Vietnam

Lefty Jew Jeffrey Blankfort offers the same diagnosis as I have for the tepidness of the antiwar movement, the absence of Jews from the vanguard this time round.

Historically, [Jews] have funded the Left... They were the major funders of the Civil Rights Movement. They were the funders of the anti-war movement during the Viet Nam War. If people were arrested, and they needed bail, progressive Jews provided the bail, and the lawyers were mostly Jewish... Going back into the thirties, you have Jews active in the unions, active in every radical movement. That's the tradition I grew up in. It no longer exists. As a matter of fact, it's been erased from Jewish history. Young Jews growing up in America today have no idea of the Jewish radical past in this country.

Blankfort points to the same problem I have pointed to, the Israel lobby, which saw crushing Iraq as in Israel's interest. But I'd like to throw in another factor: class. Since Vietnam, Jews have risen dramatically in American society. My people are now implicated in the power structure in ways we never imagined in the '60s. Back then Jews who joined the antiwar movement thought of themselves as outsiders in American life. Most of the white Columbia U. radicals, for instance Mark Rudd, the late Ted Gold, the imprisoned David Gilbert, Bob Feldman—were Jewish kids from middle class backgrounds who felt alienated from a warmaking establishment.

Rudd, born Rudnitsky (his dad changed the name to advance in the military), writes in an essay on the Jewishness of the radicals:

What outraged me and my comrades so much about Columbia, along with its hypocrisy, was the air of genteel civility. Or should I say gentile? Despite the presence of so many Jews in the faculty and among the students.. the place was dripping with goyishness... We were peasant children right out of the shtetls of New Jersey and Queens screaming, "You want to know the truth about Columbia University, they're a bunch of liberal imperialists! " Morally and emotionally we could not fit into the civilized world of the racist, defense-oriented modern university. Such was our ordeal of civility.

Today's Jewish world is not the shtetl. We have assimilated, we are the American success story. Morally and emotionally, Jewish kids tend to identify with blue-state powers-that-be. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions that prove the rule: as a body we have little class interest in challenging the assumptions of the (corrupt!) ruling class that got us into this disastrous war.

The war is too small for the stink of confusion and defeat to percolate out very far from Washington  read more »

The war is too small for the stink of confusion and defeat to percolate out very far from Washington  read more »

What may be remembered someday as one of the strangest moments of George W.  read more »

Rockefeller Center installs its Christmas tree tomorrow! And we're leading up to Veteran's Day..

There will be an unveiling of tribute panels honoring Vietnam War heroes at Vietnam Veterans Plaza, otherwise known as 55 Water Street.

A new WWII Veterans Memorial Plaza at Queens College will have its dedication ceremony in Flushing.

France presents the Legion of Honor award to WWII veterans at the French Consulate General.

Princeton University hosts a conference on "The Future Role of the United Nations in the Middle East" featuring U.N. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and U.N. ambassadors from Iraq, Iran, and Israel at the Princeton Club.

Urban Tech unveils a reality-based AIDS/STD course for high school students at the Fredrick Douglas Academy.

The Long Island Housing Partnership holds its 5th Annual Chairman's Symposium on inclusionary zoning at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury.

Update: Lewis Lapham and Gary Younge discuss "Creating a Real Opposition Force in American Politics" at the New School. —Nicole Brydson

Admitting failure is a healthy sign. Talking about "growing doubts about the Iraq war" for three years running, and issuing reports that "We have just a few months to correct the problems," again and again and again, is to be mired in self-delusion and stupidity.

Admitting that it's a failure means we can actually come up with a better policy.

Admitting it was a mistake will shed the scales of denial and align us with world opinion—in the same way that admitting you're an alcoholic during an intervention aligns you with the opinion of all your friends;

Admitting it was a mistake will win hearts and minds around the world, suggesting that the U.S. is after all a beacon of freedom.

