YES, WE DID - So What Now?

OK, let's all enjoy our orgasmic joy at finally having a voice in the election, at not having a complete bubblehead in the White House (as of January, at least - see the Bush clock to the right), and at breaking one of the great barriers of the racial divide. There's been adulation pouring in from across the world. While the CNN article describing dancing in the streets in Paris and Africa and Japan and elsewhere is heart-warming, the message I enjoyed most was relayed by my honey, who is on the Straight Dope message board, where there are a number of members from other countries. The foreign members basically said, "Oh, good for you - Welcome Back!" America can now re-join the world, rather than being the pariah hated by the ROW (for those not in the lingo, "Rest of the World," i.e. that seemingly small and powerless part of the world that is not the United States).

So, as the Republicans must, so must we also now move past all that. Lots of things got put off in the fury of getting a better candidate into office, and now that we have, it's time to move on and look at our problems, why we needed a better candidate, and what we and our new President will have to do to solve our problems. We have our work ahead of us and we need to start looking at that work with a realistic attitude towards erasing the stains of eight years of Republican misrule and restoring honor and dignity to the White House.

One thing that concerns me greatly is how much the media is congratulating the country for its "New Liberal Order" (as Time magazine called it in a recent article). Yes, we did manage to put our mutual differences aside and get a fairly competent and compassionate candidate elected who has also continuously demonstrated an interest and ability to get to work on our toughest problems, domestic, foreign, and international. But the problem here is that it seems by itself to solve our problems and let us get back to watching American Idol and worrying about Britney Spears' Palinesque breeding woes. What all this ignores, though, is that the Republicans have for over a quarter of a century controlled the political dialogue through a variety of means that are still very much a factor of our social and political structure. Our "revolution" is not over, complete, and forever safe. Our "revolution" has barely even touched our consciousness as a possibility. If we simply sit back and watch from a distance, our "revolution" will never happen. The conservative revolution, on the other hand, remains as strong as ever.

Over a quarter of a century ago, the conservatives realized that in order to get any work done over the long term, they needed to put aside their internal differences, and also to form a new constituency by finally swallowing their pride and reaching across to the religious right. They did both, as well as finding a new level of internal discipline with which to overcome their internal disputes and march in accord. They have also exploited some of the violence and uncertainty of the 1960s to paint many of the ideals of the Left in a somehow un-American light, to the point that liberals are almost afraid of the word "liberal", while "socialist" means dirty, wrong, unholy, and almost criminal.

Yet "liberals" led the American revolution, the campaign towards the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement. Socialists pushed the national agenda towards the establishment of the 40-hour work week and the minimum wage, the illegalization of child labor, and the legalization of union organization and a multitude of protections for the workers. Almost everything that our nation stands for, and for which Americans have to thank, are results of the Left pushing for the rights of the citizen against the rights of the corporation, the church, and the established social classes which were in turn supported by the Right. The Right's principal legacy is in arguing that these reforms were "too much, too fast," or weakened our nation and economy (by which the Right mean the right of the rich to stay rich, and the obligation of the poor to stay poor), and in protecting the right of a minority of religious thinkers to control how the rest of us should live our lives.

The Right has been able to sell their image of the world to the people, through the control of much of the media. They even label their own, corporate-controlled and carefully stifled, conservative information machine as the "liberal media," which allows centrist information (which comes closer to portraying the basic views of the American voters) to appear as "tainted" with liberalism and all things bad. This also allows Right-wing and far-Right propaganda to seem more centrist, or even "liberal." Pundits like Rush Limbaugh come to seem almost reasonable and acceptable to the very people whose interests are directly harmed by the Right, while those pundits and politicians trying to keep the dialogue open and fight for the rights of their fellow citizens are lambasted for being somehow un-American. This massive and well-organized machine is still in place and still in operation. Many of the facets of the conservatives' control of our language are still very much in place, and accepted as fact by members of Right, Center, and Left alike.

A telling example of this is the abortion debate. We on the Left continue to call right-wingers fighting against women's reproductive rights as "Pro-Life," which they aren't. "Pro-lifers" have supported the war efforts, and fight against aid to poor nations trying to legalize abortion in order to reduce famine and disease problems; the "pro-lifers" are very much a factor in the dissemination of both deliberate and circumstantial death. Nor can "pro-lifers" be distinguished from their opponents as being "anti-abortion"; the majority of pro-choice activists are themselves anti-abortion, but don't see it as their call to make for other women or their families. The only thing that distinguishes the two sides are whether they feel that their views should be dictated to others or not; "pro-lifers" feel that their views should become a legal obligation for everyone, whereas the "pro-choicers" feel that it should be and stay a personal choice and an individual's moral obligation. It is just a question a whether one believes in freedom or not. The "pro-lifers" are against freedom, the "pro-choicers" are for it. Our language should reflect this, rather than implying the opposite of the truth by calling those against freedom (and, largely, against "life") as being nonetheless "pro-life", which of course also falsely implies that the pro-choice side is somehow "against life." The opposing sides of any argument are pro and con; and so our language should indicate. The "pro-life" movement is Anti-Choice, and that is all that distinguishes them from their opposition. We should stop giving in to the Right's language and call these activists against freedom what they really are.

Another issue of concern is the organizational capabilities of the Right. For decades, they have been organizing and moving in unison, often putting aside their petty differences in order to march forward together on the big issues that they agree upon. The Left, on the other hand, has spent more of its time criticizing itself for (and purging itself of) the merest hint of "socialism" in order to come closer to the Right than some members of the Right are. The Left has wallowed in its petty quarrels, and focused on the individual pet projects at the expense of combined activism, and has lost most of the ground won since the 1960s, and most of the elections. We have not formed a "movement" the way the Right have. We have carefully dismantled the very machine we built up, severing our connections with labor, with minorities, and with the elderly and poor who need the support structure we have conspired with the Right to eliminate. We have become "conservatives with a conscience," and have betrayed most of our central beliefs. We need to get back on track, or the conservatives will be right back in 2012 (and 2010 in the Congress). They are as strong as ever, and while riding on our wave of victory, we have barely scratched the surface of what is required to build a long-term movement capable of taking on the conservative army in our strategic war of culture.

We need to mobilize, and to commit ourselves to the battle. We need to understand that we are in fact at war, and are under heavy fire from a well-armed, and regimented host. The first priority of the moment should be recruiting and organizing our own forces. Now is the perfect time to do this on both sides of the spectrum, Left and Right, because those on the Left are starting to feel their power again, and because some of those who have been supporting the Right are having second thoughts about the machine that thought Sarah Palin could possibly have been a good candidate for a job she knew nothing at all about. The smart Republicans are now second-guessing themselves, and the stupid ones are looking for leadership. Now is the time to appeal to their patriotic impulses (because, misled, misguided, and mistaken as they are, they don't feel that their policies are destructive or evil; they think they're doing the right thing). But we need even more to appeal to the Left and rediscover our Leftist and socialist values, the values of social justice and collective organization, the values of democratization of both politic and economy. We need to stand up and be proud to be Leftists, to accept this title with the honor and dignity it commands, and to embrace its values and objectives. Then we need to start working on recruitment, organization, and information, so we can fight the war with the Right that they have been fighting, and winning, for almost three decades.

Obama's election should not be the final result of our labors; it should be simply the first step on the path toward national and social redemption and a better future for the generations to come. It can be this if we all work together, and not simply spectate and criticize from the sidelines.

The Failure of Capitalism (A Babbling Preamble)

American capitalism is suffering from a serious problem. The banks, Wall Street, marketing firms, and the US government have conspired to convince Americans that they can, and should, afford increased rates of consumption by taking on a substantially increased debt burden. Now the bubble is burst, and everyone is pointing blame and running for cover. Personal savings are down to an all-time historical low, and the simultaneous "wealth" of consumer goods flooding the market should be a telling point that we cannot afford all that the corporations want to produce and sell. That American capitalism works by making people spend themselves to death should be a pretty strong indication that the system does not work as well as its protagonists argue that it does. The American economy has become the "wealthiest" in the world by creating an illusion that the American people can afford all that they desire and that they should have all that they desire. That "wealth" is now proving itself to be the hollow shell that it always was.

Capitalism can work in moderation. In fact, in moderation it works extremely well, rewarding innovation, enterprise, ambition, and ingenuity. It also, of course, has the down side of rewarding these things in direct proportion to the pre-existing wealth enjoyed by the individual in question, so that "opportunity" is most enjoyed and taken advantage of by the wealthy, much less so but still to a significant degree by the middle classes, and rarely if at all by the poor. "Opportunity" is abundant in America, indeed; but it predominantly protects and reinforces the class structure of American society. Nonetheless, capitalism encourages businesses to operate effectively, and can act as a Darwinian environment for business, rewarding those who make the right decisions and punishing those who don't. Capitalism, when properly regulated, taxed, and controlled, will add immeasurably to a society's ability to operate effectively and economically.

But in America, we have let the dogs off the leash almost entirely. Regulations have been struck down, the government has canceled its own tax system in order to promote corporate lobbying (which our own politicians cash in on in ridiculous quantities), and the government is openly protective of corporations' "rights" to destroy our environment and produce harmful commodities. The government has given to the corporations protections originally guaranteed to the individual, while at the same time taking it away from the individual.

The government has openly encouraged the banks to engage in predatory lending, and has also encouraged consumers to sell their own lives away in order to purchase immediate consumption of disposable products and temporary services. Where our parents worked and saved, and therefore kept themselves safe from levels of consumption that they couldn't afford, our generation works to buy and spend, leaving ourselves with nothing. We do this, by the way, at the same time that long-secured medical benefits that our workplaces used to pay for are now disappearing, while the government warns against "socialist" universal health care. We are going to run out of money and out of medical benefits at the same time, when the conservatives take away Medicare and Social Security.

And yet, as we happily march on to the great collapse of the American economy, with Americans earning less and less, and saving nothing at all, and watching conservatives take away the last of our social services and giving these benefits instead to companies already rich by promoting uninhibited consumption, we still harp on about the great advantages of capitalism. The Republicans argue that now what is needed is tax cuts for the rich; and somehow, people don't see that eight years of Republican tax cuts, and spending the Clinton surplus in Iraq, has not brought forth the jobs that they miraculously are supposed to bring suddenly under McCain's "change."

All of this diatribe has, by the way, ignored the progressive destruction of the biosphere by the use of fossil fuels and various other harmful behaviors of excessive capitalism. We have to a great degree been living off of the future generations of this planet who will have to face the greater temperatures, and greater ranges in weather patterns caused by our negligence and inability to limit our own destruction of our own home. Capitalism doesn't favor green policy for the most part, so the millions of people who will die of hunger, disease, and war because we need to drive our very own car to work will just have to accept their fates as their parents' and grandparents' sacrificial victims. Remember how our parents scrimped and saved so we could have better lives? Instead of passing on that fine tradition, we have sold ourselves into debt for our McMansions, SUVs, cell phones, and MP3-players; and we are quite knowingly destroying the planet our children and grandchildren are going to try to inhabit.

