Bush, Nixon, Watergate and the DSM

by DemFromCT

I hate to repeat myself, but since history is repeating itself, I don't feel too guilty. In anticipation of Bush's 'stay the course, Democracy is hard work' speech tonight, I give you Richard M Nixon's "pitiful giant" speech from April 30, 1970:

My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nations all over the world find themselves under attack from within and from without.

If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

It is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight. The question all Americans must ask and answer tonight is this: Does the richest and strongest nation in the history of the world have the character to meet a direct challenge by a group which rejects every effort to win a just peace, ignores our warning, tramples on solemn agreements, violates the neutrality of an unarmed people, and uses our prisoners as hostages?

If we fail to meet this challenge, all other nations will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power the United States, when a real crisis comes, will be found wanting.

Well, at least Nixon had the decency in that speech to acknowledge that the American people didn't want to stay there, and that this was a way to end the war. No such concession from Bush tonight.

Speaking of Nixon, two articles of interest on Watergate the DSM: The WSJ (subscription) writes up the Daily Kos activists who started DowningStreetMemo.com, and adds:

The current Internet pressure from the left is reminiscent of a publicity battle waged by conservatives during Mr. Bush's re-election run that questioned Democrat John Kerry's service as a Swift Boat commander in Vietnam and his antiwar activity that followed. Though Swift Boat Veterans for Truth used some traditional media to get its message out, the group mounted a potent cyberspace campaign that helped keep the issue at the fore of the public debate.

"The coverage seems to be getting more intelligent," after reporters initially gave the memos short shrift, says Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Mr. Reid himself has begun citing the documents in public remarks, ad libbing a reference to them in a recent Senate floor speech.

The WaPo adds:

In public, British officials were declaring their solidarity with the Bush administration's calls for elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But Straw's memo and seven other secret documents disclosed in recent months by British journalist Michael Smith together reveal a much different picture. Behind the scenes, British officials believed the U.S. administration was already committed to a war that they feared was ill-conceived and illegal and could lead to disaster.

The documents indicate that the officials foresaw a host of problems that later would haunt both governments -- including thin intelligence about the nature of the Iraqi threat, weak public support for war and a lack of planning for the aftermath of military action. British cabinet ministers, Foreign Office diplomats, senior generals and intelligence service officials all weighed in with concerns and reservations. Yet they could not dissuade their counterparts in the Bush administration -- nor, indeed, their own leader -- from going forward.

of course, the NY Times is nowhere to be found. Just like Watergate.

Comments

[emptywheel]

of course, the NY Times is nowhere to be found. Just like Watergate.

Don't you mean the Carlyle-Lehman Brothers-Ford-Eli Lilly Times?

[DemFromCT]

I was thinking of the Keller-Miler Times. But you might be more right.

[emptywheel]

I could come up with some serious reasons why the Carlyle Times wouldn't want to cover this. But then, back in the day, the Times was mostly a family affair, and they did no better back then. Of course, I guess Carlyle is a kind of family, when you think about it.

[al-Fubar]

I've been thinking of the "pitiful, helpless giant" theme lately, because - among all the other connections between now and then - much of the Right, and particularly the neocons, seem forever stuck in the 1970s. There's a conscious desire to kick sand in the face of the world. The Bolton nomination is a perfect example; it makes sense only as a deliberate insult to the UN.

Part of this may be personal and psychological - looking at some of those guys, it's easy to imagine that they were major weenies in junior high. They're forever trying to get back at the big kids who beat them up and the girls who laughed at them.

But there's also an obsession with Vietnam and the Rambo theme: "This time we're gonna win." It's a particularly creepy-sad irony, isn't it, that they've gotten us into precisely the same sort of jam.

-- Rick Robinson

[DemFromCT]

Rick, their response to criticism is the same, too. Right out of the Nixon playbook. Blame the dissenters.

[TenThousandThings]

The parallel to the Kerry smear is a typical WSJ editorial tactic. On the one hand, it elevates the smear by comparing it to the DSM leak. On the other, it undermines the DSM leak by associating it with the smear. It is interesting also that the smear was (and is) proven wrong by every shred of documentary evidence from the time (that is, Navy records) and the internet pressure was basically an attempt to impeach those documents (by simply lying, and basically trying to whitewash the history of the Vietnam war), while the DSM is of course undeniably the truth, and the internet pressure is to press for recognition of the documentary evidence.

[Mimikatz]

Apropos of Rick's comment, someone (I can't remember who, but I read it on the internets) described the "muscular" neocon philosophy as a way for former high school nerds to feel powerful.

We are a ways from "pitiful, helpless giant", if only because this crew is more likely to use nukes if backed into a corner, but our power, and more importantly, the perception of it, have surely taken a hit in Iraq.

One thing I do not see enough of in the media are comparisons to what Dumsfeld and others are saying about training Iraqi troops and police. I remember a year or maybe even a year and a half ago they were saying we had 150,000 trained Iraqis or something like that, and of course it was wildly off the mark. They are saying virtually the same thing now, but no one calls them on the earlier statements. As the prosecutor would say, why should we believe you now?

[emptywheel]

Mimikatz

Is that why they're trying to blow apart comets, too? (See the Short Takes two doors down.) Makes them feel powerful?

[Mimikatz]

Of course. Didn't Kurt Vonnegut write a short story about something like that? Guys like stuff like that.

