[Peace-discuss] Ending imperial war

[C. G. Estabrook]

Although the polls show that a majority are opposed to the AfPak war, we haven't 
reached the point where 70% regard the war as "fundamentally wrong and immoral, 
not a mistake."

That's our failure as activists and an anti-war movement (and Obama supporters) 
to make people AWARE of what the USG is doing.  The complete pacification of the 
universities in the last generation helped, too.

We have a government determined not to repeat the propaganda mistakes of the 
1960s - Obama sets that out explicitly in The Audacity of Hope and promoted 
himself as the one to do it, as he has.  Co-opting the anti-war movement that 
turned the public against the Vietnam war is his forte.

Of course the wars themselves are quite different.  SE Asia was never central to 
US global politics, while there's nothing more important to US geopolitics that 
Mideast energy.  And the Pentagon knows now to rely on mercenaries, not the 
draft, to oppress foreigners.  Americans objected the last time.


Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> I think the answer lies in your last paragraph.
> 
> Ricky
> 
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
> 
> --- On *Tue, 3/30/10, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at illinois.edu>/* wrote:
> 
> 
>     From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>     Subject: [Peace-discuss] Ending imperial war
>     To: "peace discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>     Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 3:38 AM
> 
>     Can Obama be forced to do as well as Nixon?
> 
>     On January 15, 1973, US President Richard Nixon announced the
>     suspension of all offensive actions against North Vietnam, to be
>     followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops. The Paris
>     Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam"
>     were signed on January 27, officially ending direct U.S. involvement
>     in the Vietnam War. The agreement called for the withdrawal of all
>     U.S. personnel and an exchange of prisoners of war. Within South
>     Vietnam, a cease-fire was declared (to be overseen by a
>     multi-national, 1,160-man International Control Commission force)
>     and both ARVN and PAVN/NLF forces would remain in control of the
>     areas they then occupied, effectively partitioning South Vietnam.
> 
>     The signing of the Accords was the main motivation for the awarding
>     of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and to leading
>     North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. A separate cease-fire had
>     been installed in Laos in February. Five days before the signing of
>     the agreement in Paris, ex-president Lyndon Johnson died. The first
>     U.S. prisoners of war were released by North Vietnam on February 11,
>     and all U.S. military personnel were ordered to leave South Vietnam
>     by March 29.
> 
>     The US war against South Vietnam ended for three principal reasons:
> 
>     [1] the resistance of the Vietnamese people to invasion and occupation;
> 
>     [2] the refusal of the American conscript army to continue to fight; and
> 
>     [3] the revulsion of the US public for the war.
> 
>     By 1969 about 70% of the US public had come to regard the war as
>     "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," largely as a
>     result of the impact of student protest on general consciousness.
>     And that mass opposition compelled the business community and then
>     the government to stop the escalation of the war.


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