Capitalism unfortunately is like the problem with drugs. Do you blame the supplier, or the user? It is easy, and in fact very frequently perfectly justified, to blame corporations because they often (especially when the laws allow them to) engage in harmful activities for the financial benefit of their stockholders. But Wal-Mart would not be the profit-earning giant it is if millions of people did not flood through its doors to purchase its wares. Big Oil makes big profits because we spend our time bitching about high gas prices while pumping fifteen gallons of the earth-killing substance into our gas tanks. Consumption-hungry people create a demand; and a corporation fulfills that demand. Both sides are to blame. If we are going to make our nation stronger and our world better and healthier, we need to come up with a better plan than this, because if we don't the next century is going to be a bleak time of war, disease, death, and destruction.

Obama in the Middle

OK, this is definitely one I want feedback on. If you're reading this, then please comment on it - and then send your comments to the Obama campaign. Comments, everyone, please; this is a blog, not a monologue (or will be if you add your comments). The Man may not hear you, but I certainly will, so let's hear what you have to say.

In November, my choice at the polls will be between Obama, writing in a candidate, or not voting; so unless something very wrong goes on in the Obama campaign I will be voting for Mr. O. This is because the Right is just plain Wrong, and is destroying our country and everything that is (or used to be) great about it. McCain is OK with turning Iraq into the new Hundred Years War, when every day we spend money we don't have to keep our forces and mercenaries there, and to kill Iraqis and suffer casualties for no good reason at all. McCain has no education policy to speak of, when our schools are increasingly destitute and we are rapidly losing our place in the global race to the future. McCain has no health care policy to speak of, in the only modern, industrialized nation in the world with no public health system worth mentioning. McCain has no energy policy to speak of beyond increasing oil production, which is another way of saying that we should hit the accelerator as we approach the brick wall of global ecological (and national economic) disaster so we can slam into it that much more quickly and effectively. I suppose the only positive thing to say about his "policies" is, that he is so old he'll be dead before his administration is, so he won't have to live to see our nation collapse as the incredibly likely result. Thanks, John.

The Republicans are irresponsible, immoral, and ineffective at leading our nation towards any goal other than that of widening the income gap by increasing the wealth of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. They are also happy to ally themselves with the far right forces which are fighting for a regime of authoritarianism, theocracy, and imperialist ambitions both at home and abroad. Every day under Republican rule puts this nation ever more solidly in the grip of Big Brother, and the future safety and security of our nation, our people, and our freedom depends on a fight for survival against these forces. We must fight against the Right with every weapon at our disposal, and Obama is one such weapon. I therefore urge every free-thinking and patriotic American to vote for Obama in the general election in November, and against McCain.

Nonetheless, I firmly believe that an Obama administration would represent at best a holding action, and really something more akin to an orderly retreat to more defensible lines. Despite the attempt by the Right to paint Obama as a "radical," it is clear to anyone actually bothering to look into Obama's actions, statements, and history, that Obama is a definitive Centrist, and not a Leftist by any means. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama speaks again and again on the need for the Left and the Democratic Party to compromise with the Right to reach a consensus. Obama argues against socialized medicine, against any radical increase or restructuring of social welfare programs, and against any "precipitous" withdrawal from Iraq.

The American political system is keyed to a process of negotiation and compromise between the two parties. Both parties hold close to even numbers of supporters, forces, and resources. In Congress, laws are worked out through deals and compromises, bargains are made in committee and subcommittee. Neither party has the clout to push through a program against the other's express will; it should be remembered that many of Bush's most unpopular initiatives involved a degree of participation by the Democrats. In any such situation, it should be obvious that to get anything done, each party must be willing and able to give up some of its demands in order to get others fulfilled. The ultimate positions reached in Congress are usually somewhere in between the starting positions of both sides. In theory, this should, or at least can, result in American politics being predominantly Centrist, providing that we have a strong Left fighting against the Right for influence and support.

But the problem is that we don't have a Left and a Right; we have a Center and a Right. The Democrats are ever apologetic about being "liberal" (and they are becoming less "liberal" every day), and rather than start out by arguing for Leftist goals, they start out by arguing for Centrist goals. At the same time, they negotiate and compromise with a Republican party happy to exploit far-right forces and always struggling unabashedly for conservative goals. The result is a compromise that lies solidly in the middle between the Center and the far Right, a definitively right-of-Center result. This brings us further to the Right with every political battle fought; and makes "liberal" ideals every day seem more "radical", "dangerous", and "unachievable."

A perfect example of this is the health care policy debate. Obama doesn't call for socialized medicine, which our nation has more than enough resources and knowledge with which to provide. He simply calls for the insurance of the uninsured - and will have to fight against Republicans with roughly even strength of forces in Congress doing all they can to inhibit this result, and trying to get all the Democratic support they can for their own conservative goals in return for what little they give back. The result of a "successful" Obama "fight for health care reform" will not be universal health care; but simply a reduction in the proportion of uninsured. It will be better than what we would get from a Republican administration interested only in corporate profits and increasing the centralized authority of the government and the church, but not much better; and it will be far less, inexcusably less than what our nation is capable of achieving. We are the country that introduced large-scale mass production and put people on the Moon. Is it really too much to ask to suggest that we might just be capable of doing what virtually every other country in the world does, including many that are so much poorer than ours is?

It is time for the Left to be what it is, to not feel sorry for it, to shout to the world that our nation has the money, the materials, the manpower, and the staggering ingenuity needed to achieve whatever we set our sights on achieving. It is time for Obama to be what the Right say he is, but which his own actions and statements say that he is not - a Leftist, the president that America needs to make our nation once again a great nation, and a true nation of compromise and consensus. It is time for the Left to be proud of itself again, and for us to make the conservatives feel a little guilty for their faults instead, such as promoting ignorance, centralized authoritarianism, theocracy, and a widening income gap. We will still, and probably always, have the Right to contend with and negotiate with (and, let's face it - to remind us of what we stand for and need to fight for, but also to remind us not to take ourselves so seriously that we forget we're not the only ones living here). We will probably never get a "radical" Leftist regime into office or achieve really "radical" Leftist goals; but we can, and will, still achieve our share of victories if we push for them, rather than start by offering to give up our rapidly diminishing ground to the enemy. The Right have declared, and have been winning, a war on everything that we value about our nation. It is time for the Left to stand up and fight back.

1984 in 2008

During the Cold War, George Orwell's novel 1984 was a favorite among people of many different political beliefs. The book was often taken in the spirit of its condemnation of totalitarianism to be specifically a condemnation of communism and of the Soviet Union, and of the Soviet system of government and social organization, which in part it was. However, Orwell's message went well past a simple condemnation of one side of the bipolar conflict, and both during and after the Cold War, many readers have ignored the rest of Orwell's message. This is ironic considering the fact that the philosopher Eric Fromm was invited to write an introduction to the novel that is often included in many issues of the book, and that Fromm specifically outlined Orwell's warning to his readers.

Fromm argued that the book's main warning was not directed against the Soviet system so much as it was directed against the West, as the West was itself headed into its confrontation with the Soviet Union by emulating many aspects of the Soviet system in the effort to fight against communism. One of the aspects of the Orwellian depiction of the near future that most people ignore is the degree to which the West became ever more similar to the East while claiming an increasing ideological divide. The story takes place in Oceania, a geopolitical entity combining among other things the United States and Great Britain, and the leaders of Oceania prosecute eternal warfare against the world's other two superpowers, Eurasia and Eastasia, by claiming a fight for freedom, justice, and morality against the decrepit and horrific systems of its opponents. Yet the three superpowers all employ the same ideology, and the same means of supporting their ideology and of fighting their opponents.

Fromm argued that Orwell's warning was that in fighting the Soviet Union the United States and the leading powers of Europe would become ever more like the very system that they claimed to be fighting against. This warning largely went unheard, as many chose merely to see the Soviet system and not the American one in the construct of Oceania. This has not changed since the Soviet collapse, as many still see the novel as a Cold War story that has now become dated. But Orwell's warning, as unheard and unheeded as it remains, becomes ever more strident.

The proof in the pudding of Orwell's warning lies in the changes in the American political landscape since the collapse of the Soviet system. The conservative revolution of the past quarter of a century has employed so many ideas and language tools employed by Oceania and its totalitarian opponents that one can't help but see Big Brother in every policy that the American conservatives enact, and in every statement of conservative ideals. The very goals of the conservative revolution in fact can be defined quite neatly by J.D. Talmon's concept of totalitarian democracy, in which the people are ruled by a ruthless and authoritarian, but nonetheless popularly elected, republican regime. The conservatives are building an ideal future based on the values of the past, in which a tyrannical father rules the home, a tyrannical company rules at work, a tyrannical government rules in the capitol, and a tyrannical Christian church rules the social and cultural norms. The conservatives have managed to build a frighteningly large consensus and support base of the very people they wish to control and exploit, a base of supporters ready and eager to sign away their last rights and civil liberties in the happy knowledge that they are building a future free of freedoms, in which they are safe from foreign ideas such as the notion that the government shouldn't tell them how to live their lives. The voters are persuaded to bask in the warm and protective embrace of a government uninhibited by inconvenient realities and moralities. Enemies are imagined up and the government strips away the people's civil liberties in order to protect them from imaginary or impotent enemies; and rather than protest, the people vociferously support the government's rights against their own, in proud defiance of everything that America's founding fathers believed in and fought for; and they do this in the very name of everything that America's founding fathers believed in and fought for.

This relates to Orwell's statement that the Party (the ruling organization of Oceania) destroys all freedoms and all notions of equity and social justice; and that it does so in the very name of freedom, equity, and social justice. But this is just the beginning of a comparison between Oceania's Party and our own beloved Republican Party (and the conservatives of which the Republicans are merely the tip of the iceberg). The Party of Oceania had three central slogans: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength. All three slogans are unspoken but nonetheless central strategies employed by the conservatives to further their aims.

WAR IS PEACE. The conservatives (with, it must be admitted, a frightening degree of enthusiastic support from "liberals" and the Democratic Party) have built up a system of eternal warfare and have eroded the distinctions between war and peace to the point where there is no longer any clear distinction. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has continued to pursue its "War is Peace" strategy both at home and abroad. The US has deliberately blown foreign "threats" out of all proportion to their actual level of antagonism and capabilities; and in particular insists on a warlike and military engagement of all opponents and "threats," at the expense of negotiation, compromise, and inclusive methods that led to the end of the Cold War and to the development of democratic government in East Europe. They do this in order to prove that continuing the employment of direct military force to any and all situations of foreign "threats" is the only way to protect America, American ideals, and the American standard of living.