Admitting it was a mistake will at last permit the tumbrils to travel down the cobbled streets of Georgetown to the guillotines by the river. As it is, a lot of people are holding on to fancy jobs notwithstanding the greatest error of judgment since Vietnam. The White House's admitting it was a mistake will force them to admit it was a mistake too, or lose their heads. There will be confessions and embraces. Tears will run through the streets of 20036, statues will be erected commemorating the 11 freelance writers who opposed the war. It will be a great show, and maybe restore authority to editorial writers and the Brookings Institution;

Admitting it was a mistake will at last shut up the pious Democrats who voted for the war and now insist that Rumsfeld simply mishandled it—as though putting 500,000 soldiers in a foreign country, rather than 263,000, to install a new form of government, was genius;

Admitting it was a mistake will make the American Enterprise Institute the new Alcatraz;

As Laura and Papa Bush surely know, George Bush might actually get a legacy if he admitted that Iraq was a mistake; as it is, he has stubbornly set himself up for twisting around in this psychopolitical glue trap forever, insisting into his old age that he did the right thing, or, at best, writing a book like Robert McNamara's Vietnam mea culpa—too late for anyone to be helped by it. (James Baker should lead the intervention.)

Admitting it was a mistake will save lives...

I think that's about a million reasons. I'll think of some more later...

Only live to a great age and you can become a hero. For much of his life, I.F.  read more »

The New Republic this week has a snidely-vicious attack on John Murtha as the destroyer of the Democratic party's hopes for November. The article reflects TNR's belief that the war in Iraq is a good thing, and underscores the deep divisions within the Democratic party over Iraq. It also demonstrates a key difference between Vietnam and Iraq. During Vietnam, opposition to the war was most fervent among those who might have to go there: Students. Back then writers at the TNR or their friends were actually in danger of serving in the war; they were against it.

This time around, there's no possibility that meritocrats or their children will have to serve in the war, and opposition to the war is again strongest among those who actually have to go there: The military. Consider these facts:

—Murtha, the leader of the Get out of Iraq movement, is a Vietnam vet who has derived moral force from his visits to veterans' hospitals;

—The other most prominent antiwar voice belongs to a military family member: Cindy Sheehan;

—The lead lawyer arguing for the Supreme Court reversal of the Bush Administration's war tribunals procedure was a Navy Lieutenant Commander, Charles Swift; —Last month the Naval War College defied congressional opposition in inviting Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer, leading academic critics of the Iraq war (and Mearsheimer is a former Air Force officer) to speak at the school, where they got a receptive audience;

—This spring the Bush Administration shifted its militant Iran policy to a softer, working-with-Europe policy after a virtual palace coup of retired generals came out to question the policy; —"Before the war began, the [former] Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki said that it would take 500,000 troops to stabilize the country, and [Paul] Wolfowitz told him, 'I think that's wildly off the mark.' I never heard a chief of staff reproved in that way by a civilian. But he didn't pull that figure out of the air. I am sure that Shinseki had a six-foot-high stack of Army estimates. We still haven't seen those studies."—Daniel Ellsberg (in New York Magazine).

—The strongest critic of Dick Cheney has been Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, an opponent of the Iraq war who has described the vice president as a "paranoid" after 9/11.

—Vietnam vet John Kerry recently recanted his support for the war and has drawn support from an upstart movement within the Democratic party that again derives its power from the disillusionment of veterans.

What I'm saying is that the moral force of the antiwar movement today comes from the military. And maybe intellectual force too: They are hungriest for new ideas about how to deal with the clash of cultures, they are most skeptical of the neocons, or most willing to speak out against their deluded program, c.f. Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. They are open to discussion of the Israel lobby, something the mainstream media has difficulty engaging. Their liability is that the military are not politically organized. A good thing, that. But daily the number of veterans of good wars goes down, while the number of veterans of bad ones goes up. Their voices will only get louder.

No Draft, No Winds Of Change

To the Editor:  read more »

No Draft, No Winds Of Change   To the Editor:    read more »

If anyone asks you why this is a great country, tell them this story.

Yesterday the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, opened its annual conference on international strategy with a speech from the Navy Secretary in a vast hall, followed by a panel on American power composed of three scholars, all of whom had opposed the war in Iraq. Indeed, in the biographical notes that were given out to the audience of officers—men and women wearing their dress whites—one of the scholars stated bluntly that he had written about the "folly of invading Iraq."

For an hour the panelists gave their reasons for why they believe America will remain the most powerful country in the world well into this century, regardless of the morass in Iraq. There were about ten questions. The last one was from a Navy commander named Cladgett from Syracuse, who rose in the middle of the audience.

"My question to the panel is, What is the path to success in Iraq?"  read more »

It would be nice to think that with the release of the new extended cut of Casualties of War, Brian  read more »

It would be nice to think that with the release of the new extended cut of Casualties of War, Brian  read more »

By 1966, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.  read more »

By 1966, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.  read more »

Are New Yorkers ready to fight the Vietnam War yet again?  read more »

Are New Yorkers ready to fight the Vietnam War yet again?

   read more »

“I think I’ve a terrible defect,” said Robert B.  read more »

On WNYC with Brian Lehrer this morning, Freddy seemed a bit edgy.

