The only lesson we seem to have learned from the Vietnam War is that
we have learned no lesson. Of course, the Vietnam War happened so long
ago that most Americans have forgotten what it was all about. But
certainly President Clinton should have remembered, because he opposed
that war, demonstrated against it, and did all he could to evade it. But
one thing should not be forgotten about that tragic war is that it was
created, escalated, and lost by the liberals who were supposedly
fighting communism. Don’t ever expect liberals to be serious about
fighting communism. Their main hatred is of anti-communists.
The men who ran the Vietnam war for President Johnson — Robert S.
McNamara, the McBundy brothers, Dean Rusk, et al — were all highly
placed members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), that elite,
Ivy-League club on Park Avenue that decides how to lead America to where
it wants it to go: a New World Order. And today, the architects of the
present war against the Serbs is led by Richard C. Holbrooke, a director
of the CFR, with the help of members Henry H. Shelton, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Wesley K. Clark, director of NATO’s
bombing campaign against the Serbs. Clark, like Clinton, is a Rhodes
scholar.
How is it that these highly intelligent, well-informed establishment
types manage to blunder us into disaster after disaster? For all their
talk about peaceful globalization, they really seem to be sophisticated
warmongers who love power and are anxious to prove to the nation that
every so often, at their pleasure, they can lead thousands of young
Americans to their deaths and still preside over the government after
the deed is done.
Not a single one of the idiots who led us into the Vietnam disaster
has suffered for his or her supposed errors of judgment. Today, if still
alive, they are considered venerable statesmen and can be found
attending and/or speaking at CFR dinners, conferences, seminars, and
receptions. They managed to sacrifice 58,000 Americans for a war the
elite had no intention of winning. A visit to the memorial in Washington
will tear your heart out. All for nothing. We abandoned the South
Vietnamese people to the mercies of the communists so that a million of
them, in utter desperation, took to the boats. Many of them now live in
the U.S.
Fast forward to Kosovo in 1999. NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia has
precipitated the greatest tragedy that can befall a people: forced
eviction from one’s homeland into perhaps permanent exile. But NATO has
no intention of calling off its war. It knows that if it quits without
defeating Milosevic, it will have lost all credibility as a military
force. That is why high-profile members of the CFR — Kissinger,
Brzezinski, and Snowcroft — are now calling for the use of ground
forces to invade the Balkans, defeat the Serbs on the ground, and set up
an independent Kovoso to which the dispersed Kosovars can return.
Everything about this war reeks of stupidity, and yet the men who got
us into it are not stupid. Richard C. Holbrooke is a financier with
Credit Suisse First Boston. He held a gun to Slobodan Milosevic’s head,
threatening to bomb Serbia unless Milosevic was willing to grant Kosovo
de facto independence and accept a NATO occupation army on Serb
territory. Mr. Holbrooke must have known that Milosevic could never have
accepted such terms. And he must have known that dropping bombs on the
Serbs would only infuriate them into seeking revenge against the hapless
Kosovo Albanians.
So now we have another humanitarian catastrophe on our hands, and the
NATO war machine doesn’t know what else to do but drop more bombs. What
a way to prove to the Russians that NATO has no aggressive intentions.
Is it possible that the establishment wanted this war so that it could
produce the kind of emergency conditions that permit governments to
institute measures that would be unacceptable in peacetime?
Senator McCain has stated that NATO must win at all costs. How does
one win such a war? By sending in an army to do the dirty work. And we
ought not to be surprised if our call for unconditional surrender by the
Serbs will force them to resist with the same ferocity they used in
fighting the Germans. And perhaps the Russians will feel obliged to help
them. In the end the Serbs will lose, but so will we.
What is so interesting these days is to hear liberals sounding like
warmongers. I heard Anthony Lewis on PBS foaming at the mouth, calling
for virtual annihilation of the Serbs. David Nyhan, columnist for the
Boston Globe, rants and raves like a mad dog in his hatred of Milosevic.
He supports Senator McCain’s call for victory at all cost, and mentions
that Bill Bradley echoes that sentiment.
The liberal elite must now do all in its power to whip up the
American people into a frenzy for all out war. And if the CFR gets its
way, it will be a very long war with lots of body bags and no end in
sight until we can restore the Albanians to Kosovo and train them to
defend themselves with massive military aid. But NATO must now convince
us that Kosovo is worth fighting and dying for, so that ten or twenty
years from now another memorial will be built in Washington to
commemorate the men and women who died to make the world safe from the
Serbs.
Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of “The Whole-Language/OBE Fraud”
and seven other books on education. His books are available on
Amazon.com.