To that end, the conservatives propose continued increases of military spending despite the obvious lack of any enemy capable of taking on America and winning on a conventional military level. They propose to continue funding and fighting a war in Iraq with no end in sight, because it keeps everyone's nerves on edge and keeps everyone cognizant of the "threat" that is out there and which we must sacrifice wealth and civil liberties in order to defeat.

The conservatives know that we can't and won't stay in Iraq forever, and so Iran is now being raised to a "threat" worthy of military response, and one which every attempt made to negotiate with is lambasted by an ever hawkish "liberal media." This despite the fact that every time Iran has stepped in the way of American goals, it was because we had stepped on their toes first. The United States has been interfering in Iran's affairs for over half a century, including the unspeakably ugly period of our direct support for the Shah's secret police and their torture and murder of thousands of Iranian dissidents. Iran has never shown any indication that they would remain antagonistic to an America that didn't continuously impose its will upon them; but the United States has never given Iran the chance. Nor will we, because it only helps build a conservative and authoritarian American system of totalitarian democracy if we have a credible threat out there trying to build atomic weapons and remaining seemingly antagonistic.

And so, in the prosecution of actual war, and the preparation for a combination of both real and hypothetical future wars, the US remains ever at war. Yet at the same time the US is ever at peace as well. This is because we are fighting, or preparing to fight, against threats not even remotely capable of withstanding US military force. There is therefore no real possibility of reinstating the draft; and so the civilian population remains safely at home working to support the troops defending their rapidly eroding freedoms.

The continual state of warfare and/or the preparation for it (with a deliberate policy of fanning and provoking such threats, and of warning the American public against them) offers several advantages to the conservative construction of totalitarian democracy, which were discussed by Orwell in 1984.

First of all, the perpetuation of an endangered state keeps the population insecure and suspicious of outside influences, and not uncommonly of each other at home. A population at war is often willing to allow, and sometimes actually desirous of, restrictions of freedoms and of civil liberties, and are easily convinced of the dangers inherent in newly arrived immigrant peoples with different languages and cultures. A constant state of war enables a state to impose and maintain authoritarian conditions.

Second, perpetual warfare requires the perpetual expenditure of resources on military equipment and supplies. This is actually considered a positive feature as it not only provides the government with a ready economic activity which must be maintained at all times, but it inhibits the government from spending money on social programs that would interfere with the conservative construction of totalitarianism. The conservatives desire a society regimented and structured along traditional authoritarian and class-based lines. They desire a society in which the rich and powerful remain in charge, the middle class manages affairs for them at a lower level of comfort that requires them to remain subordinate, and the poor remain a subordinate and cheap labor force. The conservatives fear social programs that offer social mobility, that enable workers to leave their jobs for other jobs, that provide the poor with support which interferes with the corporations' control over labor and working conditions, and that support the kind of education that enables people to improve their lives and working conditions. It is easy to sacrifice these programs when there is a credible threat out there which we have to prepare to fight, and which taxes our resources enough to put social spending on the back burner.

The War on Drugs, The War on Terror, the "threat" of Iran, and other conflicts are created and perpetuated in order to develop this totalitarian form of society in America. The imposition of military force enables the state to support corporate controls at home and abroad, both by keeping the workers hungry and ready to accept whatever working conditions the authorities wish to maintain, and by imposing the American state's will upon foreign territories that may then be exploited as corporate colonies. Thus, the conservatives make ready use of the WAR IS PEACE strategy to impose authoritarian conditions and to eliminate social spending that would negate the conditions needed to build totalitarian democracy.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. The conservatives consider the constitutional separation of church and state to be a significant barrier to the development of totalitarian democracy, and they fight for "religious rights" in an effort to protect the freedom of Americans by taking their freedoms away. They consider "justice" (greater police powers, fewer civil liberties, harsher sentences) to be a value of freedom and so they separate the citizens from any and all legal protections in order to "protect" them. But which is more dangerous: a thug with a gun (lovingly guaranteed to the thug by the NRA), or a government with a million guns, and no rules protecting the citizen from that government or its guns?

The equation of freedom with slavery gets even more reinforcement in a corporate society, where the government's guns are used to protect the corporations, and where few of the constitutional rights can be applied to the workers in their relationship with their employers. Citizens have political rights that are meaningless in their most fundamental and day-to-day relationship with their work environment. Conservatives fight to maintain and reinforce that basic reality of a democratic-capitalist structure. They fight to protect the corporations' rights (in the name of "the economy"), to prevent the government from intervening on the workers' behalf, and to invoke government intervention in support of the corporations. This is all done in the name of "free trade," as is the establishment of trade barriers, protective subsidies, and pro-corporate tax structures.

Another aspect of this strategy is the "blackwhite" tendency of conservatives to paint leftist struggles for freedom as threats to those very same freedoms which the conservatives fight to erode and destroy. The conservatives equate giving rights to people with enforcing specific choices from people not willing to make those choices. When the Left fights for the people's rights to pick their own books, movies, and music, the Right paints a public picture of goose-stepping feminazis forcing people to read Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian," and to watch movies filled with gay sex and violence, and to listen to gangster rap. When the Left supports the rights of a gay person to live their life their way, the Right equates this with people being somehow forced to live gay; gay marriage is somehow envisioned as taking something away from heterosexual marriage. The conservatives insist that a freedom granted is really a freedom taken away: the freedom to enslave, the freedom to enforce, the freedom to intimidate the different, the freedom to dominate and control other people. What the conservatives call "Freedom" is in fact Slavery; what they call "Slavery" is in fact Freedom; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. The conservatives are pursuing a state of war against education, to bolster "home schooling" as a form of fundamentalist Christian propagandizing to a captive audience without being influenced by science and rational thought. The conservatives are deliberately trying to reduce college education in the knowledge that the educated are far less likely to be conservative than the uneducated. They also desire a less educated society in order to increase social divisions and reinforce the class structure; they want the best education for the rich, a sustainable technical education as needed for the middle class, and the bare minimum level of education for the poor and working classes. A reduced level of national education increases hierarchical and patriarchal social organization, preserves the elite status of the rich and the subordinate status of the workers, and keeps the middle classes right where they are.

The "Strength" inherent in the conservative battle for Ignorance is threefold. First, it enables the conservative to maintain and reinforce their power base by keeping the people away from the education, facts, and rational thought that would encourage more liberal political tendencies and more liberal politics. The conservatives also fight to include "intelligent design" as a "creationist science" to sap away the strength of programs attempting to teach real science, empirical methods, and rational thought, in order to reinforce their base among those "forced" to attend real schools. The conservatives fight vigorously to protect their people from education and knowledge, and from dangerous, "foreign" ideas and cultures.

Second, the "Ignorance is Strength" strategy is employed to maintain and reinforce both social and political authoritarianism by increasing the powers of hierarchical and patriarchal structures such as the family, the workplace, the church, and the state. The conservatives therefore support home schooling where children can be "protected" within their "religious rights" from scientific principles and taught traditional Biblical laws instead, reinforcing the stratification of society, the suspicion of the different, and the powers of both church and state over the individual.

Third, the "Ignorance is Strength" strategy is used to protect the corporate structure by hiding the damage done to the planet by excessive corporatism. The conservatives fight to hide the corporate exploitation of resources, the corporate (and even private) pollution and damage to the ecology and biosphere, and the corporate exploitation of foreign labor and resources to the detriment of human rights abroad and at home. Thus, the conservatives employ their IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH strategy in order to improve their domestic political position, but also for the direct construction of a totalitarian society and government.

Besides these three central strategies, the conservatives also employ other language tools from Orwell's novel in order to fulfill their revolution for Big Brother. The conservatives are especially fond of "doublethink," and "blackwhite." DOUBLETHINK is the simultaneous holding of two contradictory ideas in one's mind, and the simultaneous knowing and not knowing that one is doing so. BLACKWHITE is a very closely related concept, the labeling of something as its opposite.

The conservatives use these tactics in order to control the language of politics and win a false image of moral supremacy while engaging in the most immoral actions and for the most immoral goals. For example, they label the media "liberal", despite the controls imposed on the media by the conservative corporations which own them; and despite the fact that the majority of pundits and talk-show hosts making specific observations and opinions on TV and radio are right-of-center to far-right in their opinions and statements. The media are far more pro-regime than the conservatives are willing to admit, far more than foreign media and the real (and largely marginalized) leftist press. Between the conservative ownership, the vast numbers of actual right-of-center to extreme right-wing pundits, and the editorial controls put on those in the media that actually are liberal, the "liberal media" as a voice of opposition to the conservative revolution is a total (but very unfunny) joke. The media support the regime by attempting to be hesitantly and marginally critical of minor tactics and "mistakes" while supporting eagerly the strategic goals of the conservative revolution. Recently these tactics have been applied in the right-wing media to Democratic candidate and affirmed centrist Barack Obama; despite standing solidly in the middle (despite the urging of party liberals to move closer to the left), Obama is now being accused of "radical leftism." This imaginary shift to the left would be like calling the KKK "moderately conservative."

By creating a fiction of "liberalism" that is really centrist at best and in many ways actually right-of-center, by making moderates and centrists look like extremists, the conservatives shift the country's political meter much farther to the right. The only way to avoid looking like an extremist is to support the regime whole hog; and those solidly on the right end up looking moderate or even "liberal." John McCain, a "maverick" Republican with no interest in social spending, with his "Hundred Year War" concept of Iraq, with no real education policy to speak of, becomes an acceptable way of building the totalitarian democracy through WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. He appears "moderate" to liberals, he becomes a "Republican we can live with." This is the result of conservative DOUBLETHINK and BLACKWHITE.

The conservatives employ so many tools out of Orwell's fictional Party playbook that one can't help but see Big Brother throughout the conservative revolution, and throughout the America that they have created and are continuing to build at the expense of our rights and freedoms and everything the founding fathers risked their lives for. Americans no longer take Orwell's book as seriously as they did during the Cold War, mostly because Americans only took the book to be a depiction of conditions abroad and not at home. But Orwell's warning was not intended for the people of East Europe that he assumed wouldn't be able to read the book; the warning was directed at Americans and Britons and the people of West Europe that he saw inching ever closer to the conditions of Oceania in their fight against Eurasia. Oceania is now a reality, and the conservatives are now reinforcing that reality for the future perpetuation of their revolution, a revolution of power for the state at the expense of the people, a revolution of hatred and fear and perpetual war, a revolution of a boot forever stamping on the face of the weak. We must fight against this revolution, for it is our own faces that the conservative boots are stamping upon.

The Conservative Myth of "Reagan's Defeat of the Soviet Union"

One of the most Orwellian aspects of modern conservative ideology is their application of doublethink to history. The conservatives repeatedly denounce what they call "liberal revisionism," while at the same time engaging in their own revisionist re-writing (read: forgetting) of history. Probably the single best example of this is the conservatives' tiresome and fictitious claim that "Reagan defeated the Soviet Union." An interesting side point about the conservatives' claim is that they are almost right; but that even they don't want to admit what it is that they're almost right about, as it would negate the deeper argument that they are trying to make with their Reagan fantasy.

