Who among us can forget the victory gardens of the "sixties," when we all planted grapes and boycotted bananas and Star Fruit? Who among us can forget the women going without nylons to help the war effort? The gas rations? Oh, yes, those were the days . . . if you're still smoking whatever you were smoking back then.
But, if you live on terra firma, you may hear that sop and and rightly snort in derision. The "sixties" were a go-go era economically, real wages were higher, the Red Scare was still being pushed so it was one's patriotic duty to buy-buy, consume-consume. There was no economic sacrifice asked of Americans during Vietnam. Equally true, no one was asked by the government, in the United States, to do without. There was no gas rationing, no food rationing, go down the list.
Maybe some are suffering Private Ryan damage, but they're remembering a time that just didn't happen.
What were the sacrifices? Plenty of lives.
Plenty of lives were sacrificed.
Take a moment to visualize that.
You done?
Good. What did you visualize?
Chances are, for some, you visualized US soldiers. If it was a row of White, we'll assume you've majored (declared or not) in pop culture. Don't be too embarrassed, some of your elders are pushing the myth of sacrifice. But the reality is that it wasn't an all White force.
The National Archives places the US troop death toll during Vietnam at 58,193 (8 of those were women; by race it breaks down to "American Indian 226 [,] Caucasian 50,120 [,] Malayan: 252 [,] Mongolian [,] 116 [,] Negro [,] 7,264 [and] Unknown, Not Reported 215").
As we write this, 3346 is the current number of US service members who have died in Iraq. And apparently, for some, that's not "sacrifice" enough. Of course, with Vietnam, the death toll starts in 1956. Saigon falls in 1975 so it may come as a surprise to some that, for instance, 447 were declared dead in 1978. 11 from 1991 to 1998. (Declared dead means someone from the MIA list was confirmed dead. During the current illegal war, two are declared missing:
Staff Sergeant Keith M. Maupin and Ahmed Qusai al-Taei: Status - missing-captured.) Studying the death toll year by year, you can see them climb to a high of 1968 and then taper off (as the US moved more and more towards the air war -- something Norman Solomon continues to point out regarding the current war but it often seems no one's listening -- we are).
So it's interesting that, as the number moves towards the 3,400 mark, a lot of gas bags want to talk about "sacrifice" and say it's just not enough. It's also interesting that only some lives count.
One to two million is the number usually bandied about when discussing how many Vietnemese died in that illegal war, six million is the more realistic number. The Lancet study estimated that over 655,000 Iraqis have died thus far. Those deaths don't seem to matter much today and, if the current attitude towards the number of Vietnamese killed during that war is any indication, Iraqi deaths probably won't matter to some thirty years from now.
"Sacrifice"? Apparently we only count one group and, even there, we look at a blood bath and say, "Eh, fill the tub a little higher."
That's what Congressional Democrats have said as they push a non-binding, toothless proposal (which Bully Boy may or may not veto -- he'd be smart to sign it). The proposed legislation doesn't "bring the troops home." If Bully Boy signs it (or if he doesn't and, by some miracle, 2/3s of each house votes in favor of it), he still doesn't have to do anything. The dates for "withdrawal" are not mandatory, are not enforceable. If Bully Boy wants to be really clever, he can stick to the dates but keep all troops there by declaring this phase of the illegal war (the illegal occupation) a police action and designate all troops "military police."
The death toll is going to continue to climb. That's reality.
We've avoided including the wounded for two reasons. First, there's no estimate we're aware of on Iraqi wounded. Second, when injured troops are being sent back into battle, we don't trust the US military's classification of "wounded." But those numbers will continue to climb as well.
At some point, the illegal war will be over and people may read about it in books (we doubt it will be taught in the public school system -- anymore than Vietnam was or is) and wonder why the fatality number got so large before the war ended? Didn't anyone speak out? Didn't anyone care?
A lot of people did. A lot of people and organizations objected to the bill awaiting Bully Boy's decision currently. They were shouted down by Party Hacks and liars. In fact, let the record show, things were so bad that independent media largely played dumb and either avoided the issue or presented the measure (and some still are) as something that will bring all the US troops home. Let the record show that the mainstream media was far less guilty of that. The wires, the dailies, they noted that it wasn't "troops out of Iraq" but the possibility of "some troops." Pretty much all media ignored the 'redeployment' issue (whereby troops pulled out of Iraq might be sent elsewhere).
So the thing to remember here, because there will be more illegal wars, is that Party Hacks are liars. They didn't give a damn about the number of people killed in Iraq. All they wanted to do was try to improve the chances for Democrats to score a win in 2008 -- including the big prize of the White House. They were willing to risk human lives for that.
Secondary lesson here is that independent media? Not so independent. A toothless, non-binding measure should have been called out for what it was but that largely didn't happen. There were a few brave voices. This isn't a complete list but certainly Robert Knight, Dennis Bernstein, Norman Solomon, Howard Zinn, John Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, Glen Ford, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, VeteranIntelligence Professionals for Sanity, Matthew Rothschild, Alexander Cockburn, Kevin Zeese and a few others did call out the nonsense. They were lonely voices. They also tended to disappear from the airwaves as the measures came to a vote in each house and then during the weeks it took for the House and Senate to come to a joint version of the weak measure.
Let it not be forgotten that The Nation spent the Iraq war MIA. They changed their spirit, if not their title, to Campaign Politics. In November, we offered "Magazine Parody: The Elector" (a blend of three independent media print outlets that included The Nation) and started that parody off with this:
Our special issue that continues our non-stop 2006 election coverage that we'll only drop in a few weeks when we gear up for the 2008 election. No one owns The Elector!
That was intended as a joke. Who knew The Nation would prove us right? There's a great deal of talk about how "early" the 2008 election coverage started. Never let The Nation get away with bemoaning that because they were out front leading the pack. And what's really sad is that we're not even half-way through 2007 yet. You're already seeing what the non-stop election coverage does to all media. You're seeing the many stories that fall off the map as Marshmallow Candidate Fluff (which has a much longer shelf life than any of us would have guessed) oozes non-stop.
So, years from now, when people wonder how the illegal war managed to drag on for so long, don't just point to the White House. Congress was willing to enable to it. And so was big media and so was small media.