Vietnam, Iraq, and Now ... Syria

Along the Haute Route - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman

As a fourteen year old in 1964, I huddled with my family around our A.M. radio, as the announcer declared the U.S. Maddox had been attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin.  This unprovoked assault in international waters was a call to arms and not unwelcome to our military family.  The television media as well as Time, Newsweek, and Life called for an immediate response to punish the the perpetrators and to begin in earnest our unqualified support for the legitimate South Vietnamese government. 

Later it would be discovered the incident, which smacked of William Randolph Hearst's instigation of the Spanish American War, was contrived, greatly exaggerated, and used as a false pretense by the political establishment and the media to dupe the American people into war.  Eleven years hence with 55,000 American dead, billions of dollars wasted, and the fabric of American society shredded, the North Vietnamese reined victorious, and we limped home licking our wounds and vowing never to make the same mistake again.    

Memories are short among the political elite and within a generation America found itself once again embroiled in two un winnable Asian land wars - this time in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The reasons for going to war in Iraq were tenuous and suspect, and without the necessary editing, spinning, and presuming most Americans were content to heed the lessons of history which had escaped their leaders.  But the will of the people is ignored easily but often at great expense.  Other than a stronger and quasi independent Kurdistan, it is difficult to make any argument which justifies the time, expense, and lives spent trying to make Sunni love Shi’a, much less transform Iraq into a thriving democracy.  Saddam Hussein was a dastardly psychopath to be sure, but his regime formed a buttress against Iran and maintained the balance of power in the region.  He committed atrocities against his people, but the sectarian violence now rampant in the country was kept in check.

Now our Nobel Peace Prize winning President, after having failed Foreign Policy 101 by delivering a public ultimatum to another Middle East psychopath, who has everything to lose if he does not defeat the Syrian insurgency, is calling for military action.  Obama declares his line in sand applies not only the United States but to all nations, yet the outcry has been muted with few countries willing to unleash their arsenals to punish Assad for allegedly using Sarin gas.

The majority of Americans do not support military action in Syria, recognizing there are only bad and worse options regarding Assad’s Alawites and the rebels to whom the United States is an anathema.  This uncomfortable fact has not stopped Congress or the mainstream media from reminding the public they know what is in the country’s best interest as was the case in Vietnam and Iraq.  Many of the arguments are speculative: the effect on the 2014 elections, the message given to Iran and North Korea, and the negative impact on the prestige of the Office of the Presidency if retaliation is not forthcoming.  Anyone questioning the wisdom of military intervention is branded by the Wall Street Journal as a Taft isolationist, morally suspect for the unwillingness to right a great wrong.  Why was the bar set so much lower during the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi?  Perhaps the wholesale slaughter of thousands with a machete is less reprehensible than the killing of hundreds with nerve gas, but the cynic may conclude Syria is all about an egotistical and naive President painting himself into a corner and the need to save face.

This afternoon I received an email response from California Senator Feinstein, who once again disagrees with me.  The ancient San Francisco liberal has seen pictures depicting Assad’s barbaric conduct, and to strike an emotional tone, she describes children laying dead still dressed in pajamas.  Horrible indeed, Senator, but once again, reliance on emotion sweeps the country to a place best left avoided. 

 Switzerland - photo by JoAnn Sturman