The essential conservative argument about Reagan is, that Reagan defeated the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War by spending the Soviets to death, making them spend lots of money for military weapons to counter the heavy spending that we were engaging in. They assert that the Soviets were forced to outspend themselves in order to keep up with US spending, and that the Soviets could not afford this alleged increase in spending; by not spending money on more needed projects (like better roads, or improved agricultural systems, or better consumer goods), the Soviets wasted themselves away on military spending. The conservatives lay the credit for this alleged behavior at Reagan's feet, citing the enormous defense budget of his first four years of administration.

As is the case with most myths, this one has a certain element of factual basis, which is as follows:

1) The Soviets did, indeed, over-spend themselves on defense, throughout the entire course of the Cold War; this over-spending did contribute significantly, probably decisively, to the fall of the Soviet Union by making it difficult for them to fix many of their non-defense-related troubles after the conclusion of World War Two.

2) Reagan did, indeed, substantially increase American defense spending, by an amount that rivals many wartime increases in American history.

3) The Soviet Union began large-scale deployments of numerous high-tech land, air, and sea-based weapons systems during the Reagan and Bush, Sr. administrations (e.g., the T-80/85/90 battle tanks, the BMP-1 and BMP-2 MICVs, and new infantry weapons and hand-held missile systems; MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters, and the Tupolev "Blowback" bomber; a major new aircraft carrier class, the Kirov-class nuclear cruisers, and several other major seacraft classes; and many new and improved missiles for all three dimensions of modern warfare).

4) While the final collapse of the Soviet Union technically occurred in 1991, on Bush, Sr.'s watch, many of the decisive or formative events occurred during Reagan's regime in 1988.

Where these facts stop, and the conservative fictions begin, is in the relationship of Reagan with his political reality and the motives and objectives of the Republican Party at the time of Reagan's regime; and in the motives and spending behavior of the Soviet Union. The conservatives do their best to repress these other facts, as they invalidate many of their arguments today about the value of different aspects of Reagan's policy.

First of all, when presenting this argument, the conservatives do not like to remember the reasons and motivations behind Reagan's defense-spending hikes. When Reagan came into office, American national security was a shambles. President Carter had slashed the defense budget beyond the point of reason, and had canceled outright many vital military development programs. Logistical and operational capabilities had also been sacrificed. As a typical example of the state of affairs, by the end of administration, the US Navy didn't have enough fuel and ammunition to keep its ships stocked up; ships coming back to port were forced to cross-deck their remaining fuel and ammunition with ships getting ready to leave port. For a nation not at war and with no adversaries of consequence, this might be acceptable in peacetime, but the US was still engaging seriously in the Cold War, and at any time might have had to engage the Soviet Union in a full-scale military struggle. Thankfully, the leaders of both superpowers kept our differences from exploding into global warfare, but if things had gone otherwise the US would have had to overcome some major disadvantages in any conflict fought near the end of the Carter administration.

These problems were addressed by the Republicans both before and after the 1980 elections. The US Defense Department printed tons of literature, some of which I still have in my personal library, decrying America's military inferiority to the Soviet Union, and trying to sell back to American taxpayers, the US Congress, and the next president those programs cut by the Carter administration. The Pentagon wanted to see the B-1 bomber and Ohio SSBN/Trident ICBM programs re-installed, and also wanted to accelerate the delayed funding for the long-overdue M1 tank program. All of these programs, given new life by Reagan's budget, proved to be successful defense systems; the conventional warfare systems at least have proven their worth in action. But what is forgotten now is that Reagan's policy was not to "outspend the Soviet military", but to catch up to an opponent perceived as having finally achieved superiority. It had long been recognized that the Soviet Union held and would retain uncontested numerical superiority in most classes of military equipment, but NATO and the US had long fought to retain technical, qualitative superiority. A war between the superpowers would have been a contest between the larger but less sophisticated forces of the Warsaw Pact, and the smaller but qualitatively superior forces of NATO. By the end of Carter's administration, however, many American strategists were concerned that we had lost the vital technical edge, and that our numerical inferiority was worsening as well. The Republicans went into the crisis mode, and rapidly set out to repair American military capabilities when Reagan came into power.

A second problem with the conservative image and its conflict with history is that the Soviets deployed many major, new weapons systems during Reagan's regime which had been under development for some time (on the order of 10-20 years for most systems, which was normal for both the US and the USSR). Again, the Defense Department literature of the day was chock-full of de-classified intelligence for the average American to see what kind of weapons the Soviets were getting ready to deploy, so anyone who was interested (as I was at the time) knew well in advance about these systems long before they deployed to operational units. The Defense Department made sure that we knew about them during Carter's administration, so Reagan's regime can't be given credit for these weapons "suddenly" deploying; they had been designed in the 1960's and early 1970s, and then developed for deployment through Nixon's and Ford's presidencies and finally into Carter's. For interested civilians with no security clearance, such as myself, the deployment of the MiG-29, the T-80, and other contemporary weapons systems was no surprise, but a long-anticipated and expected event. It had nothing to do with Reagan; had Carter still been president, or a different Republican taken office, these weapons systems would still have been deployed when they were. And the spending on these systems was predominantly already completed by the time Reagan took over; the Soviets had already committed themselves financially and economically to the production of these systems before Reagan took oath as the president. The research, development, and deployment of these systems had nothing to do with Reagan or with American defense policies made after the Soviets had already committed themselves.

Once these weapons systems began deploying, Soviet military factories continued production at already established (or in some cases very marginally lower) rates than before; so, during Reagan's first term and the first half of his second, the Soviets did not make any visible response in defense spending or production to Reagan's defense expenditures. In fact, during Reagan's first term, the Soviets behaved as if they were perfectly comfortable with their security affairs and with their production and deployment levels (and if the Pentagon wasn't merely being paranoid in pointing out their perceived inferiority, then indeed the Soviets had every reason to feel comfortable).

However, in Reagan's second term Soviet behavior did start to change, and the truly sad and ironic part of these changes is that to a modest degree Reagan actually does deserve some of the credit for events; yet the conservatives refuse to acknowledge his real impact on events because it would go against the entire grain of current conservative ideology to do so. In 1985, Gorbachev became the General Secretary, and Gorbachev began making changes and demonstrating an interest in improving the Soviet system across a wide range of problem areas. By this time, Reagan's own defense policies had finally started to kick in, and the US now needed time to get these systems online. With a seemingly more reasonable leader in the Kremlin, Reagan chose to ignore all of the "Evil Empire" speeches that he had made and began actively seeking a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Reagan's complete reversal of his own foreign policy resulted in the Reykjavic summit, at which both Reagan and Gorbachev decided that they could work with each other. Gorbachev went back home and immediately began preaching "Military Sufficiency" to the Soviet Army. "Military Sufficiency" was political jargon for "cutting military spending across the board." It was basically the philosophy that the Soviet Union only needed forces sufficient to defend her territory, and that (with the US being reasonable about things, not to mention still somewhat behind on actual deployments) there was no immediately perceivable threat to Soviet territory, so the army was much bigger than it needed to be, and was also far too widely deployed in areas outside Soviet territory proper. Reagan had finally managed to get the Soviets to change their behavior, and that they did: by slashing their military budget, unilaterally withdrawing their entire army from central Europe (without America expressing any interest in doing the same), and ending the war in Afghanistan.

This, then, was the first visible sign that the Soviet Union had noticed Reagan's administration. Their behavior from Carter's time remained consistent until just after the Reykjavic summit. Then, suddenly, they noticed Mr. Reagan; and decided for the first time since World War Two that the US did not represent an immediate threat. So, while the conservatives give themselves a hard-on by imagining Reagan pumping up the American defense budget and forcing the Soviet Union into a defense-spending showdown, the reality is that the Soviets made Reagan (or at least the US government) change America's behavior instead. And while the reality of "Reagan the Warrior" is really rather impotent, the conservatives completely ignore "Reagan the Peacemaker", who did have an impact worthy of mention.

The conservatives' Reagan myth is not a mere mistake of perception or of misinterpretation, but is a deliberate marketing strategy intended to sell the conservative ideology and goals. The Republicans depend on the Reagan myth for their political strength and vitality; while it is not the central focus of conservatism, a recognition of "Reagan the Peacemaker" at the expense of "Reagan the Warrior" could jeopardize the Republican Party's image and their ability to sell their ideology and goals to the public. The conservative ideology can best be summed up by what J.L. Talmon called totalitarian democracy, and is based on the classical conservative ideal; which is the belief that men are not able to govern their own actions responsibly, but that a government of the rich and educated elite are so capable. The conservatives strive for an American society that is regimented and centralized, based on certain traditional authority figures, especially the father (at home), the corporation (at work), the state (in law), and God - specifically the Christian version (in the individual's mind and soul). The conservatives depend on American fears of the outside world, and have gone to every effort to exaggerate every possible force that does not represent their image of America as a "threat" to America. These fears must be met with by force, and not by negotiation or compromise; negotiation and compromise are contrary to the values of totalitarian democracy, in which authority is imposed with no regard to the wishes of others. Totalitarian democracy opposes the inclusion of alternate points of view, and of conflicting interests, and requires the maximum application of forceful authority wherever dissenting opinions may appear. Therefore, the idea that a threat can be reduced or eliminated by negotiation and compromise is detrimental to the Republican image of America and the world. The reality that the Soviet Union was peacefully convinced to demobilize on its own, and the idea that current "threats" can also potentially be "defeated" by reasonable and inclusive methods, is contrary to the heart of conservative ideology and objectives, and therefore to Republican strategy.

As a result, the Republicans, together with the conservative-owned media (ironically nicknamed by its very owners and operators as "liberal"), have transformed Reagan, at first impotent and merely responding to Soviet initiative, and then able to implement a reasonable and peaceful solution to a major threat of war, into something very different: a powerful and strong leader who forced the Soviet Union into defeat by strength of arms. The conservatives have deliberately revised history in order to sell their ideology of reaction, fear, force, and authoritarianism, a frightening package for the future that can best be described as totalitarian democracy. Peace, negotiation, and compromise can play no part in the conservative landscape, and so they must not merely create a vision of strength from thin air, they must also cover up all traces of the very elements of negotiation and compromise that Reagan employed in helping to end the Cold War and the Soviet threat. The conservatives must first cover up their own history, and then write a new one from whole cloth. They defend their dubious position by going on the offensive and condemning the liberal presentation of the facts as "revisionism." Thus, the conservatives employ doublethink as a central and principle strategy in their cultural offensive on truth, freedom, democracy, and morality.

