of casualties” (emphasis added).
I have extracted only a few paragraphs from a report by WSWS.org. Click the link above to read it all.
In the Balkan states of Yugoslavia and Greece, after a rapid conquest of the countries, the German Nazi regime was confronted with an intractable war against resistance movements. Nazi efforts to suppress guerrilla activities progressed from detaining suspected partisans to reprisal killings of civilians and wholesale massacres. Mark Mazower, an author on the Nazi occupation of Greece, noted in his work Inside Hitler’s Greece: “One of the basic assumptions behind German occupation policy was that ‘terror had to be answered with terror’ to force the population to withdraw support from the insurgents.” (Inside Hitler’s Greece, Mark Mazower, Yale University Press, 1993, p. 173)
In a fashion similar to that of the Bush administration, the Nazis characterized the resistance fighters as terrorists and criminals. Mazower points out, ‘[R]egarding the guerrillas as inhuman, criminal or racially inferiors undoubtedly helped to erode the [German] troops’ moral and legal inhibitions against the use of ‘harsh and ruthless measures.’” (ibid, p. 160). If the Wall Street Journal has its way, US imperialism is on the path to using just as harsh and ruthless measures in what it calls the “Sunni-Baathist heartland” of Iraq.
Underpinning the Journal’s call for stepped-up repression in Iraq is the right-wing mythology as to why the US was defeated in Vietnam. According to this myth, US administrations were intimidated by the antiwar movement at home, which tied the hands of the military and prevented it from carrying out a “total war” to defeat the Vietnamese. The majority of the American people, the right-wing claims, did not oppose the war. They simply lost confidence in the determination of the government to win it.
The Journal editorial asserts: “The lesson we draw from American wars is that the public will accept casualties, even in large numbers, as long as it feels the cause warrants it and that its leaders have a strategy to succeed. As late as May of 1967, long into the war and after more than 10,300 US deaths, 50 percent of the American public still supported the conflict in Vietnam” (emphasis added).
The Journal confidently reassures its readers that with a sufficiently concerted war against the Iraqi guerrillas, “there is every reason to believe” the US will eventually defeat the “Baathist-terror counterattack.” It takes comfort in the fact that the Iraqi guerrillas, unlike the Vietnamese, have neither the backing of a rival great power nor the ability to cross borders into “foreign sanctuary.” And it is convinced that the American people “won’t turn against the US commitment in Iraq merely because of casualties” (emphasis added).
posted by A. J. Franklin @ 17:31
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