The more things change, the saying goes, the more they remain the same. When the subject is American foreign policy, that old truism is often quite accurate; its truthfulness is on display in the Middle East at this very moment.
As was the case a half-century ago in Vietnam (Has it really been that long?), the US is once more bogged down in a foreign war with no end in sight. It’s not literally bogged down, of course, since no American troops are “in country” (though our navy is offshore), but bogged down policywise nevertheless, and the effect is the same.
Like Vietnam, America’s involvement in Israel’s Gaza war has placed us in the position of supporting one side in what is essentially an internal civil conflict. Like Vietnam, our stance is unpopular around the world; except for Britain, our Western allies are mostly against us. Like Vietnam, we’re complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians our client state has slaughtered with American-supplied weapons. (The latest figures as of May 1, courtesy of the PBS NewsHour, are 34,500 mostly noncombatant deaths in Gaza, of whom an estimated 10,000 are women and 13,000 are children.)
Like Vietnam, we’re propping up a corrupt, dictatorial hard-right government in the name of freedom and democracy. Like Vietnam, the rationale for American intervention is global big-power politics; Soviet and Chinese Communism was the real enemy then, Iranian Islamism today. And, like Vietnam, the effort is adding to an overstressed Treasury. About $15 billion of the recently enacted foreign-aid package signed by President Biden is for military assistance to Israel, so it can continue its offensive war of revenge against Hamas by obliterating Gaza.
Only a third of the latest Israeli arms consignment is truly for defense; this portion, according to the New York Times, includes $5 billion to replenish the country’s American-supplied high-tech shields against airborne attack (Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Iron Beam), which destroy incoming missiles, drones and rockets. By comparison, barely $1 billion has been budgeted for Gazan humanitarian aid, even with famine looming.
In this country, meanwhile, we have other reminders of Vietnam uncomfortably pressing in upon us. College and university campuses are in revolt again, as they were in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with familiar pejoratives being tossed around by supporters of the Gaza adventure and knee-jerk opponents of student activism. The phrase “outside agitator” is popular once more to discredit and vilify protesting demonstrators; the implication is they’re not really concerned students at all, but merely troublemakers bent on random destruction. Are there a few professional anarchists present? Of course, but as in the ‘60s, they’re a small, unrepresentative minority.
For me, personally, the current campus unrest has revived memories of 1969 and the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. Then, I shared a stage at one of the University of Maine’s branch campuses with the late actor and political activist Gary Merrill (“Twelve O’Clock High”), husband of Bette Davis and then a resident of Maine. I read some prepared remarks opposing the war, and, as I remember, Merrill added a selection of antiwar poems. We were just a couple of troublemaking outside agitators.
One of the routine charges made against student participants in today’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations is that of inciting violence. The same was said of antiwar protesters during Vietnam, with little justification. There were some undeniable incidents of property damage and a few physical altercations, mostly involving fringe radicals, but most of the violence was perpetrated by the authorities — Mayor Daley’s “police riot” at the 1968 Democratic convention, for instance. By contrast, the famous antiwar Moratorium march on the nation’s capital the following year drew 250,000 totally peaceful attendees.
The pro-Palestinian occupations have been similar: a few broken windows, some littering and overturned furniture, and the like. Except for occasional strong-arm tactics by law enforcement, most “violence” has been verbal: chanting, shouting, some pushing and shoving between contending groups.
But the official reaction has been close to hysterical. President Biden himself has been apparently unsettled by instances of “trespassing” and occupation of campus buildings. The worst example of violence, in fact, was an attack on the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA by self-described supporters of Israel, who physically assaulted occupying students, an incident downplayed by what seems to be a biased, largely pro-Israel mainstream media.
The Biden response to all this has been sadly predictable. He’s a member of my generation, the Vietnam generation, but uniquely among his politically oriented peers he never participated in any antiwar activities, being repulsed by them, as he admitted in his memoir “Promises to Keep” (2007), preferring instead to stay on the straight-and-narrow career path to law school.
The president’s dismissal of his contemporaries’ youthful idealism has carried over into his opinion of today’s protesters, whom he views with cavalier disregard. Apparently, standing on a street corner with a sign is alright, as long as no one is inconvenienced or pays attention, but step across a Bidenesque red line and there will be consequences.
One glaring homefront difference between Vietnam and Gaza — so different it literally defines the existing situation — is the charge of antisemitism directed at pro-Palestinian demonstrators because they harshly criticize Israel, which the president views as unacceptable. He’s internalized what the Times calls the US State Department definition of the word antisemitic (endorsed by various countries and some Jewish organizations) — that speaking ill of the State of Israel is in and of itself antisemitic, exposing those who do so to sanctions.
This illogical conflation of anti-Zionism (opposition to Israel’s regional expansionist policies) and antisemitism (opposition to Jews as an ethnicity), which most liberal Jews themselves disavow, theoretically makes all actions against Israeli government policy, such as boycotts, morally out of bounds. This would include a main demand of student protesters: divestment of university endowment investments in companies profiting from business dealings with Israel.
Nevertheless, Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed Zionist, evidently accepts the argument. So do cynical pro-Netanyahu Republicans in Congress. So, too, many “woke” academic administrators seeking to punish campus demonstrators for anti-Zionist commentary (as opposed to antisemitic hate speech) that might disturb the sensibilities of Jewish students.
They should all know better. The Republicans, who never cared much about Israel until its current right-wing government took office, probably do.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2024
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