The Way Forward in the Middle East

The US must begin revising its policy in the Middle East as soon as the next president is sworn into office. Our current policy is far too short-sighted and unrealistic, and has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of inhabitants of the region. Our current policies are also responsible for the growth of regional and global terrorism, despite our attempt to shield our impotence behind the semantics of a "war on terrorism." Many politicians are already aware of how much the war in Iraq is hurting our country and its interests. We need a direct commitment to a final withdrawal of our forces from Iraq within a short period of time; we have bankrupted this country to fight someone else's war and hand the region's oil to America's wealthiest corporations. We have no more money to fight this war, and every day that we do we not only come closer to complete economic disaster, we also help our enemies recruit the next generation of soldiers to fight against us. Looking beyond these salient facts, however, our relations with Israel (together with Israel's own domestic and foreign policies) are also outdated, and do not take into consideration the current demographic developments in Israel. If we do not revise this policy soon, our policies will result in further misery and a national policy failure equivalent to that which occurred in Vietnam.

Ever since the creation of the modern state of Israel, the US has been Israel's principal ally and supporter, and Israel owes much of her ability to maintain herself to American military and economic support. This support has been based on a number of factors, such as the prevalence of Jewish political support within the US for the Jews "back home"; guilt for our nation's failure to stop Nazi aggression against the Jews of Europe, and sorrow for the horrendous slaughter that we allowed through our inaction; and the Soviet support for the Arab nations which opposed Israel (and for the PLO). Americans should be proud of the support which our nation has given to Israel as a nation with some impressively democratic characteristics. Nonetheless, for the twenty-first century, our policy needs some serious re-thinking.

Israel has raised itself up to become a capable industrial and technological power in its own right. Israel has developed the capability of building its own tanks and fighter aircraft (virtually the only Middle East nation that is able to do so), and several other major items of strategic military equipment. Israel still depends heavily on continued financial backing from America, but strategically, Israel builds its own weapons and has achieved a certain degree of material independence. The United States should not see its support for Israel as the key to Israeli survival any more, so much as a bulwark to assist Israel's continued economic and social development. But we need to maintain a measure of influence as to how that development proceeds if we are to continue funding it as extensively as we have done.

There are now in place two decisive peace treaties between Israel and her neighbors. She has now been at peace with Egypt for 35 years, and both she and Egypt have invested a great deal in the continued state of peace between them. Israel also now has a treaty with Jordan, and in fact Israel has been at peace with Jordan for even longer than it has been with Egypt. The only remaining national threat to Israel's security is Syria, which continues to maintain a large Soviet-style armored army and air force, and is heavily armed with relatively contemporary vehicles, weapons, and equipment. Only having the one threat, however, enables Israel to concentrate her forces against Syria if a crisis emerges between the two antagonists.

The eradication of two of the three main threats to Israeli security also allows Israel, in the lack of a major crisis with Syria, to focus her attentions on operations in the occupied territories and in the north against the ever-problematic Lebanon. Despite the initial progress that had been made after the 1987 Intifada, Israel has mostly given up on fulfilling its treaty obligations to conduct even limited withdrawals from the West Bank, and so the Palestinian desire for independent statehood remains unfulfilled as well. The US seems content to sit on the sidelines while Israel ignores her own treaty obligations and continues to oppress a people who are making a legitimate fight for their freedom. Israel also continues to involve herself both politically and militarily in the Lebanese morass; it must of course be understood that Israel feels a strong necessity to defend herself in the north against both Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanese affairs, as both Syria and Iran are goal-oriented to see Lebanon built into a base of operations against Israel. Israel does have legitimate security concerns in Lebanon so long as both Syria and Iran continue their interference there as well.

Nonetheless, Israel has abandoned whatever commitment it may have had towards a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian diaspora. This failure of the Israeli commitment has prompted a new generation of Palestinians themselves to abandon the moderate attitudes of their predecessors who had finally managed to win a peace treaty with Israel. The Palestinian cause is now back in the hands of extremists who wish to pursue a program of violence against Israel (and perhaps also her supporters, such as the US), because Israel herself has communicated to them that violence can be their only recourse at this stage of the game.

The US needs to get more closely involved in the peace process, or we will find more of the attentions of the Palestinian fighting organizations directed against our nation and our people. More precisely, the US needs to make its intentions all too clear to both Israel and the Palestinians, as it did after the 1987 Intifada, and those intentions must be for a peaceful resolution that gives the Palestinians their own independent state and a security arrangement to protect that state's existence in just the same way that the US currently protects Israel's existence. The aims of US policy should no longer be to protect Israel from all of her opponents, but to bring her into peaceful co-existence with those powers that now oppose her. The process of 1987 showed us clearly that powerful, moderate forces do exist on both sides, and these forces need once again to come together empowered and committed to peace.

The fact that the US is more concerned with maintaining the security of an Israeli state that is now capable of defending herself against her remaining national threats, than we are concerned with peace or with the needs of the Palestinian people, stands out as a strong recruiting argument for any organizations fighting against American interests. Is is all too easy for Arabs, Palestinians, Persians, and other inhabitants of the region to look upon America as an inherently hostile and aggressive antagonist, as we continue to back an oppressive Israeli regime which is able to use our support for their own purposes. It is difficult for the US to sell itself as a "democratic force" in the region when we have attacked and invaded their nations and supported their oppressors and torturers.

It should not be thought that a commitment to peace would in any way involve abandoning Israel. However, we need to make our continued support contingent upon an active Israeli involvement in the peace process, and specifically a final commitment to Palestinian statehood within a specified time-line of as short a duration as possible. We also need to work with the Palestinian Authority, and with the independent organizations of Palestine (including those which we have labeled as "terrorist"), to ensure as we did in 1987 that Israel's continued survival remains an American security objective. But we must revise our vision of Israeli survival, to include a peaceful coexistence with her neighbors, rather than a continued survival of diametrically opposed and heavily armed powers committed to each other's ultimate oppression or destruction.

What is needed is a complete revision of our international security objectives in Palestine. In addition to supporting and defending Israel, our objectives need to be expanded to include the creation, support, and defense of a complete and fully autonomous Palestinian state. Our objectives should include our direct involvement in assisting Israel and Palestine in coming to terms under these conditions, and in mediating a beneficial and benevolent relationship between the two powers. There would be great advantages for our nation if we do so. Besides having a friend where we currently have adversarial terrorist recruiting grounds, we would have a powerful and well-located listening post in the Arab world, situated where we would have access to Arab public opinion as well as an outreach capability. This would help to expand the dialogue between our world and theirs; many of the problems that occur in American relations with Arab nations is the lack of a successful or complete dialogue, and the many misunderstandings between us that result from that lack. A Palestinian state friendly with both the US and with Israel would help greatly in counter-balancing the more extremist groups in the Middle East that would argue for war and hatred, and in neutralizing the main recruiting grounds for anti-American and anti-Israeli groups (outside of Iraq at least, which will still remain the primary anti-American recruiting ground as long as US forces are deployed there). Maintaining friendly and supportive American relations with Palestine will help maintain the momentum of change from extremism to moderation.

An important point here is that the Zero Sum Game theory of politics has failed. Helping Israel today can be done far more easily and effectively, and with far longer-term results, if we include as a part of that policy helping some of the forces that are currently arrayed against Israel. Israel cannot and will not survive indefinitely if her current policies remain unaltered. For Israel to survive the 21st century, she needs to live in a friendly and healthy environment. Furthermore, American strategic interests are being hurt both by our continuing need to back Israel against parties with legitimate concerns, and by our obvious involvement from the Arabs' perspective as an alien adversary. Both Israel and the US need peace established in Palestine, and this requires Israeli and American compromise, and our commitment to Palestinian statehood.

A revision of our security objectives is also needed to take into account recent changes in Israel's population. Israel is rapidly becoming "less Jewish," as the non-Jewish sectors of her population are rapidly outgrowing her Jewish population. Jewish immigration into Israel has slowed to a trickle (due to several factors, including the state of tension and open violence there now), and the Jewish population of Israel has a relatively low birth rate (similar to other modern, industrialized nations' birth rates). The Arab and Bedouin populations of Israel, however, while much smaller than the Jewish population, have substantially higher birth rates and are starting to catch up in overall numbers. Also, for various complicated reasons, the Christian population of Israel is also vastly outpacing Jewish population increases (largely due to actual immigration, especially of Russian Orthodox, but also due to higher birth rates as well). By the middle of the century it is highly likely that Jews will become a minority in their own state. If Israel continues to exist as a "Jewish state" with a largely non-Jewish population, then it will become a definitive apartheid state, with a revolutionary impulse for change and an increased tendency for both internal and external violence. If the Jews of Israel don't make peace with their neighbors soon, they may once again find their neighbors and themselves at each other's throats, and the final American act in Israel may be merely to watch the slaughter.

The US needs to prepare itself for this change, and to accept this as not merely inevitable but desirable. If Israel peacefully develops itself along these lines, then the new Israel that develops over the next century should continue to receive American support whatever its demographics are, in order to ensure all the inhabitants of the Middle East that we are supporting not merely Jews, but all peoples. We also need to be able to operate in the new environment as it develops, and not remain unrealistically wedded to the past. But we must not get bogged down in supporting an apartheid state, especially if that would antagonize that state's neighbors.

Another way in which the US must modify its Middle East policy is in its program of relations. In the past quarter of a century, international relations have grown far more complicated as independent and popular organizations have achieved greater power, influence, and overall importance (due in part to the growth of the internet, and other technologies that enable people to reach out to each other and develop agencies outside of official state structures). Two excellent examples are Hezbollah, which as an organization has achieved practical statehood in Lebanon, almost completely marginalizing the actual Lebanese government; and Hamas, which competes with the Palestinian Authority for legitimacy amongst the younger generations of the occupied territories. The US refuses to converse with either organization, naming them both (with some justification) as terrorist organizations. Nonetheless, refusing to speak to what are now the powers that be is not conducive either to productive relations or to realistic expectations for the future. Furthermore, the US must bear in mind that its relations with the PLO were developed over time as we basically "weaned" the moderate factions away from terrorism and towards responsible negotiations. Our negotiations with the PLO were started initially as discussions with a group that we had still at the time considered to be a terrorist organization. Eventually, after some discussions, the PLO was convinced that further work with the US justified abandoning their terrorist-type operations, and this became official PLO policy shortly afterwards.

The US should look to Hezbollah and Hamas as two major powers in the Middle East, worthy of negotiations and discussion. As all organizations do, Hezbollah and Hamas will take advantage of any opportunity to achieve their objectives, and the wealthy and powerful US is in a great position to offer both carrot and stick. The stick these organizations are already all too familiar with; we present it to them virtually every day, either directly, or indirectly through Israeli actions involving the expenditure of American ammunition. We should now show them the carrot as well; the opportunity to have American wealth and influence fighting for them rather than against them. Just as we won over the PLO, we can win over either these two powerful organizations, or large moderate forces within the organizations that can moderate their actions. As powerful as these organizations now are, it is highly unrealistic to think that peace can be achieved without their direct involvement; especially when they are so highly committed to their goals, and heavily armed, socially and politically entrenched, and elaborately organized.

