By Paul Edwards
Assessing the sickening slide into chaos the United States has made so rapidly, one hesitates to describe the hot mess while it is still bleeding out and decomposing, but comparing the Gulf of Tonkin incident with the launch and abject failure of Trump’s Pearl Harbor style Iran attack reveals the meltdown that has occurred.
Both involved the deceit by the American government that has always defined its operation, arguably from its inception. That noted, their political contexts differed enormously. It is not a question of one of these acts being justifiable and the other not: both were instances of America creating wars based on lies.
American enmiring in Vietnam occurred not from any particular decision, but as a fumbled, ad hoc decision to stop a plebiscite on unifying North and South Vietnam. Congress never declared war and abrogated its Constitutional responsibility. This most costly, bloody war since WW II was waged without authorization by the only body empowered to do so. It dragged on for years, killing and maiming many thousands of U.S. soldiers and millions of Vietnamese, to a shameful defeat that added gross humiliation to the historic guilt of having perpetrated that useless tragedy.
Johnson took the part of the defeated French in refusing to allow Vietnam to end its colonial status and become a sovereign state under the wise, principled leadership of Ho Chi Minh, who openly revered American ideals, intending to adopt them. In a cynical betrayal of those ideals—typical for America—the U.S. backed the wealthy, elite, landlord class and very soon owned the war.
Americans, in their profound ethical indifference, were mute through decades of their government’s morally indefensible crimes because it described them so nicely.
The great problem for Johnson—in that time of some respect for Constitutional law that is unimaginable now—was that he had no legal basis for waging war in that country. American assistance was wholly based on “stopping Communism”, sold to the the public with the fable that we had to halt it there or all the Asian “dominos” would fall, and Asia would be “lost” to “democracy”.
The fact is that everywhere America ever engaged, it supported wealthy, hated, exploiting classes that gouged and bled their people. That is what Capitalism does: cements, with money and violence, total state control by rich elites who milk and loot their people, just as is done at home in less punitive ways, with our working class bamboozled by heavy indoctrination in the idea that they can improve their status by voting in “free elections”. It’s a sick private joke of parasitic monsters. As Emma Goldman said, ‘If elections changed anything, they’d make them illegal’.
Johnson needed an inflammatory pretext to commit U.S. forces to defend the rich and privileged from their own people they so viciously abused. He made it known, and the required incident occurred. Naval commanders colluded, concocting an imaginary tale of direct attack by North Vietnamese ships, and Johnson took it to Congress, which passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave him his war, allowing unlimited deployment of American soldiers. 58,000 of them died in that colossal failure. [Between 2 to 3 million Vietnamese paid with their lives,too, many dying horrific deaths, including at the hands of CIA organised death squads.]
Ignoring and violating our Constitution is routine on the part of Presidents and Congress now, but not one of the wars America instigated since WWII was declared. What offends Americans who oppose Trump is not what he does, but what he says about it. In other words, his style. Americans, in their profound ethical indifference, were mute through decades of their government’s morally indefensible crimes because it described them so nicely.
Trump is a horse’s ass of a different color. His failed attack on Iran was made due to his diktat not simply that Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear bomb, but that it cannot use Uranium for any civil purpose; in short, that it must give up its sovereignty and become a vassal state to America. This it will never do.
His attack achieved nothing, but did result in ruinous damage to the satrapies that enabled it, obliterating of their costly American warning systems, crippling their oil operations, and the closing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump swore to eradicate Iran if it didn’t open it. He couldn’t; and it didn’t. Invasion has been ruled out by his military chiefs, who won’t do it. The Imperial Sap is going to have to fish or cut bait, and he’ll be damaged either way.
The great difference between Hormuz and Tonkin is that the law that hobbled Johnson is not even a matter of serious discussion in our garbage Congress. In spite of our cynical deceit then, there were men of conscience still, whereas both houses now are packed with sleazy jellyfish whores with neither shame nor honor.
Trump is, for practical purposes, a dictator, in that there is no law nor power that restrains him. Will he decide to alter the mid-term election results, or perhaps just declare the process itself invalid? What would prevent him? Our invertebrate Congress..? The Supreme Court, that coven of fascisti warlocks..? The military..? Try to imagine it. What can prevent his continuing as our Fuhrer?
Trump could unravel the mummy of our worthless ‘democracy’, which would not be a bad thing in itself, given how rotten and rank it is. It is far too shot through with poisons to be reformed, even if the will was there, which it is not. Our dizzy plunge into the dysphoria of imperial disintegration is foreordained.
The greatest difference between the two wars is not that our motivation and behavior is more evil now than then, but that the intervening decades have allowed the cancer that has eaten the ethical tissue of our polity to metastasize until it almost demands the elevation of a hideous subhuman like Trump as its master.
