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Beware Iraqization
By Mike Ferner
12/02/05 "ICH"
-- -- I half-suspected NPR to exhume Henry Kissinger (he is
dead, isn’t he?) the other day when they did a promo about a story
on “Iraqization,” but no, they spared us the sonorous tones of
Doctor Strangelove, only to give us his pin-headed sidekick,
former Nixon Defense Secretary, Melvin Laird.
Since it’s clearly too much to expect National
Pentagon Radio to invite an eminent historian like
Howard Zinn or someone of similar ability onto our airwaves to
explain the likely pitfalls of Bush’s plan to hand over Iraq to our
hand-picked Iraqis, it falls to the Itinerant Scribbler Corps to put
Laird’s interview into historic perspective.
“Eventually we have to get out as soon as our
job is done…” Laird began, omitting, of course, any mention of
exactly what that job might consist of…finding WMD’s?
Freeing Iraqis from despotic torture chambers? Militarily securing
a strategic, oil-rich region?
“…But we can’t walk away from the conflict
now,” he cautioned. “We will be able to start withdrawal of our
forces as the Iraqi forces come into readiness…Just because we get
our force level down in Iraq doesn’t mean we can walk away…(All
together now:)…or the losses we suffered will be in vain.”
When the reporter introduced the term “Vietnamization,”
Laird interrupted her to say eagerly, “That’s a good term. I coined
that term. And it worked very well, I think.”
With images of U.S. helicopters evacuating
people from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon coming to mind, I
heard the reporter counter that perhaps in the end it didn’t work.
Gentleman Mel interrupted again to say, “Vietnamization did work. I
mean the forces of the South Vietnamese were doing very well but
they had to have U.S. support to carry on the war…”
Finally, answering a question concerning
whether Bush could count on sufficient popular support to make
“Iraqization” work, Laird allowed as how “I think we need to have
more straight talk in order to show real leadership in this field.”
This is news worth the pain of listening to a
fall pledge drive?
One would think that having to hear that 800
number in our sleep would at least have earned us the right
to learn some basics of this Vietnamization business: that in order
to quell a growing antiwar sentiment spilling into the streets,
Nixon decided to change the color of the corpses in Viet Nam by
replacing U.S. ground troops with U.S. bombers…that in just six
months of 1972, U.S. warplanes dropped
702,000 500-pound bombs on Viet Nam…or that
15 giant B-52’s would be shot down during the “Christmas
Bombings” that year, with nearly 100 crewmembers killed or captured.
And saints preserve us from hearing how this
history relates directly to Iraq today.
You’ll recall how nearly every Member of
Congress – Republican and Democrat alike – was struck down
apoplectic when Representative Murtha suggested the U.S. withdraw
from Iraq?
Consider what Murtha outlined: a force of
Marines “over the horizon” ready at a minute’s notice and bombers
awaiting presidential orders. This is a script to make Bush’s
Iraqization look disturbingly like Nixon’s Vietnamization – and with
similar results for the people of Iraq. The color of the casualties
will change and that’s about all.
We are the OCCUPIERS in Iraq. The OCCUPIERS
have created institutions – an army, police, and paramilitary death
squads among them – that are permanently tainted by our connection
to them. When our troops eventually leave, no number of “Marines
over the horizon,” or punishing air strikes, or “battle-ready
battalions” of Iraqis will keep the OCCUPIER’S institutions in
place. Resistance, some of it undoubtedly violent, will continue
until those institutions are either removed or destroyed.
That’s a bit of a public service public radio
could actually provide, and leave Mel Laird to peddle his memoirs
elsewhere.
Ferner is a freelance writer from Ohio. He served as a Navy
corpsman during Vietnam and as a member of Toledo City Council. He
is a member of
Veterans For Peace.
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