Other organizations and groups in the Middle East are similarly deserving of official American relations, such as Al Jazeera, which is a powerful medium for influencing Arab popular opinion. In the modern information age, the US needs to give the independent and popular groups greater consideration, and include them in the peace process. Ultimately, it is really their peace that we are trying to help them achieve. If the popular forces of the Middle East are not involved in the peace process, then whatever the national politicians agree to, there cannot be a lasting peace.

A final point on American policy in the Middle East touches upon a vital point which fortunately is understood by many Americans already: the war in Iraq. Many Americans, and many politicians already understand very well how much the war in Iraq is killing America's economic security, political security, and moral legitimacy throughout the world. It has become almost cliche that the next president's first and most vital mission will be the extraction of the US armed forces from the Iraqi abyss. However, it is in the direct strategic interests of the United States to re-think our Middle East policies beyond our Iraqi exit strategy, and our relations with Israel. Israel has finally grown up, and it is time for us to take a look at the region around her, and figure out how the state that we spent so much money trying to protect is going to survive in such a hostile environment. Israel has learned the hard lessons of how to fight with her neighbors and survive on a military level; it is now time for Israel to learn how to survive on an international political level. Israel needs to live with her neighbors, not just be able to kill them efficiently and occupy their lands. In this new struggle, Israel needs our help, as do her neighbors, who past events have shown are capable of compromise if they can be assured of achieving some of their objectives. Not providing our help, especially if we continue to back Israel, will ultimately result in more young men and women joining ranks with our enemies than we can kill off in battle. As independent and popular organizations become more sophisticated and better armed, it becomes more and more a vital strategic objective for us to help these people, rather than ignoring them and killing them.

The Mistakes of Vietnam

Many people have asked me over the years for my opinion of what happened in Vietnam, whether our involvement there was a mistake, and whether the war could have been won. My reading of the history of the war and the politics behind it has led me to the conclusion that our involvement there was not a mistake, but the war was; and that the war was far more accurately a series of mutually compounded, fatal political mistakes. The real tragedy of Vietnam for me is the fact that these mistakes do not bear scrutiny as inevitable or necessary considering the times, but were policy decisions that could have been made differently without requiring any kind of complete reversal of American ideology or strategy. The mistakes of Vietnam were made by the administrations of the seven consecutive presidents who set our foreign policies with regard to Vietnam, from our first involvement there in 1944 to the defeat of South Vietnam in 1975 by the communist forces.

The first president to initiate America's involvement in Vietnam in the 20th Century was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Our first involvement began in 1944, as FDR ordered a small OSS team into Vietnam to make contact with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the pro-communist Viet Minh resistance forces. Before World War II, Ho Chi Minh had been a thorn in the side of colonial French authority by struggling against the French occupation of Vietnam, but after the Japanese took control of Vietnam in 1941 Ho Chi Minh turned his forces against the Japanese instead. FDR chose to establish contact with Ho and his forces, and to help them in their fight against America's enemies in the Pacific. The United States sent in a special forces team (the so-called "Deer Team") that provided arms, supplies, and training support to Ho's forces. The head of the Deer Team became personally acquainted with Ho and sent many reports back to the US government praising him as a patriot and a nationalist, and specifically informed his superiors that, while Ho was essentially a communist, he was not religious about it. Ho was also very concerned about the possibilities of Soviet or Chinese domination over his group. Ho wanted to maintain contact with the American government as a counter to that possibility, to keep Vietnam from falling too much under the spell of either Stalin or Mao, neither of whom Ho liked or trusted. Ho very much wanted Vietnam to become an independent power, not a Soviet satellite. Ho was also greatly assured by FDR's policy statements to the effect that he had no intention of sacrificing American lives and material simply to restore the European powers' prewar colonial empires, and that the United States would support national self determination after the war.

When Japanese power in Vietnam collapsed (from predominantly external causes, as Japanese occupation forces got sucked into other theaters where they were suffering enormous casualties), the Viet Minh was the principal force available to fill the resulting power vacuum. Supported by the Deer Team, the Viet Minh marched into the capitol and declared Vietnamese nationhood and independence. Ho read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, the first paragraph of which was simply copied verbatim from the first paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence. This was no coincidence; it was a deliberate policy statement informing the American observers that Vietnam felt itself to be positively influenced by American ideals, and intended to retain and develop ties with its new friend across the ocean. The leader of the Deer Team also noted that Ho's words contained little in the way of communist ideology or propaganda, unusual for an ostensibly communist leader with few real political rivals. If Ho were really a hardcore, committed communist, he had at the time nothing to stop him from simply giving himself over to the doctrinaire ideals of his philosophy, and with powerful Chinese communist forces nearby, and a Soviet Union further away but still closer than the United States, he could easily have chosen to follow Moscow or Mao more closely, as most other national communist leaders had chosen to do. But Ho's policy was to keep the major communist powers at arm's length while he built up a countering friendship with the United States. In later years in postwar Europe, this form of communist policy would be called Titoism, and was denounced severely by Soviet leaders.

In April 1944, Roosevelt died, and his vice-president, Harry Truman, became president. Truman was a very different man, with very different ideals and a very different agenda from that of his predecessor. He quickly set America on a radically different political course, which was based on Truman's incredible distrust and dislike for communists and their ideology. Truman was largely responsible for the American side of the beginning of the Cold War, deliberately putting the United States quite firmly in the way of the foreign policy of Stalin and the Soviet Union (which for its part was also essentially and deliberately confrontational and not interested in the West's hopes for the European lands liberated by Soviet forces).

As part of Truman's new policy, he made it clear that FDR's commitment to national self-determination would be sacrificed to the needs of building a postwar international coalition of Western powers against communism. Britain and France would now be assisted in achieving their postwar colonial goals after all, at least where there was a possibility of communist involvement. Truman ordered the Deer Team out of Vietnam, and refused to listen to the reports and protests of its commander. Truman gave political support to the British, who decided to step in and take over Vietnam in the interim until newly created French forces could arrive, and to take the surrender of the remaining Japanese forces in French Indochina. The British forces that arrived came under fire from the Viet Minh, and having few personnel or arms, they released their Japanese POWs, re-armed them, and sent the Japanese soldiers into the fight. The Western allies were now officially employing their wartime enemies in the fight against their wartime allies.

While the United States was sitting quietly in the background of these events, Truman's stab in Vietnam's back was finalized when the French arrived. Truman wanted to build a large-scale West European alliance against the Soviet Union, and the French were leery of an alliance in which they could be effectively reduced to a satellite power. They made it clear to Truman that their support of his alliance would hinge upon his support of their colonial policies, and Truman all too quickly agreed to provide them with all the support they needed. Truman rather short-shortsightedly dismissed the abilities of the communist forces that his own men had helped to train, arm, and equip, and assumed that French forces sent to Indochina, and American military support for those forces, would be a drop in the bucket to what France could give to the western alliance in the defense of Europe. It is the first great tragedy and irony of Vietnam, and of Truman's failed policies, that the French fight for Indochina sucked up more men and materiel, both French and American, then France was able to provide for continental defense in Europe. Had World War Three broken out during or shortly after the French Indochina War, NATO would have had fewer forces to fight the Soviet Union with than if France had refused to join the fight and America's efforts had been concentrated in Europe instead of being divided between Europe and Indochina.

Another ironic element of the tragedy of this failed policy is the simple fact that French foreign policy is always self-serving and survivalist. Even had France refused to join NATO in peacetime, it is unrealistic to suppose that they would have stood aside and done nothing with a large-scale Soviet armored force working its way through Germany towards the French border. In the event of a continental war, whatever the French policy before that war would have been, they would have seen the need to get involved. To suppose otherwise is to completely ignore at least a century of French history and policy. The price America paid for French involvement in forming the alliance was far too high, and was higher than the value of its return.

Eisenhower's administration committed the next tragic mistakes, which are all too ironic considering other international events occurring at the time. Eisenhower chose to reverse some of Truman's policies, but also continued the precedent of others. It is greatly and sadly ironic that one of Eisenhower's reversals of Truman's policy was to take a second look at communist leaders and forces that did not wish to stand in the shadow of Moscow or Peking. Under Eisenhower, the United States established friendly relations with Tito of Yugoslavia, and developed trade and cultural ties with his country. Yet in Vietnam, Eisenhower ignored the opportunity to do this with a leader and organization that had already been involved personally with America and had proven itself to have an interest in building ties. This was before American military forces had become officially involved, before it was publicly known that Americans had both shed and spilled blood in Vietnam. Under Eisenhower, America threw away its last real chance for establishing friendly ties in Southeast Asia, and countering Soviet and Chinese plans for the region, and just at the same time as the administration was proving itself willing to talk to and establish friendly ties with other parties previously perceived as enemies.

Under Eisenhower's watch, the French Indochina War came to its bloody climax in the battle of Dien Bien Phu (from March to May, 1954). For many historians this battle signifies the end of the French war for Vietnam, and the beginning of the American war. After this battle, the French signed a treaty with Ho's communists which temporarily split Vietnam into two sections, north and south; the communists were to move north, and those not wishing to remain in communist held domains were to withdraw south. The intention of the treaty was to establish a schedule and procedures for elections, which would then elect a single, united Vietnamese government to run the whole country. While the communists in the north announced their readiness to hold elections, the United States government expressed fears that the elections would not be fair, and chose instead to build a separate, independent South Vietnamese government in violation of the Geneva treaty, and to ignore calls for general elections.

It was at this time, in 1954, that Eisenhower had the best opportunity since FDR's administration to establish friendly ties with Ho and the communists, and to wean them away from the Soviets and Chinese whom the Vietnamese communists distrusted. The French for their part were already rapidly repairing their estranged relations with their recent enemies; America had the perfect opportunity to join them and establish ties with Ho's forces. Eisenhower threw away this opportunity, and chose instead to pursue a confrontational policy and strategy. This strategy was often sold to the public under two related theories: the Monolith theory, and the Domino theory.

The Monolith theory asserted that all communist forces throughout the world were centrally controlled by the Soviet government. This theory remained a publicly accepted one, despite much intelligence that the US government collected that the communists distrusted each other, and despite the fact that almost from the moment that the Chinese communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1948, large and growing cracks were spreading across the communist facade. The US government all too quickly became aware of the Moscow-Peking rivalry, and the fact that communist states were being forced to either take sides, or to declare neutrality and cut relations with both powers, as Yugoslavia did. By 1968, at the height of the American war in Vietnam, the Sino-Soviet hostility had escalated to a border war, fought predominantly by each country's border guards units, but with tank support, artillery fire, and air strikes as well. Brezhnev's government alerted the Soviet nuclear forces while the Politburo openly debated launching nuclear strikes on China, a step they never even came close to even in the worst moments of their Cold War relations with the United States. The Monolith theory falls apart at the idea that the only time the Soviets really considered launching their nuclear weapons, they were targeting their own ideological "partners", not their capitalist rivals. This escalation in 1968 was the climax of a process that was underway from the moment Peking fell to Mao's communists, and the record of American intelligence reports demonstrates that the American strategists were well aware of it, from very early on.