[Mimikatz]

Yep, Alzheimer's hasn;t set in yet. It was "The Big Space Fuck." It was hysterical, as I remember. Nailed that attitude, as it were.

[RonK, Seattle]

Four months after this speech, a truck bomb levelled the Army Math Research Center in Madison, WI.

That event seemed to mark a reversal of fortunes for the antiwar movements.

Beware of provocations on both sides.

[Meteor Blades]

Interesting that the Washington Post was out to lunch on the Pentagon Papers, even though it was the first newspaper that had access via Ellsberg, and The New York Times was the hero. Come Watergate, it was the Times playing catch-up most days.

In a balanced, just and fair world - all right already, stop with sniggering at the superannuated naive idealist - the Iraq Attack Debacle would curtail imprudent (and/or imperialistic) use of massive military force for a few decades. After May 1, 2003, when everything looked so hunky-dory for the NeoImps, it wasn't hard to imagine they'd take their victory and use it as backdrop for a drive toward Tehran and Damascus and gawdknows where else. But now that their theories - like the theories of the best and brightest who gave us Vietnam - have been brought up wanting by reality on the ground in Iraq, one would expect their hubris to have been punctured and deflated just a tad.

But, no. Despite a boatload of Iraq Attack miscalculations - delivered together with sneers at any naysayers - the denizens of the arrogantly named Project for a New American Century continue to argue in favor of doing still more militarily in the Middle East, calling it a "generational commitment."

I don't suppose Dubyanocchio will be taking note of the words of senior PNACker and American Enterprise fellow Thomas Donnelly, who said:

"The street-by-street slogging long predicted never materialized.... If there ever was an Iraqi plan for bleeding U.S. or British forces in urban combat, it could not cope either with the British care and precision in Basra or with the boldness of the American attack into Baghdad."

These are the assholes who nowadays claim the war is being lost because of a failure of support on the home front.

[DemFromCT]

Anthony Lewis on the Pentagon Papers, which led to the formation of the "plumbers" to break into Ellsberg's office and stop the leaks, which led to Watergate, which led to...

[willyr]

Nixon's speech, written by none other than Patrick Buchanan, contained this massive lie:

"American policy since then [the 1954 Geneva Accords] has been to scrupulously respect the neutrality of the Cambodian people".

Within 2 months of taking office, and at the urging of Henry Kissinger, Nixon began a massive secret bombing campaign of Cambodia, code named "Menu." Despite repeated White House denials, the secret bombing had been going on for 14 months by the time of his speech on April 30.

After the speech, protests broke out on college campuses all over the country that very night. Nixon referred to the protesters as "these bums."

2 days later, on May 2, Senators McGovern, Hatfield, Cranston, Goodell, and others announced they would introduce an amendment to cut off funding for U.S. military actions in southeast Asia by the end of the year.

2 days after that, on May 4, 4 student protesters were killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. The father of one of them, Allison Krause, said, 'm child was not a bum."

2 days after that, two more college students were killed on the campus of Jackson State College. Nixon's comment on this killing was, "What are we going to do to get more respect for the police from our young people?"

On May 9, as anti war demonstrations spread, over 80,000 people gathered on the Ellipse in Washington to demand an end to war.

Five years later the war ended.

see: http://www.landscaper.net/timelin.htm
see also: Our Vietnam, by A.J. Langguth, (Simon and Schuster, 2000.)

[Paul Rosenberg]

A couple of white guys sitting around talking:

Marx: Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Dylan: Here I sit so patiently / waiting to find out what price / you have to pay to get out of / going through all these things twice...

[Meteor Blades]

Oh, Karl. So good at describing, so wretched at prescribing.

[Frankeynstain]

mature vs young hard mature women vieille salope mature amatrice mature fuck young young boy and mature mature vieille mature salope mature young first time mature and young boy < mature old fuck mature woman fucking girl hot mature men mature woman asshole mature pics free grosses.femmesmuresx.com grosse femme mature hairy bush mature mature hot movies film mature fuck dogs mature black busty photo penetration femme mature hot nasty mature galerie nylon mature brune mature nu hot wife mature blowjob woman mature mature free galerie rencontre femme mure femme mure amatrice cochon photo de femme mure hard cum her face mature photo x femme mure femme mure pour jeune homme 19ans mature mom cum photo gratuite fellation femme mure age mure nu gratuite x femme mure femme mure tres poilue photo femme mure amateur exhib rencontre coquin femme mure > femme mure et nu gratuit mure femme mure avec jeune mec recette and confiture and and mure photo x femme mure et ronde photo de femme mure xxx femme mure nu photo photo gratuite vieille mature nu mature busty babe gallery nymphomane mature amatrice lady mature mature drunk suck vieille saint girons photo vieille salope gratuit mature collant nylon galerie gratuite mature mature and granny mature lady posing femme amatrice mature vieille salope .com pipe hard concert hard rock berlin hard rock cafe black orchid rock nantes hard audrey tautou film hard archive journal hard pps hard ecoute musique hard rock couple hard roman photo hard film and x and hard photo hard de brigitte lahaie music hard core teen hard preview hard top nissan navara hard and top rencontre hard gratuite pps hard gratuit hard anal fucking photo gratuite femme hard peugeot dangel 505 hard top dvd x hard discount sodomie hard amateur pps humour hard liste hard discount essonne mature riding hard hard tv net hard xxx gratuit