History repeats

No matter that George McGovern is a war hero. No matter that he is an elder statesman who dedicated his life to public service. No matter that he has made ending world hunger his mission or that he is 84 years old, witnessed the savage destruction of alcoholism on one of his own children and three months ago lost his wife of 63 years.

Dick Cheney still couldn't resist abusing him.

In a speech before The Heritage Foundation this month, the vice president had this to say about the former South Dakota senator: "Thirty-five years ago the standard-bearer for the Democrats, of course, was Sen. George McGovern, who campaigned on a far-left platform of heavy taxation, a greatly expanded role for government in the daily lives of Americans and a major retreat from America's commitments in the Cold War. Sen. McGovern was, and is, an honest and a straightforward man. He said what he believed, and he told people where he stood. And on Election Day, Sen. McGovern lost every state but one and collected just over 3 percent of the electoral vote."

Cheney employs that tired rhetorical ruse of false compliment followed by censure. In his speech to the conservative think tank, however, the comparison Cheney made of the tough predicament the United States faces now in Iraq to the one it faced in Vietnam in the early 1970s could not be more true, according to one George McGovern.

"They are almost precisely the same situation," McGovern says of Vietnam and Iraq.

In each case, he says, America went to war against a country that was no real threat to it. In each case America went to war against a country that it knew nothing about. And in each case America found itself in a war that turned out badly, that its own people and the rest of the world came to condemn, and that it could not – and would not – end. In both Vietnam and Iraq, says McGovern, "we just created a royal mess."

The reason for our presence in Iraq has changed during the past four years. I will not weary you with that chronology here. Suffice to say the rationale has gravitated to this: We are in the midst of a global war on terror, and if we don't take the fight to them, they will bring the fight to us.

In addition to this big premise, the Bush administration posits a number of smaller predictions:

If we leave Iraq before restoring order, it will become a haven for terrorists – possibly Iranian-backed Shiites, possibly Syrian-sponsored Sunnis, possibly an al-Qaida-aligned group – who will have access to enormous reserves of Iraqi oil and, in turn, piles of money to ply their deadly trade.

If Iraq were to fall into the hands of extremists, they would spread their menace in the already-fractious Mideast, making a bad situation worse.

If we fail to finish what we started in Iraq, there are people in this world who want nothing more than to do America harm and who, from our failure, will take heart that America lacks the patience and the will for long slogs, that she is more sprinter than marathon runner, and if you run the right race, she can be beat.

To McGovern these apocalyptic arguments sound strikingly familiar. "All of those things, I heard them 35 years ago."

In Vietnam when public sentiment for the war started to wilt, McGovern says, President Nixon and his administration claimed that if America did not continue to stand against communist North Vietnam, there would be a bloodbath of unimaginable proportion in South Vietnam. In addition, if South Vietnam fell, all of Southeast Asia would subsequently fall to communism as well. And finally, McGovern says, the Nixon administration warned that if America gave up in Vietnam, it would be fighting communists on its own shores and in its own cities.

None of those dire prophecies, says McGovern, came to pass. There was no genocide. No dominoes fell. No communists stormed the beaches of San Diego. "None of that happened."

McGovern says flawed assumptions kept America in Vietnam, and now they are keeping America in Iraq. But the former history professor insists this is nothing new.

In an essay soon after the War in Iraq began, McGovern cited the following observation of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy: "And what an immense mass of evil must result, and indeed does result, from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen."

Mountains have been scaled, riches have been won, cures have been found based on assumption. What great achievement of man, in fact, didn't have assumption at its heart? To risk one's self –- either one's livelihood or one's life – on chance or prospect or expectation or likelihood or even confidence is one thing. War, however, is a different matter, says McGovern. In war the risk of destruction or death extends to the lives of others, he says, and to run that risk based on assumption, on what might happen, on crystal ball conjecture, on ifs, is perilous. Yet man often does it anyway.

In World War II McGovern piloted a B-24 Liberator on 35 combat missions in Europe. "I saw people die in front of my eyes. I saw planes go down in flames."

It is this knowledge of war, this wisdom born of hard experience that prompted McGovern during his 1972 presidential campaign to say, "I'm sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars in which young men do the dying," and which prompts him today to speak out against the War in Iraq.

For his efforts he draws the barbs of the vice president, who at the end of his speech before the Heritage Foundation had this to say: "Although the current political environment in our country carries echoes of the hard left in the early '70s, America will not again play out those old scenes of abandonment and retreat and regret. Thirty-five years is time enough to have learned the lessons of that sad era. When the United States turns away from our friends, only tragedy can follow, and the lives and hopes of millions are lost forever."

The tragedy of Vietnam, says McGovern, was not what happened after the war but what happened during it. More than 58,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese died. He says to suggest – as Cheney does – that America's withdrawal from Vietnam was a mistake is to miss the point. Although America did not prevail, its exit ended the killing and commenced the repair.

McGovern acknowledges there are differences between Vietnam and Iraq. If America were to leave, he says, the result in Iraq would be utter chaos. On that he and President Bush concur. But McGovern says chaos is the condition in Iraq now, and if anything, America's presence there is only serving to stoke the inferno with jet fuel.

Like Vietnam to a large degree, McGovern believes it might take a generation for Iraq to straighten itself out. Nor does he deny that the country has become ground zero for terrorists. He does not submit, however, to the consequent Bush administration theory that absent America, the bedlam in Iraq will spill into neighboring Arab nations, poisoning the peace that exists there. The way McGovern sees it, the war in Iraq is at its core an internal divide, and those waging it have enough on their hands.

To what precipitated this current American crisis, McGovern is not blind. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism was indeed exported to this nation. The Avon native admits the possibility exists that it could happen again. Yet is that possibility enough to continue the sacrifice of young American men – 3,300 of whom have died so far and more each week?

That seems to be the overarching question as America enters its fifth year in Iraq, and to it, McGovern's answer is no. "We can't leave now, we can't leave now," was the battle cry in Vietnam, recalls McGovern. "And, of course, that is the battle cry in Iraq."