Time to forget Vietnam, says this warning article from 2003 to anti-war activists. Al From says we need to forget it and reassert "internationalism for a new era."
The word internationalism is not necessarily bad, but it sure depends on the context. This article is rather demeaning to anti-war activists, somewhat critical of Dean, but it really rips Kucinich badly. Undeservedly, I might say. In fact it is just plain nasty to him. He was speaking truth, and it needed to be said...he was right...they have damaged our country internally by fighting this war. And more Democrats need to speak up now.
Good Night, VietnamFormer Gov. Howard Dean, whose antiwar rhetoric has made him the unlikely darling of liberal activists in Iowa and elsewhere, has been visibly struggling to criticize the war without appearing to undermine the troops. He vowed not to "personally" attack the president on the war, but has instead continued to attack his Democratic rivals who voted to authorize force.
But one antiwar Democrat has refused to change his rhetoric at all, and is supplying a fascinating exhibition of the Left's "Vietnam Syndrome": the tendency to interpret any military conflict through the nostalgic lens of the political struggle against the war in Vietnam.
Like rock musicians, antiwar protesters tend to keep going back to the 1960s and early 1970s for role models and inspiration. But few are as fearlessly faithful to the Vietnam War era of protests as presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who made a speech on the first day of the war in Iraq that consciously echoed George McGovern's "Come Home America" acceptance speech at the 1972 Democratic Convention.
"Come home, America," said Kucinich to the National Newspaper Association on March 20. "Come home and fix your broken streets and mend your broken dreams.... Come home and establish a living wage.... Come home and provide single payer, guaranteed health care for the forty-one million Americans who suffer illness without relief.... Come home and provide guaranteed social security for generations to come without privatization and without extending the retirement age, which would be devastating for minorities.... Come home and make non-violence an organizing principle within our society through the creation of a Department of Peace, America!"
The Kucinich campaign is sort of the Unclaimed Freight Outlet of Democratic politics, retailing every failed or outdated lefty idea with a fierce and touching passion.
This is unnecessarily divisive in every way, and it was typical of the rhetoric which drove us mad in 2003 as the war began. I am not really sure just how much "internationalism" Al From had in mind in this next statement:
Some aging baby boomers may continue to view every military conflict as a reprise of the big war of their youth, and some politicians may opportunistically offer them a sort of battleground reenactment of the protests they fondly remember. But for the rest of us, the Vietnam War is long over, and it's time to reassert Democratic internationalism for a new era.
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