The
recent death of General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S.
forces in Vietnam, reminds me of the cruel irony that the United
States, the most powerful military force in history, lost the war
because we would not use the weapons that made us strong. Is that the
case today in the war on terrorism? Is our strength actually our
weakness if we can’t use it when attacked by the less powerful?
Granted,
during the Vietnam War we were faced with the very real consequence of
ending the world as we know it if the Soviets or Chinese retaliated
against our use of nuclear weapons in Indochina. The fear was setting
off the chain reaction of thermonuclear Armageddon—a very real prospect
in the dangerous days of the Cold War. Instead, the disenchanted
American giant lumbered off the battlefield humiliated, suffering its
first defeat in war.
The “scar” on
the national psyche from the defeat in Vietnam continues to ache. Many
feel a sad remorse, but others enjoy a barely concealed jubilation: the
American anti-war activists who worked hand-in-hand, whether knowingly
or not, with Soviet agents to undermine the war effort in the U.S.
Today, history correctly attributes America’s loss in Vietnam to the
effective Soviet propaganda war on the “home front.”
These
same home-grown Lilliputian dupes that bound and gagged the mighty
United States in Vietnam are at work again, this time dedicated to
preventing the American giant from fighting effectively against demonic
Islamic terrorists who, like the North Vietnamese, lean on their own
weakness as a tool of war. With no standing army and very little
weaponry, the homicidal jihadists use Neolithic methods to strike fear
and cause mayhem. But they have help from the alumni of the Vietnam
era, and their younger recruits, who are helping them out in their
continuing zeal to criticize America and our allies for fighting back.
As
Islamic terrorist gangs kill innocent people, these activists and their
media dupes are upset over the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo,
ironically conjuring up the term “gulag” to compare U.S. treatment of
terrorist prisoners to the very real slave camps in the Soviet Union, a
nation they so admired. At every media juncture, there is a plea for
the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, proselytizing it as the new Vietnam.
During the 2004 presidential race, candidate John Kerry was exposed as
a card-carrying member of the old radical groups, delivering the
keynote anti-Vietnam War address to the Senate Foreign Relations
committee in 1971. Later, he showed up for the Paris Peace Talks and
met with the North Vietnamese delegation on behalf of American
dissidents. Today he still talks the talk of his salad days as a dupe
for the Soviets, sniping at U.S. efforts to combat terrorism.
The
recent renewal of the Patriot Act, a necessary restraint on civil
liberties to combat terrorism, was depicted as fascism by the same
suspects. The alleged leaking of a minor CIA officer’s real name is
breathlessly reported as the new Watergate, hoping it will bring down
the Bush administration and end the war. These delusional antiwar,
anti-American busy bodies must know they are undermining troop morale
and staining the U.S. image abroad. But just like the old days, the
activists, still enthralled by 50-year-old freeze-dried Soviet
propaganda, continue to conduct their political war against their own
country.
This reflexive instinct to
blame America, swaddled in Marxist propaganda and breast-fed by Soviet
money and propaganda can be looked back on via memoirs of the
participants and recently provided information from Soviet archives
since 1992. It is clear that denigrating the U.S. was the clarion call
to rally the New Left and the Student Movement against the Vietnam War.
The tropes and slogans so in vogue today, even the organizational
charts of these anti-war groups (and domestic terrorist gangs, like the
Weather Underground), followed the Communist International template.
The
Soviet Union finally collapsed under the weight of its own evil, but
the propaganda remained within academe and the activist Left. And once
again they have a cause to rally around to put down America. Their
handiwork is everywhere in the debate over how to handle Islamic
terrorism. After President George Bush chose to fight terrorism where
we find it, and to fight in Iraq to replace fear and violence with
freedom and democracy, the renewed Left undermines that mission at
every turn.
I remember vividly the
initial news reports during the first hours of 9-11 from National
Public Radio and the major network news: Their first concern was that
Americans not over-react and mistreat Muslims, conjuring up images of
angry mobs attacking mosques. This was followed by strict controls on
security checks to ensure that we did not “profile” Arabs and Muslims.
Airport security guards were directed to detain and search white female
children to be sure the process did not upset the American Civil
Liberties Union. The World War II internment camps set up to quarantine
Japanese Americans made a vigorous comeback as a news item, reminding
Americans that we must not repeat that course of action against
jihadists.
To the activists, it is
more important to be politically correct than safe. Today, this train
of thought is supported by the doctrine that implies America deserved
9-11 for being the engine of global capitalism. University of Colorado
radical scholar Ward Churchill is invited to campuses to repeat his
statement that the victims who fell from the burning inferno of the
World Trade Center were “little Eichmanns,” comparing them to the Nazi
who exterminated Jews since they worked in commerce for the American
fascist/capitalist state.
Are we once
again to skulk away from war as the nutty Left shouts its slogans and
blames America for terrorism? And are we to be defeated, at least in
spirit, by teenage Moslem fanatics led by deranged mullahs because we
can’t use our strengths? Have the jihadists found that our weakness is
our inability to use our power? Or have they latched on to the same
thing that brought us defeat in Vietnam, our own radical citizens who
can be recruited to hate America too? Are we then to succumb to the
treachery of our own citizens who thwart our efforts? Would the use of
small tactical battlefield nuclear weapons in countries that harbor
terrorists prevent us from losing this war as we did in Vietnam?
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
Have
you signed up for the Raleigh International Spy Conference set for Aug.
31-Sept. 2 at the N.C. Museum of History? It’s a stellar line-up of top
intelligence scholars featuring Ronald Radosh, Harvey Klehr and John
Earl Haynes along with IC Smith on Chinese espionage, Nigel West on
Venona, Steve Usdin on Soviet high-tech spies and Time correspondent
Ann Blackman on Civil War spy Rose O’Neale Greenhow. This is the third
year for the event and you don’t want to miss it. Go to www.raleighspyconference.com, call the spy hotline at 919-807-7917 and check out the schedule in this issue.