Rohan Pearce
On March 1, 1991, after the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War, US President George Bush senior told the American Legislative Exchange Council: "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!" Since George Bush junior gave the thumbs up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he has proven his dad's assessment was vastly premature.
If the "Vietnam syndrome" — the opposition of the US working class to a protracted US colonial war in which US casualties steadily mount — was ever dead, the three-year-old US war in Iraq has well and truly resurrected it.
The September 17 New York Times reported that a poll by the paper and CBS News poll found that of those US residents surveyed "Fifty-two percent called for an immediate departure#148; of US troops from Iraq, even if Iraq was not a "stable democracy". Among African-Americans support for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq was 76%.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted September 8-11 found that Bush's approval rating had dropped to its lowest point ever. Overall 57% disapproved of how Bush was handling his job; 45% strongly disapproved. Disapproval of Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq was even more pronounced — 62%.
These two polls came on the heels of a bloody month for the US-led occupation forces in Iraq. August was the third-deadliest month for US soldiers in Iraq, according to a September 19 Washington Post report. The paper reported: "Last week, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, declared 'great successes' against insurgents. But Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where Lynch briefed reporters, was under stepped-up security screening and US guard for fear of suicide bombings. Insurgents for three days running last week managed to lob mortar rounds into the Green Zone, the heart of the US and Iraqi administration."
The continuing bloodshed in Iraq, with no victory in sight for the occupation forces, has dovetailed with the domestic US social crisis in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Large numbers of US residents have drawn a connection between Iraq war spending, the deployment of National Guard troops to the Middle East and the humanitarian crisis the engulfed the Gulf coastal states in the aftermath of Katrina.
Thirty-nine per cent of respondents in the Post poll thought the administration should pay for hurricane relief by cutting government programs, with the most popular single area of funding participants thought should be cut being the spending on the Iraq war.
A number of comparisons between the Vietnamese struggle against French and then US imperialism and the protracted guerrilla war that is unfolding in Iraq have been drawn. But there is a further similarity — the ever more shrill appeals for the US public's backing for the war effort, while public support for the war sinks ever lower.
In an August 24 speech in Idaho, Bush explicitly addressed the calls for US troops to be brought home. He declared: "We'll complete our work in Afghanistan and Iraq. An immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, or the broader Middle East, as some have called for, would only embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America and free nations."
The White House is trying to assuage concerns about the war, but the ghost of Washington's defeat in Vietnam still haunts the US rulers. The impact of the US defeat in Vietnam, and of discrediting of the US rulers' protracted campaign of lies to justify the war on Indochina, including repeated claims that victory was assured and successive presidential assurances that troop withdrawal was just around the corner, while all the time casualties continued to mount, led to a deep-seated opposition to Vietnam-style military interventions among US working people.
A report released by the Rand Corporation (a government sponsored think tank) in 2000, International Law and the Politics of Urban Air Operations, explained that until the 1990-91 Gulf War, "commentators cast American casualty sensitivity as part of the 'Vietnam syndrome.' Contrary to the predictions of those who saw Desert Storm as putting the Vietnam experience in the past, the relatively low American death total likely raised public expectations of 'bloodless' foreign policy and fed policymakers' and military planners' perceptions that the public had softened in this regard. The further erosion of already fragile American public support that followed the October 1993 deaths of 18 US servicemen in Mogadishu evinced the strong pull that US casualties can exert on policy."
The Rand report argued that "contextual factors and other variables" play a role in the willingness of the US public to back a foreign deployment — "for example, support is likely to erode with casualties when vital interests are not at stake or when the public views victory as unlikely".
In this regard, 9/11 was a godsend for Bush junior and his neoconservative backers. The White House used the justified horror and outrage of the US public at the terrorist attacks on New York City's World Trade Center to justify launching its "war on terror".
While the US-led invasion of Afghanistan found significant public support, the war drive against Iraq was opposed by large numbers of people from the start. However, despite the large anti-war rallies in the US and around the world, the US-led invasion of Iraq proceeded and the ability of the US anti-war movement to mobilise opposition on the streets contracted massively.
A further blow to the movement came from within, when the bulk of the liberal wing of the movement, including the leadership of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ — one of the two key national anti-war coalitions), fell into line behind the Democratic Party's contender in the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry.
In a statement issued after Bush's re-election, the second main national anti-war coalition, ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) noted: "If nothing else, we all know that if Kerry was President-elect, nothing would be different for the people of Iraq right now. Kerry has not condemned the bombings of Fallujah at any point, nor the attacks on the Iraqi people, nor the use of US soldiers as cannon fodder in this war of aggression and conquest. Now the people of Fallujah wait for the next attack, and the US soldiers wait for their orders to carry out actions that they will have to reconcile for the rest of their lives, if they survive."
The support of peace activists for Kerry's tilt at the White House (the "Anybody But Bush" campaign) dealt a grave blow to the anti-war movement. The "softly, softly" approach — not even criticising Kerry when he publicly backed the US military's bloody efforts to "pacify" Iraq — backfired. Not only was Bush re-elected, the anti-war movement was almost completely demobilised.
However, it never completely went away, and the courageous stand of Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, proved a rallying point for anti-war activists. Sheehan's establishment of her peace camp outside Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas, in early August and the media ruckus that greeted her demand that Bush meet with her evidently spurred the leadership of ANSWER and UFPJ to overcome a damaging split that would have seen separate anti-war demonstrations in Washington on September 24 — the date set for the next major anti-war mobilisation.
On August 19, the two coalitions issued a public statement declaring that a joint rally and march would be held in the nation's capital. A September 18 Associated Press article reported that it will be the first demonstration permitted by police to "surround the White House in more than a decade".
According to ANSWER, buses, vans, car caravans and trains of protesters will be coming to the mass mobilisation from more than 200 cities, including from as far away as Albuquerque, New Mexico — a 28-hour drive!
September 24 will mark the culmination of months of organising for US anti-war activists, but it's only part of the story. Other anti-war activity has included "counter-recruitment" organising on campuses, a speaking tour by the fiery British Respect MP George Galloway (including a debate with professional Bush-apologist Christopher Hitchens in New York on September 14) and the "Bring Them Home Now Tour", heading from Crawford to Washington, led by Cindy Sheehan and sponsored by Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace.
As the most recent US public opinion polls indicate, the anti-war movement is now working in fertile ground. According to poll taken by the Princeton Survey Research Associates, results of which were released on September 21, already nearly 40% of respondents think Iraq will turn out to be "another Vietnam".
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
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