The
grownups, who also ran the government, the TV networks, the corporations, and
the domestic households, and the opinion polls, were shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that the American
government had been lying to them about the Vietnam War. Lying about the reason
we got into it, the phony Tonkin Gulf provocation, the justifications offered
by successive administrations -- Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon -- not only to continue
an evilly stupid war but double down on the failed policy by sending more and
more troops, bombing more and more roads and cities in both Vietnams and
neighboring countries. And to offer dangerously paranoid and self-defeating
myths like "the domino theory" to justify a vast expansion of death
and destruction.
JFK
knew that an American military intervention in Vietnam was a poor military
gamble, but decided it was politically impossible to admit the truth publicly in
an election year. His party could not afford to appear 'weak' in the face of
Communism.
That
is, in order to maintain an appearance -- the illusion that 'anti-Communism'
justified any sacrifice -- more American soldiers -- not to mention Vietnamese
-- would have to die.
This
was the same choice, made on purely partisan political grounds by LBJ and
Nixon: to preserve a politically
convenient illusion -- and evade an inconvenient truth -- human beings must die
in great numbers and countries far from America must be destroyed.
I
can see why anyone, for whom this revelation was news, would be disturbed to
learn it.
But
for people like me, the 'kids' of the anti-Vietnam War protests -- however
strange it is to recall that angry youthful perspective -- what the
"grown-ups" were doing or thinking had long ceased to matter.
Of
course -- we knew -- the war was
unwinnable, undertaken on a fraudulent basis, and wholly immoral. Of course the
idea of trying to impose our ideas on a country and people we knew nothing
about "in the name of anti-Communism" was both wrong and stupid.
Of
course the North Vietnamese 'enemy' we slandered as 'Communist' was seen
primarily as a 'nationalist' and
anti-imperialist force for freedom and self-determination by the majority of
the Vietnamese people.
And
of course the Vietnamese people would go on resisting our attacks, no matter
how costly we made the war for them, just as patriotic Americans had resisted
the overpowering might of the British Empire in the determination to be free
of foreign domination. In
all likelihood North Vietnam was likely to outlast us, just as our determined
Patriots of the 18th century had outlasted the domineering British Empire.
And
-- most certain of all -- of course the political leaders of the corrupt older
generation -- our presidents, our generals;
our perfidious FBI director -- have all along been lying to the American public
about the nature and conduct of the war, and why more and more Americans had
been sent there to kill and die.
I
never glanced at the Pentagon Papers when revealing portions of them were
published by newspapers in 1971. Never read the New York Times' initial story on
their existence after someone handed this heavily "classified
document" over to that paper.
Didn't
follow the story when the government got a court injunction to prevent the Times
from publishing any further parts or information from the infamously
long-concealed analysis of a failed American policy. Or pay attention when the
Washington Post, having been given another copy of the hijacked Pentagon Papers,
began publishing them --
...
and when Nixon's government took the Post to court for publishing
"important government secrets" as well -- succeeded in winning a
Supreme Court judgment in favor of the right of a free press to publish the
truth despite the government's desire to suppress its dirty secrets.
Unimportant
to me then. Because, as I said, these facts were what we protestors believed (knew) all along.
But
both astonishing -- and wholly moving -- to me now.
Being
now, of course, and for a very long time, one of the 'grown-ups.' And grown-ups
need their illusions; or, you might call them, their 'stories.'
Which
made Spielberg's recent movie about the release of the Pentagon Papers,
"The Post," which Anne and I finally got around to seeing, so much
fun.
The
high points: Meryl Streep's portrayal of Katharine Graham, publisher of the
Washington Post, as she hesitantly seats herself in a conference room with 25
men in identical black suits as they discuss taking her company public. This
is the 'grown-up' world of 1971: We had such a long way to go. How far have we
come?
Reporters
working from pay phones trying to write down a crucial phone number while
stuffing more quarters into the phone. (It's still hard to write down all the
info while talking on the phone.)
Tom
Hank's Ben Bradlee, the Post's editor, lounging in his glass office while he
worries aloud to reporters that New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan has
"got something."
What
Sheehan 'got' was a copy of a multi-volume study commissioned by the Defense
Department back in 1968 to analyze the decision-making process that led to
massive US troop commitments to a disastrous military adventure in Vietnam.
The
expression on Matthew Rhys's face (the lead in "The Americans"),
playing Daniel Ellsburg when he realizes that Defense secretary Robert
McNamara, who knows the war is a disaster, is saying exactly the opposite to a
group of American reporters. Ellsburg then decides to steal bound copies of the
highly-secret study and copy them, eventually leaking them to the Times.
The
Post reporter played by Bob Odenkirk ("Better Call Saul") being chased
down by a Post company lawyer and forced to admit that his copy of the Pentagon
Papers may have come from the same source that leaked them to the Times. If so,
that would make the Post vulnerable to a charge of "violating the
government secrets act."
And
of course, Graham's courageous decision to allow Bradlee to begin releasing the
papers in her newspaper at great legal and financial risk to the future of a
newspaper founded by her father -- because the American people needed to know
the truth about what their government's leaders (including her close personal friend
McNamara) had done and the self-serving, spectacularly immoral reasons for
doing it.
And
-- what I can only appreciate now and was unable to appreciate back then -- the
Suprem Court's decision to reject the government's pleas to keep the Pentagon Papers
secret because the U.S. Constitution guarantees to the American people the
right of the free press.
That
decision came too late to save all the lives wasted by the political crimes
committed by America's leaders.
But
it cemented the press's right to try to prevent similar ones.
Which
is where we are now, when a current pretender to the office of POTUS threatens to
start a nuclear war to distract people from paying attention to his other
corrupt acts.
Leading
to a few questions:
Why
are there still so many government secrets? (What I really feel is 'why are
there any?')
Why,
after the "lessons of Vietnam" did America's government get away with
starting another absurdly unnecessary war in Iraq, displacing a million Iraqis,
killing, arresting and injuring them by the hundreds of thousands, and killing
and maiming thousands of American troops?
Where
are the Pentagon Papers for that atrociously costly disaster?
Why
do America's laws still protect the policy-makers of torture and death in the
Middle East -- some of whom were recently appointed to high positions by the
current maggot in the White House?
Why
do our laws still prosecute those who bring the truth to light by making public
certain perfidious "classified secrets"?
Why
does the American public not have a right to know everything done by government
officials in our name?
And
when the current scumbag-in-chief continues to go after newspapers, or TV
stations, or websites that expose his lies and crimes, in an attempt to silence
them...
will
American courts still be willing to protect a free press in the service of the
public good?
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