interview with
George McGovern
George McGovern Was Right About
the Vietnam War -
And He's Right About the Iraq War
Buzzflash
www.buzzflash.com, July 26, 2006
"Let me say that one thing that Richard
Perle and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have in common is that
none of them have ever been near a combat scene. They're perfectly
willing to send younger people -- other people's sons -- into
war. They're very generous with that blood of the young men and
women that they throw into combat so casually. But they've protected
their blood and their limbs by never serving near a battlefield.
That's true of the President. It's true of the Vice President.
It's true of Perle and Wolfowitz -- that whole crowd of neo-conservatives
that have the ear of the President."
Former Senator George McGovern and 1972
Democratic Candidate for President
He's 82 now and America still owes him
his due.
Unlike GOP Chickenhawks Dick Cheney and
George Bush, George McGovern was a decorated combat veteran. He
knew war -- and he knew the Vietnam War was a waste of American
life.
Thousands of American lives would have
been saved -- and millions of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotians
would not have died had George McGovern been elected president
in 1972. Many Democrats tremble at being called a "McGovern"
candidate, and the Republicans keep bringing up his loss to Nixon
as some sort of "warning" of what will happen to Democratic
liberals.
But the warning should be to the Republicans.
What Republican or Democrat, in retrospect, could successfully
make the argument that Nixon's election in 1972 was preferable
to the election of George McGovern?
Nixon ultimately resigned in disgrace,
holding drunken prayer sessions with Henry Kissinger on the Oval
Office carpet -- and Gerald Ford, under the guidance of two White
House staffers named Rumsfeld and Cheney, then authorized a chaotic
end to the failed war.
Some analysts argue that Rumsfeld and
Cheney are still trying to avenge their oversight of an ignominious
end to a devastating, futile war.
George McGovern was a senator from South
Dakota when he ran against Nixon. They don't elect wild-eyed radicals
up that way. Just take a look at Tom Daschle.
The nation would been have well-served
if McGovern had become president. Many more young men would have
returned home to their families, instead of having their names
end up among the thousands on the Vietnam memorial in Washington,
D.C.
That, of course, is why we turned to former
Senator McGovern for his perspective on the war in Iraq.
* * *
BuzzFlash: Many of the people involved
in the war with Iraq actually trace their political roots back
to the period when you ran for President. If you look at Cheney
and Rumsfeld, they were assistants to President Ford when the
Vietnam War was finally ended, when U.S. troops chaotically evacuated
Vietnam. What is your thought about any comparisons that might
be made between the architects of the Vietnam War and the architects
of the Iraq War?
George McGovern: Well, they're quite similar
in the very sense that you combined military solutions to political
and social problems, and that's how they have both had such difficulties.
We couldn't win the war in Vietnam, not
because we lacked military power, but because we were allied with
a corrupt regime in South Vietnam that had lost the confidence
of the people there. And because we were trying to argue that
we could defeat the guerilla forces there with napalm and with
strategic bombing and using chemical warfare -- it just didn't
work. Finally we decided, after many, many years, to withdraw.
In Iraq, you have a similar situation
in that we have easily defeated the official Iraqi Army. But now
we have this band of guerillas fanned out across the country who
are picking off our troops one at a time -- sometimes two or three
at a time. I think we'll eventually get tired of that and decide
to withdraw. In that sense, it's quite similar to our experience
in Vietnam.
BuzzFlash: Let's put labels aside -- liberal,
progressive, right wing, conservative. On BuzzFlash, we often
make the argument that it's not the political label that counts
in assessing the Iraq or Vietnam wars. The reality is that these
wars are simply inept strategic judgments that have led to ruinous
results. Those who support the war tend to say: Well, if you don't
support the war, you are in favor of Communists, as in the case
of Vietnam War, or, with Iraq, that you are in the favor of terrorists.
Our argument is U.S. power has to be used
thoughtfully, and these are basically sort of ham-fisted efforts
to appear to be powerful that are doomed to failure. In Vietnam
now, American businesses are competing to participate in what
has become a sort of an emerging capitalist economy. What did
we accomplish by fighting there and losing over 55,000 men and
women that we wouldn't have achieved by letting the country naturally
evolve?
George McGovern: Well, you're absolutely
right about that -- that as far back as 1945, Ho Chi Minh tried
to work out a negotiated deal with the United States to support
the movement that he led for an independent Vietnam. He didn't
want to be controlled by the French, which they were for a hundred
years. He certainly didn't want to be controlled by the Japanese.