Brian asked him to explain how the Iraq war directly impacts New Yorkers' daily lives and, while Freddy lamented "the toll in human life and national wealth," peppering his reply with references to Vietnam, he wouldn't really go there. Brian nudged him to elaborate, but he wouldn't address a concrete impact on local services or security.

Freddy also got a little antsy on the topic of development, after Brian played a clip of him addressing the Atlantic Yards Project during a June interview:

[clip]"The Towers I do support, it's a very powerful agreement with the city and with the Ratner organization. Fifty percent affordable housing; look, you can't say you believe in affordable housing and reject that. However, I still hold that we shouldn't be using public dollars for private stadiums, and we certainly should be getting the full, the maximum value for the development rights over the Atlantic Yards... I've talked a great many of the people over there, and I think what they're opposed to is the lack of transparency in dealing here."

"Well, thank you Brian for reminding folks that I've been consistent on this!" Freddy said testily, when the clip was done. He emphasized the ongoing problems of transparency in the project, and restated his committment to affordable housing there.

"We ought to call a halt to this right now, call a halt to this entire project and revaluate it," he concluded.  read more »

Towards the end, Brian mentioned the Hoy endorsement, which went to Mayor Bloomberg.

"I mean should a Latino get all the Latinos? Should an Asian get all the Asians? We're a bigger and better city than that, don't you think?" he replied.

Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, from a screenplay by William Broyles Jr., based on the book by Anthony Swoffo  read more »

Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, from a screenplay by William Broyles Jr., based on the book by Anthony Sw  read more »

My Father the Spy: An Investigative Memoir, by John H. Richardson.  read more »

My Father the Spy is a tracking down of the old man, who’s poised somewhere between public and  read more »

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John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics, by Richard Parker.  read more »

A female soldier in fatigues stands at a phone booth, starkly framed against a clean, white U.S.  read more »

With the Fire Department of New York once again under fire for its lack of minority firefighters-the  read more »

"You can't be sure of how the trial will go," said longtime Manhattan civil-rights attorney Ramsey C  read more »

Sapa, a new restaurant on a dingy block in Chelsea, is named after a mountain town in North Vietnam,  read more »

The war thought safely over bit John Kerry anew this week, just when he was beginning to nudge ahead  read more »

Agnès Jaoui’s Comme une Image ( Look at Me), from a screenplay by Ms.  read more »

Still heated by John Kerry’s performance in Coral Gables, Fla., the night before, a couple of hund  read more »

1) The Fog of WarDo you recall the haunting incantatory refrain of that Charlie Daniels song: "Still  read more »

You can be forgiven for feeling good.If you don't look at the polls (or The New York Times ' best-se  read more »

Republicans and protesters still roam the media capital of the nation-which is good for John Kerry,  read more »

Remember Bob Dole?You know, the guy from the Viagra commercials, who used to be U.S.  read more »

"The carrying of a weapon, for whatever reason, jeopardizes a journalist's status as a neutral," The  read more »

Every rare once in a while, a moment comes along that soperfectly sums a mind-set, nothing's left to  read more »

Shortly after sunset on a recent May evening, in an Upper East Side apartment cluttered with tchotch  read more »

The condemnation of Lynndie England, the abuser of prisoners, in some ways echoes the exaltation a y  read more »

Hardly anybody is speaking of it, and then only in a whisper, but President Bush, his administration  read more »

On an April night in Washington 33 years ago, a tall, slender man in navy combat fatigues tapped me  read more »

In recent weeks, even Senator John Kerry's closest friends have been at a loss as to why the Democra  read more »

Whenyou celebrate an author, i.e., Ann Coulter, who asserts that anyone to the left  read more »

Finding the bottom of American politics these days is as easy as looking up the latest column by Ann  read more »

George W. Bush lied about his military service record.  read more »

No one can accept that an imperial army has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty o  read more »

It is perhaps ironic that Maya Lin, architect and designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washi  read more »

Who tried to negotiate a pipeline deal with the Taliban AFTER they blew up the buddhas and forced je  read more »

Errol Morris seemed a little worried on his recent visit to New York, but I don't think he should be  read more »