The power of faith: anti-U.S. style

The only parallel that really holds up between the Vietnam and Iraq engagements by the U.S. is in the "anti"-movement. Many of the leaders and participants of anti-Iraq war protests are drawn from then, or are miseducated by the ‘60’s radicals and wannabes who have graduated into and predominate in academia and media. Just go here and trace some of the names and organizations, for example, here, here and here.

There are many empirical studies and surveys, and few to dispute, the dominance of the left-leaning in academia and media, so just google. Whenever Nat Hentoff speaks I listen, and his sterling liberal civil libertarian credentials should make it impossible for all but the deaf among liberals to listen. Hentoff pointedly enjoins media that, “by doing more investigative reporting on freedom of thought on campuses, the media can also be of significant help for future students, faculty and the nation as a whole. We are engaged in a war against terrorism, but also in a war of ideas between those committed to freedom and advocates of its lethal opposite.”

A major difference from Vietnam is that without a draft to avoid that interrupts their comforts and climb to affluence, the current anti-Iraq recruits from campus have been far sparser, leaving a largely middle-aged crowd, many of whom are trying to reclaim their youthful zeal or who have never stopped living the ideology formed then. I went to see a Sheehan-sympathy demonstration in my hometown, and could have cleaned up with a Geritol stand.

That youthful zeal, its memory or invented memory, the ideology of the far-left adopted then, has become almost a faith, impervious to reason. At its root is nothing else but opposition to the United States’ intervention abroad against foes of Western values and safety. RealClear Politics Tom Bevan reduces the left’s various rationalizations and camouflage of its real message, “at Daily Kos all the way to the New York Times op-ed page” to it’s core: “Taken together these requirements would seem to make it almost impossible for the left to support U.S. military action under any circumstance.”

Not just their leaders and arguments, but the anti-Iraq movement’s tactics are a replay of those used four-decades ago. During the 2004 presidential campaign, it took (as I wrote) a revolt of the Vietnam veterans to expose John Kerry’s Vietnam duplicities and remind Americans of his slanders against us then, despite the leading media’s chorus of support for him and opposition to us. Today,the same tactics, (I wrote) of slandering the American troops and character are being used. Another illustration is the World Tribunal on Iraq held in Istanbul last June, its cast of characters and assertions, even its roots in the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, as a replay of the anti-Vietnam Bertrand Russell tribunal in Europe and its U.S. offshoot at the Jane Fonda funded VVAW Winter Soldier show trial. See here, scroll and click around, for an abundance of documentation about the Kerry-Winter Soldier fraudulence.

The lead reporter for USA Today at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas seemingly addressed the press’ 24/7 extravaganza of countless articles on Cindy Sheehan. When interviewed at CBS MarketWatch August 17 (free signup needed to link), reporter Keen “suggested that the Bush White House played an unwitting role in sparking the Sheehan extravaganza.” Keen continued, “When the White House is not generating news for us, it leaves us to our own devices.” (Oh my! Stop me President Bush before I become a responsible journalist. Give me something to play with, er report, to justify my hotel bill in Crawford.) As Michael Barone adds to the boredom excuse for the Crawford-Sheehan reporting extravaganza, “Today, we have many in the press – not most, I think, but some at least – who do not want us to win.”

Thus far, buried within a feature story on Sheehan, the leading media has usually given a paragraph or so to one or two opposing views but not the overwhelming majority of parents of American casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan who believe differently or who oppose her. Some columnists from the political right have spoken out, for example, and some major newspapers with more balanced op-ed pages have allowed other bereaved parents to be heard.

If it’s Vietnam all over again, it’s not in Iraq. It’s in the same cast of characters reliving their anti-Vietnam, anti-U.S. faith to undermine U.S. resolve in the MidEast, and in the leading American media’s irresponsibility to allow this rerun farce of their old moth-eaten plays and ploys.