And he and his men helped spirit some of the American pilots who
were shot down over the Vietnamese jungle in World War II back
to their homeland -- some of my fellow pilots that survived the
War because of Ho Chi Minh's cooperation were with us in slowing
up the Japanese.
At that point, we should have recognized
him. We'd have had the same kind of constructive and peaceful
relationships at that time that we now have going on, but without
killing 2,000,000 Vietnamese and losing 58,000 young Americans.
I think the same procedures could have been used in Iraq. Saddam
Hussein was a miserable S.O.B. We all know that. But he wasn't
much of a threat to anybody after he was thrown out of Kuwait.
And for the next 10 years, he never stuck his big toe beyond the
borders of Iraq. So I think we should have tried to work out some
kind of an understanding with him while strenuously objecting
to the way he treated his own people, but not to put an American
army in there.
The President keeps talking about the
Iraqi terrorist danger. It's a danger because we have an American
army in Iraq to be shot at by the guerillas and by the terrorists.
If we had not gone in there militarily, I think in due course
we could have worked out an arrangement with Iraq on a peaceful
basis.
BuzzFlash: Why do you think the Republicans
are so successful at focusing their argument? Some people say,
in fact, that what we have here is the Republicans revenge over
the final evacuation in 1975 from Vietnam and that this is their
reassertion of American power. Why is it that Republicans seem
to be able to put people on the defensive like yourself, or Howard
Dean, or people opposed to the Iraq war because strategically
it's just plain dumb?
The Republicans seems to have the upper
hand. At least polls show people trust them more with national
security. And yet we would argue -- you would and BuzzFlash would
-- that basically they weaken us in national security because
they pick the wrong fights with tremendous loss of life, billions
of dollars in expenses, and tremendous collateral damage. And
we end up nowhere on the other side of their failed wars. The
Vietnam War was a complete waste.
George McGovern: It was a complete waste.
I don't feel I can estimate on the total cost of that Vietnam
War, but let's say it runs to some $600 billion. That's six times
the size of the entire U.S. budget when I was serving in the Senate
-- we blew that whole thing on a stupid, ill-advised military
campaign in Vietnam that did nothing but kill people on both sides.
I was in Vietnam a couple of years ago
in conjunction with my work as Ambassador to the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Agency, and I was received in such a friendly
way, as were other Americans traveling with me. After I spoke
to the group, I answered their questions for about 20 or 30 minutes.
And then I said, "Now I'd like to ask a question. Why is
it that you Vietnamese have been so friendly to the United States
since we took our army out of Vietnam? What about all the bombing,
the napalm, the chemical warfare that wiped out your crops and
so on? What about everything?"
They said, "Look, we never were against
the American people. Our fight was with your leaders. It was the
American people who forced an end to the war in Vietnam, and we
want to be your friends now as we did in the historical past."
Well, I think we're up against the same
foolish mistake today in Iraq. And I think we're going to come
to nothing but grief in that venture as more and more young Americans
are killed. What we accomplished by our invasion and that heavy
area of bombardment was to destroy their electricity, destroy
their water supplies, break up their bridges and their transportation
links. We turned that country into an economic mess. The reported
percent of the Iraqis unemployed before the war, in considerable
part because of the international boycott against any kind of
trade moving in or out of Iraq now -- it's 60 percent unemployed.
Imagine living in a country where your
house is bugged 24 hours, where you have no sanitary water, and
where you don't have a job. It's a climate of desperation, and
I tremble at the results it's going to produce. They're going
to recruit increasing numbers of people to serve as sharpshooters
and guerilla leaders and suicide bombers against our American
troops. It's not the fault of our troops. It's the fault of Bush
and Cheney, and Rumsfeld and this crowd that took us into this
war.
BuzzFlash: Rumsfeld and Cheney, as I mentioned,
go back to the battle over who lost Vietnam -- quote, unquote
-- and one of the chief advisors here to the Bush Administration,
Richard Perle, was an advisor to Scoop Jackson. Now did he run
against you in the '72 primary -- Jackson? Or was that later?
George McGovern: Yes. His chief advisor
was Richard Perle. He'd been around forever. And I found over
the years that just about everything he says is dead wrong and
damaging to the best interests of the United States.
BuzzFlash: He's got a relatively obscure
appointed position on the advisory board of the Defense Department.
