[Peace-discuss] Parties and wars

Sun Jul 22 14:39:33 UTC 2018

That’s the sort of argument defenders of US aggression - which has killed more than 20 million people since WWII, in ‘defense’ of US economic hegemony - are reduced to…


> On Jul 22, 2018, at 9:27 AM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> You pretend to be some sort of scholar, but you are sometimes just full of shit - let's just leave it at that. 
> 
> Roger
> 
> On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 7:18 AM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com <mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:
> And why did ‘we’ withdraw from an aggressive war (the crime for which people were hanged at Nuremberg), launched by the Kennedy administration against S. Vietnam?
> 
> The US military was 'actively downsizing’ because its conscript troops were ‘unreliable.’ Good for them - and the 70% of Americans who supported them - against the criminal government of the US.
> 
> —CGE  
> 
> 
>> On Jul 22, 2018, at 3:31 AM, Roger Helbig via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> Rather think it was the other way around - we have withdrawn, why do we need the draft anymore - we are moving towards a better paid all volunteer force, but you keep viewing through your distorted lens.
>> 
>> The US military was actively downsizing beginning in late 1973 - certainly by mid-1974.
>> 
>> Roger
>> 
>> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 11:58 PM, Estabrook, Carl G <galliher at illinois.edu <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>> I'm sure that came as a surprise to a government engaged in a large, unpopular colonial war: "Oh, shucks! Look at that! The draft just ended! Guess we'll have to withdraw..."
>> 
>> Now, if we need do the same thing in the Mideast. And close the hundreds if US military bases ringing Russia and China. Bring all US troops (and weapon) hime, as Ron Paul insisted some years ago...
>> 
>> From: Peace-discuss [peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net>] on behalf of Roger Helbig via Peace-discuss [peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>]
>> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2018 10:49 PM
>> To: C G Estabrook; Peace-discuss
>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Parties and wars
>> 
>> It ended in June 73 because that was the end of the 1971 extension to the law - there was no sudden end as you claimed - it took two years to come to an end - read the following:
>> 
>> Senatorial opponents of the war wanted to reduce this to a one-year extension, or eliminate the draft altogether, or tie the draft renewal to a timetable for troop withdrawal from Vietnam;[67] Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska took the most forceful approach, trying to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, shut down conscription, and directly force an end to the war.[68] Senators supporting Nixon's war efforts supported the bill, even though some had qualms about ending the draft.[66] After a prolonged battle in the Senate, in September 1971 cloture was achieved over the filibuster and the draft renewal bill was approved.[69] Meanwhile, military pay was increased as an incentive to attract volunteers, and television advertising for the U.S. Army began.[61] With the end of active U.S. ground participation in Vietnam, December 1972 saw the last men conscripted, who were born in 1952[70] and who reported for duty in June 1973. On February 2, 1972, a drawing was held to determine draft priority numbers for men born in 1953, but in early 1973 it was announced by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird that no further draft orders would be issued.[71][72] In March 1973, 1974, and 1975, the Selective Service assigned draft priority numbers for all men born in 1954, 1955, and 1956, in case the draft was extended, but it never was.[73
>> 
>> and this 
>> 
>> USARV controlled the activities of all U.S. Army service and logistical units in South Vietnam <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam> until 15 May 1972, when its structure was merged with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Assistance_Command,_Vietnam> (MACV) to become USARV/MACV Support Command, which was disbanded on 28 March 1973 after completion of withdrawal of all combat and support units. ]
>> 
>> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 7:48 AM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com <mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Why do you think the draft ended, Roger?
>> 
>> Of course the government and media wished to cover up the refusal to fight of the draftees sent to Vietnam - up to the point of attacking their officers (‘fragging’ - from the live fragmentation grenade rolled under the beds of gung-ho cadre) - but too many of them came back to tell the story.
>> 
>> One of the few media accounts of why the US withdrew combat troops in 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir!_No_Sir! <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir!_No_Sir!>
>> 
>> —CGE
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jul 21, 2018, at 3:05 AM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com <mailto:rwhelbig at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> your reason for the end of the draft is completely wrong, but then, you always look at history through greatly distorted lens!
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 2:41 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>>> Or, more reason not to give Democrats control of Congress
>>> 
>>> https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/democrats-press-gop-quick-legislative-response-russia <https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/democrats-press-gop-quick-legislative-response-russia>
>>> 
>>> Political parties in other countries are often dues-paying, class-based associations pressing for certain well-defined goals - so you can have, e.g., a bankers party, a farmers’ party, a working class party, etc. 
>>> 
>>> In contrast, in the US  parties are brands, trying to convince the largest number of voters that Coca-Cola is better than Pepsi-Cola, Cheerios better than Wheaties... (Do they still make Wheaties?) Thus the greatest US crime of the post-WWII world, the US invasion of SE Asia (the ‘Vietnam War’) was not ended by parties’ taking different sides, even though -  
>>> 
>>> “By 1969 about 70% of the public had come to regard the [Vietnam] 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.” [Chomsky]
>>> 
>>> We may ask, Will the Bush-Obama-Trump depredations on the Mideast be brought to end as the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon assaults on SE Asia were? The answer is hardly clear: history, as has been said, doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Remember that Richard Nixon had a ‘secret plan for ending the [Vietnam] war’: he was the anti-war candidate in 1968 (as Trump was in 2016); in each case their opponents (Hubert Humphrey and Hilary Clinton) were leading members of the administrations making war.
>>> 
>>> The Vietnam war ended (to the extent that it did) for three reasons - in order of importance:
>>> (1) the brave resistance of the Vietnamese people against US attack;
>>> (2) the revolt of the American army in Vietnam (cf. ‘fragging’) - which compelled the sudden ending of the draft in 1973; &
>>> (3) the ‘mass opposition’ of the US public (in fact, the least important of the three factors on US policy).
>>> 
>>> When it came to the Mideast (even more important to US government planners than SE Asia), US imperial policy was determined to avoid the ‘mistakes’ of Vietnam: 
>>> (1) local resistance in the Mideast was widespread, but divided and inchoate (note that 9/11 was a counterattack to US actions); 
>>> (2) the US military had been assuaged: the draft had been ended (because of US resistance) and only the economic draft was left, so the US fights its Mideast wars largely with foreign proxies, whom it finances (from NATO in Afghanistan to jihadists in Syria); then with drone assassinations. (Cf. “Noam Chomsky: Obama's Drone Program 'The Most Extreme Terrorist Campaign of Modern Times’”);
>>> (3) the mass opposition to the US public to foreign wars - perhaps never greater than in 2003, with Bush’s invasion of Iraq - could be managed with lies and propaganda. Obama ran as the peace candidate in 2008. The anti-war movement that should have countered his lies was seduced by him instead, so in office he could immediately expand the war in Afghanistan that he’d attacked in the campaign.
>>> 
>>> The examples of Vietnam and the Mideast seem to make it clear that an anti-war movement today that actually deters US wars will not be based on the Republican and Democrat organizations. They are together part of the ‘war party’ that serves the world-wide economic interests of dominant social groups in the US (‘the one percent’) - not the interests of the population at large, who have to misled with ever more fantastic lies - now including ‘Russian aggression’ and ‘collusion.’
>>> 
>>> ###
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
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