From Vietnam to Iraq: How to stop the war
WITH INCREASING frequency, writers are likening the Iraq war to the war in Vietnam. The latest, Melvin Laird, was secretary of defense during the Nixon administration. Perhaps it is time to look at how we stopped the Vietnam War, and see if the same methods might work now, or if not, why not.
In those years the Nixon administration realized that it could not win, and set out to end it. The killing would go on for years, but a divided country was turning against the mission. There were three major reasons:
The student resistance movement and the draft. The fact that every male student was eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam created great anxiety and, with time, organized resistance to the war. One of the first nonviolent protests was in 1967 by students at the University of Wisconsin who prevented
The media. TV newscasts at that time showed an incontrovertible truth: Real bleeding bodies were brought into everyone's living room. Screams of the wounded were heard. Dead bodies were seen sprawled in the graceless horror of death. Both American and Vietnamese casualties were shown. There was a nightly tally of the dead and wounded. Coffins draped with flags were were given air time. When Walter Cronkite stated that we couldn't ''win" this war, something in the mainstream trembled, and shifted. TV and print news, not owned by mega-corporations, was independent and brave. The Pentagon Papers were published despite obvious legal risk. Reporters, both TV and press, like Michael Herr and Sy Hersh, would never ''embed" with the military. Accept censorship? They went out on their own.
Leaders. Both within and outside of Congress there were great leaders who spoke to the link between racism and classism and the obscene images on the TV and in the papers. Congressional leaders stood up -- McCarthy, Fulbright, Ted Kennedy, McGovern among many -- and, in his most impassioned moment, a young sailor named John Kerry, back from Vietnam, asked a Senate committee, ''How do you tell someone that he's the last man to die for a mistake?"
What is the message in this, from Vietnam to Iraq?
The draft. Introduce legislation to institute the draft. At once, no exceptions, not even gender. Mothers, fathers, and their children would be in the streets. There might be a violent response. The resistance to the war would focus. Many returning soldiers and their families and loved ones would join in.
The media. Corporate controlled, it is probably beyond repair. Some of the alternative and foreign media are often more reliable truth-tellers. But there is one question for the TV commanders to which we must demand an answer: Why are you not showing the bloody bodies of the wounded and dead Americans and Iraqis?
Leaders. The only leader of national note is a dead soldier's mother, Cindy Sheehan. The Congress, with few exceptions -- Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Russ Feingold, and now John Murtha -- is as quiet as 500 invertebrates. In this silence is opportunity. Most Americans see Iraq as a mistake. If a leader of some stature stands up and asks, again, ''How do you ask someone to be the last person to die for a mistake?" there will be an audible sigh of national relief. A simmering movement will ignite. This requires courage, probably from someone outside of Congress -- Wes Clark or John Edwards come to mind. It may seem risky to take that stance, but that person might well be elected president in 2008.
Stopping a war is difficult, especially given the hubris, spin, and tragic incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration. Yet even Kissinger and Nixon were able to manage it, however clumsily and with a great cost of lives on both sides. We Americans can stop it in time to save many thousands of wounded and dead. Now.
Dr. Stephen Bergman is a Boston doctor who, as ''Samuel Shem," is the author of the novels ''The House of God" and ''Mount Misery."