But in an unprecedented way, he goes around the world speaking
on behalf of the administration and ticking off allies, saying
the French are horrible people. Have you ever seen anything like
this? He's not a cabinet member; he's just on this so-called advisory
board.
George McGovern: Let me say that one thing
that Richard Perle and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have in
common is that none of them have ever been near a combat scene.
They're perfectly willing to send younger people -- other people's
sons -- into war. They're very generous with that blood of the
young men and women that they throw into combat so casually. But
they've protected their blood and their limbs by never serving
near a battlefield. That's true of the President. It's true of
the Vice President. It's true of Perle and Wolfowitz -- that whole
crowd of neo-conservatives that have the ear of the President.
And it makes me furious to see people
like that beating their chests on how patriotic they are, waving
the flag, glorifying God, while young Americans are needlessly
being sacrificed in wars that they have devised, not our troops.
These theorists sit around dreaming up wars for young men to die
in.
BuzzFlash: Have you read or seen the documentary
on the trials of Henry Kissinger?
George McGovern: I read some of the articles
on that subject.
BuzzFlash: In the book and in the documentary,
there is proof -- not just an accusation or an assumption -- but
actual documents that were released under FOIA which showed that
Henry Kissinger, in 1968, helped the Nixon Administration undercut
the Paris peace negotiations -- that then President Johnson was
about to finalize -- by telling the Premier of South Vietnam not
to go along with them, and to wait until Nixon was elected, and
that they would continue the battle against North Vietnam. Once
Nixon came to power, more young men died in Vietnam once he assumed
office than before.
George McGovern: I think it was actually
40 percent of our total casualties occurred in the Nixon Administration,
and that's too many. That's 40 percent that never should have
died because Nixon came into office in January of '69 after campaigning
on the pledge that he had a secret plan to end the war.
The secret plan turned out to be Vietnamizing
the war on the ground -- that is, putting more of the load to
the ground fighting on the Vietnamese while we accelerated with
strategic bombing. So there were probably more Vietnamese killed
during that Nixon period than during all the preceding years.
BuzzFlash: My point is that Kissinger
helped the Nixon campaign of 1968 undercut what could have been
at least a halt to the war through the Paris peace negotiations
at the time.
George McGovern: I really can't comment
on that because I just don't know. I don't know what Kissinger's
role was in that. What I do know is that he and Nixon needlessly
prolonged that war for years after they assumed office. And about
'69 until '75, Nixon and Kissinger together, and then Kissinger,
after Nixon left -- they literally prolonged that war for five
years beyond any reasonable limit.
BuzzFlash: You're a pilot from World War
II. You flew in combat. You were a Democratic Senator from South
Dakota, which is a fairly conservative state. How did the Republicans
then and now marginalize you? You seemed like such a common-sense
person and you were right about Vietnam and many other issues,
and they made you seem like such an extremist, to the extent that
even now, the conventional wisdom -- and you hear this from these
well-paid media shills who fashion themselves pundits -- is that
the Democrats in Washington are worried that Howard Dean is "another
McGovern." Regardless of the extent of your electoral loss,
the implication is somehow that you were this flaming radical,
when in reality, you were right.
George McGovern: That's the point. Just
about every American would now agrees that those of us who opposed
the war in Vietnam, well, we were right. I don't worry about the
nitpickers who go around saying that we sold out the country.
I don't believe that. I think that most Americans know we were
right. And what angers the Republicans is that they know that
we were right.
BuzzFlash: Bush has been someone who grew
up with a sense of entitlement, and made all these messes in his
life, and Daddy would come and help him out of business. And Daddy
helped him get his job with the Texas Rangers, where he finally
made his money after making a mess of everything else. Now he's
made a mess in Iraq. What can be done? It's another Bush mess
waiting for someone else to clean it up.
George McGovern: Well, the irony of that
is that when his father decided we had to take the lead in getting
the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, he went to the
Congress for authorization. He went to the United Nations for
authorization. He got it in both of those cases. He went to the
European Union. He went to the Arab League. He even had the countries
like Switzerland and Sweden that ordinarily remain neutral on
board. He had the whole world behind him, and only then would
he order American forces into Iraq. The result was that we ended
that war in just a few days' time, and we sent Saddam Hussein
and his army packing, and left them behind his own borders for
the last 10 years, bothering no one outside of Iraq. Why we needed
to send the American army in there is beyond my comprehension.
George
McGovern page
Home Page