In a few isolated circumstances, American strategists used this intelligence to develop relations with communists who had clearly broken from the mold, such as Tito, and certain communist leaders in the Dominican Republic. While this clearly was not the main focus of American strategy, it is also all too clear that the US government was aware of the potential and opportunities to develop friendly relations with various parties and leaders within the communist movement; this is the irony and tragedy of the missed opportunities to do so on a larger scale.

Related to the Monolith Theory was the Domino Theory, which asserted that with each national victory enjoyed by the communists, the next would be easier, and that the fall of a single country to the communists in a region could lead to the other countries in that region falling like a bunch of dominoes. This in turn would lead to further communist victories in other regions, and so forth, until communism came knocking at America's front door. While for strategic reasons the Domino Theory stands scrutiny more easily then does the Monolith Theory, it fails in the face of events in Indochina after 1975. Although Cambodia and Laos soon fell to communist forces as well after the defeat of South Vietnam, seemingly validating the theory, these various communist states rapidly developed hostile relations with each other. The Domino theory would suggest that after the fall of Indochina to the communists, the communists would then begin to threaten the states around them, in nearby regions. Rather than do this, they proceeded to fight amongst themselves, and have been doing so ever since. Communist Vietnam eventually launched a full-scale invasion of Communist Cambodia; and then Communist China, in support of the Cambodians against the Soviet-supported Vietnamese, invaded Vietnam. The Vietnamese were able to employ many of the lessons they learned while fighting the French and the Americans against the Chinese, and eventually the Chinese withdrew in defeat.

Eisenhower's confrontational policies were sold to the public under the pretext of these two failed theories, one of which was already known at the time by intelligence analysts and political strategists to be wrong (to such an extent that the government based certain policies around it, in respect to Yugoslavia, Albania, and Dominica), and the other which would only be proven wrong by subsequent events. Eisenhower missed a great opportunity to open further an already large crack in the communist Monolith, and to develop American influence in a region which to this day houses three of the world's very few communist states which survived the fall of Soviet power.

The next administration to develop the American involvement in Vietnam was that of Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was a true Cold Warrior, and was committed to engaging the communists on a global scale. In Indochina, Kennedy openly supported the neophyte South Vietnamese government in their growing fight with communist forces moving back down from the north. One of the tragedies of Kennedy's administration, and a grave mistake, was to limit the interests of American Indochina policy to South Vietnam. Kennedy was informed that there were struggles between communists and theoretically pro-western forces throughout all of Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), but he provided only hesitant and minimal support to Laos and Cambodia, while he built up a large-scale infrastructure for the support of South Vietnam. This meant that the US effectively forfeited to the communists in all but the South. This was a fatal start to the American military and political involvement, as throughout the war North Vietnam was able to use heavily jungled trails in Laos and Cambodia for the movement of forces and supplies, and for the resting of forces on long-distance transits to the front lines of South Vietnam. While the Americans dubbed these trails and sanctuaries the "Ho Chi Minh Trail", they could just as well be called the Kennedy Trail, for Kennedy made the policies that helped to make these trails a safe haven for the communists.

In later years, after the frustrations of having to fight communist forces with these safe havens as protected bases and supply routes, Johnson and Nixon hesitantly pursued the communists into Cambodia, but by then popular support for the war had vanished, and the popular vision of the US government escalating the war into other countries resulted in an explosion of anti-war civil unrest. During Kennedy's administration, however, there was still a vocal and popular support for the war (which admittedly hadn't really become a "war" yet; American soldiers were still "advisors", and American deployments there as well as casualties were both still fairly minimal). Under Kennedy, if America were going to have to fight a war that previous presidents should have prevented but didn't, there was still the possibility of conducting the war where it would have hurt the North Vietnamese, in Cambodia and Laos. Just as Truman and Eisenhower passed by the political opportunities to avoid a war, Kennedy passed by the political opportunity to start the war off where it would have mattered.

The war truly developed under the next administration, that of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson deliberately opened a new chapter in the war by fomenting and then exploiting the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He was looking for a politically acceptable pretext for launching a large-scale invasion of South Vietnam, and just made one up. One could say that Johnson was simply pursuing the policies of his assassinated predecessor, but Johnson was his own man and made his own policies. His later daily mismanagement of the war was both legendary and tragic, and casts a dark shade of irony upon his better policies, such as his half-hearted and reluctant support for the civil rights movement, and his Great Society reforms.

The first great tragic mistake of Johnson's administration in Vietnam (if one chooses to look past the Gulf of Tonkin and its aftermath as the first such) was his choice as the commander, General William Westmoreland. Westmoreland was one of four generals being considered at the time for the post. Another was Creighton Abrams, who replaced Westmoreland in 1968. Westmoreland proposed an amazing type of war under the circumstances, in opposition to Abrams and the other two generals (Bruce Palmer, Jr.; and Harold K. Johnson). Westmoreland actually proposed to fight a modern war of attrition, probably the only time in modern history that a western power actually deliberately considered such a strategy in Asia. While on the face of things Westmoreland seems insane to have deliberately proposed such a strategy, there was some reason behind it. America has in fact won many of its wars through attrition, including the war in the Pacific against an Asian enemy with far superior technology than what the Vietnamese could employ. Vietnam has less people and far less resources than the US, although it could also draw on support from the Chinese and Soviets. And American military technology was vastly greater than that of the Vietnamese; with a much greater capacity for killing and destroying, American forces in theory could out-kill and out-destroy communist forces past the communists' ability to operate. Westmoreland really believed that a war of attrition could work in America's favor in the long term.

In the end, of course, we know that the Vietnamese were able to withstand their casualties, and deploy more men and material, past the ability of America to do so. The Vietnamese were fighting for their survival against a foreign invader, whereas the Americans were fighting an overseas war against an enemy that ever fewer Americans were really interested in fighting. The ultimate decision in a long war of attrition is often determined not by the mere numbers, but by each side's will to fight, and to convert their resources into fighting capabilities and combat results. The North Vietnamese ultimately proved to be far more interested in gambling all that they had for victory in the war than did the US government, which had many other things on its mind and agenda. Under these circumstances, an American war of attrition for Vietnam never stood a chance.

Yet again we are faced with a policy decision marked by irony and tragedy, because Abrams and the other generals were all opposed to Westmoreland's proposal. They proposed instead to fight a more political war for popular support, and to work harder on building a South Vietnam capable of standing on its own feet. They wanted to spend more time, money, and effort on building South Vietnam's infrastructure, and on fighting for the support of the peasants who were the Viet Cong's principal recruiting base. They thought that American military confrontation with North Vietnam's main force units in the field was a subsidiary operation rather than being the main emphasis, as it was in Westmoreland's more combat-based war of attrition.

These three other generals also took a different view of the communist logistical situation than did Westmoreland. Unlike Westmoreland's traditional military view, of a tail-based supply system (with combat forces in the front, and supplies coming to the forces from the rear), these generals saw that the Vietnamese communists built up their local supplies in the field where they were going to launch an operation, before the main forces got there. The communists in Vietnam utilized an unusual nose-based supply system. This made communist forces vulnerable to preemptive operations, an opportunity almost never utilized by Westmoreland.

In 1968, once the smoke of the bloody Tet Offensive had cleared, Westmoreland was relieved of his command and replaced by Abrams (Westmoreland was promoted to US Army Chief of Staff, a post in which Abrams also replaced him, in 1972). Very quickly, events in Vietnam started to turn in the Allies' favor. Abrams achieved great political and military successes in Vietnam with his own strategies. Unfortunately, Abrams was fighting a progressively scaled down war, as Nixon was gradually but steadily drawing down the American deployments and bringing more and more troops home. At home, all political interest in continuing the war had vanished; internal White House and Defense Department memos of the time indicate that the disgruntlement with the war and the desire to just get out had reached high governmental levels. The US Congress had gone from being one of the primary forces behind the war to the main advocate of withdrawal. Abrams still managed to accomplish great deeds, with fewer and fewer forces, and with a government behind him that viewed him as simply a rearguard to protect the last troops until they could be pulled out.

It strains the imagination to try to visualize Abrams acting in Westmoreland's place in 1964, with the full backing of the American government, and with popular support still not yet decided against the war. A different strategy, with fewer American casualties (from fewer full-scale field battles), and with greater captures of communist arms and supplies before they could be employed by the enemy, and with much more attention given to the political struggle that was completely ignored for so long, may have resulted in a very different outcome. This then was one of Johnson's greatest missed opportunities. By picking the wrong commander with the wrong strategy, Johnson doomed his own military forces to defeat.

Johnson is also responsible for several other serious strategic failures at the critical time of his administration. Johnson chose to maintain personal, daily control over many of the aspects of the war, in particular such aspects as planning air-strikes and selecting bombing targets. He therefore bears much of the responsibility for the failure of his forces not merely because he was the chief executive at the time but because he actually had a hand in the day-to-day decision making of their employment. As he took an immediate interest especially in directing the air war, the miserable results of the air war under his leadership have to be blamed especially on him. After Nixon took office in 1969, the air war, as with the ground war, took a rather different turn. Nixon did not focus on micromanaging the air war as Johnson did, but let his air generals do their job of leading their forces. Nixon, as president, did however help to select the general strategy, and both on the strategic level and the tactical level the air forces were far more successful in accomplishing their objectives than they had been under Johnson. Again, one is left to wonder what might have happened had the same tactics and strategies been employed four years earlier, before the American popular mood turned against the war.

Johnson's strategy can be faulted for the American failure in Vietnam on a greater strategic level as well. As our country's leader, he was responsible for leading all of the country in its prosecution of the war. In time of war, presidents lead industry, the media, the Congress, and popular movements in their support of the military forces. They deliberately put the war out in front as the nation's greatest priority, and call for sacrifices to be made elsewhere until the war is won. They also obviously direct the military forces themselves to focus on the war as their most immediate priority. Johnson did neither of these two significant things. Rather than urge everyone to make the war our greatest priority (and execute directives to make this so), Johnson chose to bury the war in the background as something that would take away the focus and resources from his social and domestic political agenda. Those that choose to blame the peace movement for calling for the war's end forget the president's failure to push the country into making the war a priority. It was Johnson's job to motivate and lead the country, and this he failed to do, when most other wartime presidents did do this. The peace movement was reacting to the administration's obvious embarrassment from the war, and the attempts to keep much of the war secret and behind the scenes, when in fact it was very much on people's minds every time the coffins came home.

