The Vietnam Syndrome is not, as Colin
Powell once suggested, a fear of getting into “another Vietnam.”
The Vietnam Syndrome is the belief that
we won. Or we shoulda won. Or we woulda won, if not for them. And it is the dominant element of the Nixon Political Myth.
When a Myth is based on a lie, as this
one is, it can be very hard to get rid of. And the lie is told,
wherever the Myth’s followers gather. Were it not for Watergate,
Vietnam would not have fallen. Were it not for the hippies, the
journalists, the academics – the internal enemies – the Vietnam War would
have been won.
That’s why they Swiftboat. That’s why
they surveil everyone. That’s why the War on Terror seems like a war
on the American left. It’s the Myth being sustained.
Throughout my adult life I have watched
millions of good people seduced by this lie, because they wanted to believe it, desperately,. In Garden Grove, near where my family lives,
Vietnamese-Americans rejected the display of a “North Vietnam”
flag.
Even here in Atlanta you will see South Vietnam flags, and that
country hasn’t existed for a generation.,
Vietnamese have not been the only folks
affected. Cuban-Americans continue to be played by the Right, and
they now await Castro’s inevitable death as the signal for a new War, a war for them.
But no group has been as taken-in as
Jewish people. American support for Israel, as I’ve noted, goes back
nearly 60 years. And the Nixon Myth itself has as its roots in the Munich
Pact of 1938, so it goes 10 years further back. (That’s 68 years, for those keeping score at home.)
Even today, any
suggestion of retreat, on any issue, is met by cries of “Munich”
from the Right. The enemy is always Hitler, the left is always
Neville Chamberlain. It’s their favorite talisman.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a walk in the right-wing blogosphere and find out:
Here’s Bob Waters
— “peace movements generally don’t bring peace, they bring war.”
Marc Schulman on anti-war writer Glenn Greenwald
— “there’s more than a faint echo of Neville Chamberlain in
his words.” The Jawa Report, attacking Peter Beinert of The New
Republic —we
face another World War II, not a repeat of the Cold War.”
We
are nearly as far removed in time today from Neville Chamberlain at
Munich as the Lincoln-Douglas debates were from the nation’s
founding.
Chamberlain’s Act at Munich, meanwhile, is the genesis of
the whole Nixon Myth. The Nixon Myth is that Vietnam wasn’t really
lost, that we were “stabbed in the back” by war opponents and
prevented from winning.
It’s
the biggest lie of the 20th century. Bigger than any
whopper told by Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao Zedong. And it’s told by
Americans, believed by Americans, today. It’s what sustains today’s
dominant worldview. It’s powerful mojo.
So
no one should be surprised when the “media narrative” or the
“Washington narrative” concerning Iraq refuses to conform to
reality, despite the public’s proven distaste for the policy.
Such
is the power of a political Myth, even one based on a lie.
Nice piece, Dana. But surely, this lie did not begin with Vietnam? How far back does this lie really extend?
Nice piece, Dana. But surely, this lie did not begin with Vietnam? How far back does this lie really extend?
It might surprise you to know that I agree with you about Vietnam, and have made the same arguments you make about it repeatedly in my blog. I opposed that war then, and there is nothing you say about it in this post with which I don’t agree now.
If we could have fairly won the plebiscite provided for by the 1954 Geneva accords, it would have been a war that was both winnable and worth fighting. But we refused to allow that plebiscite precisely because we knew- and Ike even admitted as much- that Ho Chi Minh would have won it overwhelmingly.
Now imagine the Vietnam war if the phony parallels the Lefts keep drawing between it and the current conflict were valid.
It is 1967. The country is fairly well pacified- except for the continuing violence from bitter-enders in occupied Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh- whose support among the Vietnamese population is minimal- is on trial for his life. A democratic government, elected by the Vietnamese people, has taken his place.
Yes, the parallels are striking, arent’ they? And they’ll be even more striking when our casualties in Iraq reach those we experienced in Vietnam, sometime near the end of the current century.
I’d like to propose that the real “Vietnam syndrome” is neither the fear of becoming involved in a war, nor the myth that we should have won in Vietnam. Rather, the most apt use of the phrase would seem to be to be as a description of the irrational obsession shared by the Left and most of the media that *every* war is Vietnam. But despite the
determined efforts of both to portray it as such and to make it equally futile, if possible, the fact remains that every war is *not* Vietnam- and that includes the current one.
It might surprise you to know that I agree with you about Vietnam, and have made the same arguments you make about it repeatedly in my blog. I opposed that war then, and there is nothing you say about it in this post with which I don’t agree now.
If we could have fairly won the plebiscite provided for by the 1954 Geneva accords, it would have been a war that was both winnable and worth fighting. But we refused to allow that plebiscite precisely because we knew- and Ike even admitted as much- that Ho Chi Minh would have won it overwhelmingly.
Now imagine the Vietnam war if the phony parallels the Lefts keep drawing between it and the current conflict were valid.
It is 1967. The country is fairly well pacified- except for the continuing violence from bitter-enders in occupied Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh- whose support among the Vietnamese population is minimal- is on trial for his life. A democratic government, elected by the Vietnamese people, has taken his place.
Yes, the parallels are striking, arent’ they? And they’ll be even more striking when our casualties in Iraq reach those we experienced in Vietnam, sometime near the end of the current century.
I’d like to propose that the real “Vietnam syndrome” is neither the fear of becoming involved in a war, nor the myth that we should have won in Vietnam. Rather, the most apt use of the phrase would seem to be to be as a description of the irrational obsession shared by the Left and most of the media that *every* war is Vietnam. But despite the
determined efforts of both to portray it as such and to make it equally futile, if possible, the fact remains that every war is *not* Vietnam- and that includes the current one.