Are the powers-that-be lying to the American people about what we’re up to in the former Yugoslavia? If they are, “This is d?j? vu all over again,” as Yogi Berra used to say.
Thirty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg blew the whistle on the Vietnam War when he released the Pentagon Papers, proving that our government, from Truman to Nixon, had been systematically lying to the American people. The papers showed a generation-long conspiracy of deliberate concealment from both the people and Congress concerning Vietnam policy.
Just one whopper among thousands: In 1964, when LBJ was running against Barry Goldwater, he promised “no escalation was needed in South Vietnam.” Meanwhile, as the Pentagon Papers later showed, his advisers were telling him the ante had to be kicked up. So LBJ lied and whipped Goldwater, whose sin was telling the hard truth about what he thought needed to be done in Vietnam – which was pretty much what LBJ ended up doing!
Because of all the fabrications, 4 million Southeast Asians lost their lives, we took nearly a half-million casualties, and our nation was almost ripped asunder.
And now, for at least a decade, we’ve been similarly deceived regarding U.S. policy in ex-Yugoslavia – about who’s been receiving intelligence and arms from us, and our real agenda.
The lies have ranged from biggies, like Clinton saying in 1995 that our forces would be in Bosnia for only one year, to the less consequential, such as what really happened after so-called Air Force hero Scott O’Grady went down in flames.
As with Vietnam, the American people are fast asleep, while many members of Congress seem interested only in their post-Congress lobbying jobs. And the soldiers on the ground who do the bleeding are all regulars, so no one cares what happens to them except their families.
Since 1990, the ex-Yugoslavian swamp’s gotten wider, deeper and more costly in lives and dollars. First we stepped into Croatia and Bosnia. Next came Kosovo. And now there’s the mess in Macedonia.
When Dubya was running against Big Al, he used to talk about getting us out of the Balkan bogs and bringing our boys back home. Now that he’s in the presidential saddle, he’s completely changed his jingle – just like LBJ. The latest lyrics go, “We went in together, we’ll come out together.” The “we” refers to obsolete NATO, which only exists because it’s good for the U.S. arms business.
More recent lies:
Last week, President Bush said he’d “not ruled out the possibility of sending U.S. troops to Macedonia to help quell unrest there.” But our troops were already there – and many more are either on the way or on alert to go.
Like Vietnam, we’ve got a whole lot of lying and covering up going down. How many more feet, legs and lives will be lost in ex-Yugoslavia before another brave Ellsberg releases the Pentagon Papers Part II?