There was a more direct military correlation to Johnson's failure to prioritize the war on the political level. During the Vietnam War, the American military priorities remained focused on the Cold War, and on deterring the Soviet Union from attacking the West. The Vietnam War was kept in the background of the military mind just as it was kept in the political background. The maximum effort of American military forces came in early 1969, when American force levels hit their peak, just after the last reinforcements reached Vietnam and before Nixon's administration came into the White House and began withdrawing troops. Their peak level of deployment was reached only after a tortuous period of five years of rather gradual reinforcements and increases, and American forces were at their peak strength for only a few months. In early 1969, the Army had just a hair under one half of its active-duty forces deployed in or near Vietnam; the Air Force had a little over a third of its active-duty units in Vietnam or based within operational range and conducting operations there; and the Navy had something over a quarter of its regular units involved in some capacity. The US never even deployed so much as a half of its active-duty military personnel to Vietnam, and never mobilized or deployed reserve or National Guard forces to operational theaters. Westmoreland and other generals did call for mobilizations and increased deployments, but Johnson refused. Clearly, while the military was willing to commit itself to the war, Johnson refused to let them get more than marginally involved in it. This is especially significant in view of the lack of reserve and guard-unit mobilizations. The American strategic plans for large-scale war view the reserve and guard units as key elements of any global war strategy; the active-duty components are too small in number to be more than an emergency force to protect the nation's interests for just long enough to get the reserves and guard units mobilized, ready to fight, and deployed to their theaters. That a major war was fought without any mobilizations, only through active-duty units, and less than half of these at the brief moment of the greatest level of deployments, demonstrates very clearly that the war was not only a not a major political priority, it wasn't a major military priority at the time either. It is virtually impossible to fathom the idea of a president actually failing to make the war that he started a priority for the forces responsible for fighting it, but that was Johnson's policy.

As the real American involvement began under Johnson's watch, he deserves the king's share of the blame for the military and political failure of Vietnam. His decision to get the United States involved in large-scale combat; his refusal to acknowledge the war as America's strategic priority; his desire to manage the war personally, tied to his inability to manage the war successfully; and his selection of the wrong commander with the wrong strategy, all doomed the American effort to fail, and wasted the lives of tens of thousands of American men and women, and perhaps a million Vietnamese.

When Nixon came to the Oval Office, the war had already been on for years, and Nixon won the election in part through a promise to get the troops out. Nixon therefore began his administration with an unpopular war already effectively lost, and a promise to keep to end that war. Nonetheless, Nixon did make an effort to defeat the communist forces with the time and forces remaining to him. He was fortunate in that several months before leaving office Johnson had replaced Westmoreland with Abrams; the ground war under Nixon soon became a very different type of conflict, which the United States actually came close to winning. Nixon also let his air force commanders run their own war, and supported their change of strategy in the Linebacker bombing offensive, which many political commentators have asserted drove the North Vietnamese to the peace table. Nixon also authorized extending the air war into Cambodia (as well as minor ground operations, and several larger ground campaigns). The extension of the war, however, led to an explosion of popular unrest and protest; it was too late to extend the war to other areas now that the promise to end it had been made.

The main mistakes which can be attributed to Nixon's administration were made in the aftermath of the massive North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam in 1972 (the first "Spring Offensive"). Nixon sent Kissinger to the peace talks with North Vietnam, and the negotiators signed a cease-fire agreement that Nixon called "peace with honor." The agreement was an understanding between North Vietnam and the United States, by which America's continuing withdrawal from Vietnam would be completed, and the war would be put on hold until the American ground forces could be pulled out. The treaty left the North Vietnamese army in possession of almost a third of South Vietnam's territory, including strategic enclaves that directly threatened the capitol in Saigon, and several regional capitols such as Hue, Pleiku, Kontum, and An Loc. The South Vietnamese army conducted a number of counter-offensives to clear these enclaves after the "cease-fire", and did in fact re-take much lost ground, but these operations still left the enemy in possession of vital territories that made the job of defending the south virtually impossible.

The communists had of course won this territory through hard fighting, and kept much of it by continued hard fighting, so it is difficult to ascertain how much more territory could have been chipped away from them at the peace table, but the fact remains that Nixon and Kissinger did show more interest in a quick and successful end to the negotiations than they showed in helping South Vietnam to save itself. Nixon and Kissinger did not try to improve the strategic position of their ally, but only negotiated the establishment of a "quiet time" with which to speed the American withdrawal.

In the meantime, American forces in Vietnam rapidly accelerated the hand-over of large quantities of sophisticated military equipment to their allies, who had not yet received the training or combat experience with which to properly utilize this equipment. America was trying to create a miniature version of the US armed forces, but was unable to provide this "little brother" with the necessary material and logistical support upon which the US armed forces depend for their very survival. South Vietnam was given naval vessels, combat and supporting aircraft, and armored forces, with neither the technical, maintenance, or supply support necessary to maintain them. Especially lacking was access to fuel reserves, a problem that was magnified several times over in 1973 with the global oil crisis. South Vietnam had to reduce training to a minimum, and even cannibalized whole units in order to keep others operating, because of the lack of spare parts, ammunition, and fuel with which to maintain them. Under these conditions, the South Vietnamese forces could not function properly no matter how sophisticated their equipment was.

Nixon's intentions with the cease-fire were that it would not only give American forces the time to get out with minimal casualties, but it would also give the South Vietnamese forces time to get acquainted with their new equipment, and with their strategic position of finally having to call the shots by themselves. He expected North Vietnam to return to the offensive, but also expected that the next time around the US Air Force would provide heavy support, while the US Congress would authorize the necessary financial support for South Vietnam to get the fuel, ammunition, and spare parts that it needed. However, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, who had replaced Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate, faced a Congress uninterested in going out of its way to provide this support, and Congress also opposed the commitment of America's strategic air-power. This disinterest in supporting America's disintegrating ally was partly a result of the frustration with previous efforts over what had by then been almost a quarter of a century; it was also strongly affected by the oil crisis, which had vastly changed the global price of fuel, and of products with prices related to fuel prices.

The greatest mistakes on Nixon's part therefore include failing to take a greater interest in helping South Vietnam, and insisting more on the speed of the American withdrawal than on improving South Vietnam's position at the peace negotiations. Another mistake was simply anticipating greater support being available to South Vietnam from America than proved to be the case, although at least part of this lack of foresight was related to the changed global economic situation after 1973. Nixon also, however, vastly overestimated the interest of the American people and the US Congress in continuing a financial commitment to a war that his administration had been voted into power with the mandate to end.

The final tragedy for the American involvement in Vietnam occurred under Ford's watch. By the time Ford took over from Nixon after Watergate, the US ground forces had almost completely evacuated, with the exception of a small number of "advisors," training specialists, and security guards. In the spring of 1975, North Vietnam launched what proved to be South Vietnam's death stroke (although the North Vietnamese leaders had expected South Vietnam to last a year longer than it did). The expected American support did not materialize, and the South Vietnamese forces disintegrated. After a few initial large-scale battles, the communists opened up the routes into the major cities, and their final drive into Saigon went virtually unopposed. It must be noted that Ford faced a different political situation than had his predecessors; he had few options on the table, as Congress had re-written the rules under which the US president could commit American forces to the fight, and Congress adamantly opposed a direct commitment of forces or material support beyond the protection of the US embassy and an evacuation airlift. The failure of Ford's administration to save South Vietnam must really fall much more heavily upon the shoulders of his predecessors than upon his; it is difficult to imagine what Ford could realistically have done but didn't. Ford simply had the misfortune to be condemned to watch the final act of the American tragedy from the Oval Office TVs. Ford did, however, authorize some minor operations that had no impact upon events and caused unnecessary casualties, in particular the Mayaguez operation. With these harassment operations, it almost seemed as if he, too, wanted to get in on the game of costly, futile operations, albeit on a smaller scale.

Ford, and the presidents after him, have mostly shunned Vietnam since the Vietnam War, for several reasons. The main reasons for this are the POW issue and the emotional residue of the war, the global competition with the Soviet Union, and the continuing struggles in southeast Asia. Americans retain a lot of bad feelings about the war and involvement in that region, and it would have presented a politically difficult proposition for the American government to open its arms toward its previous enemy the way that France did after its involvement there. Furthermore, Vietnam remained allied with the Soviet Union, and needed this alliance in order to balance against the growing animosity of China in the struggle between the communist blocs. When under Nixon the US began to develop its relations with both China and the Soviet Union, the US clearly favored China against the Soviets, and so Vietnam essentially fell on the "wrong" side of the inter-communist struggle. Finally, the US criticized Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia (later called Kampuchea), and took little official notice of the retaliatory Chinese invasion of Vietnam. These factors all demonstrate that there is much emotional damage that needs to be cleaned up for the US and Vietnam to develop close and friendly relations. While recent American administrations and the Vietnamese have initiated this process, it should be understood that the process will take some time.

The ultimate irony and tragedy of all of this is that America and Vietnam got off to such a good start under Roosevelt. Truman destroyed what Roosevelt had built, and while Truman's policy was a complete reversal of American policy there, his successors mostly chose a course that developed from Truman's. Under Eisenhower, when France ended its war there, America had a golden opportunity to make peace and missed it. Kennedy saw the war as a fait accompli, but then made not only the bad choice to fight it but also the bad choice of where to fight it. Johnson made more bad choices than can be counted, making them seemingly on a daily basis with his direct mismanagement of the air war and of the general strategy of attrition, while at the same time completely failing to support that very strategy. Nixon promised to get America out and mostly did so, but with the veneer of "honor" and the promise to continue to support South Vietnam's struggle; then signed a treaty leaving the North Vietnamese army in occupation of almost a third of South Vietnam's territory. The economic damage of the 1973 Middle East war and the resulting oil crisis, together with domestic American opposition to large-scale spending in support of Vietnam, also made Nixon's promises essentially worthless. Ford was hampered by these realities and had few options but to provide the troops needed to protect the American withdrawal and evacuation; but then authorized a few minor retaliatory operations which cost lives and achieved nothing. And succeeding presidents have essentially ignored the region with its problems and opportunities, although this seems to be finally changing on a small scale at least.

So after Roosevelt's moves to develop American power and influence in the region, his successors reversed American policies in ways that resulted in over 50,000 American fatalities, something in the rough neighborhood of a million Vietnamese fatalities, billions of dollars in military expenditures that did nothing to improve America's strategic position, and a region that over half a century after Roosevelt's death is still outside of American influence and houses three states that still call themselves communist. Had America instead continued to pursue Roosevelt's course, we could have built up a friendship with a power interested in staying out of the central orbit of the two primary communist powers, and have had sixty years of lucrative trade with a region blessed with ample resources, and without ever having had to fight a war. America's fight with the Vietnamese was unnecessary; a reversal of America's previously established policy; harmful to American interests strategically, politically, militarily, and economically; and resulted in enormous numbers of fatalities and other casualties for no purpose and with nothing to show for it. This is what resulted from a seemingly easy decision to confront "enemies" rather than consider our other options, and should be a powerful lesson to current and future American leaders.