I Wrote Bush's War Words -- in 1965 (Daniel Ellsberg)

[Antigen]

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes000A.html


I Wrote Bush's War Words -- in 1965
By Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg worked in the State and Defense departments under
Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. He released the Pentagon
Papers to the press in 1971.

July 3, 2005

President Bush's explanation Tuesday night for staying the course in
Iraq evoked in me a sense of familiarity, but not nostalgia. I had
heard virtually all of his themes before, almost word for word, in
speeches delivered by three presidents I worked for: John F. Kennedy,
Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Not with pride, I recognized
that I had proposed some of those very words myself.

Drafting a speech on the Vietnam War for Defense Secretary Robert S.
McNamara in July 1965, I had the same task as Bush's speechwriters in
June 2005: how to rationalize and motivate continued public support
for a hopelessly stalemated, unnecessary war our president had lied
us into.

Looking back on my draft, I find I used the word "terrorist" about
our adversaries to the same effect Bush did.

Like Bush's advisors, I felt the need for a global threat to explain
the scale of effort we faced. For that role, I felt China was better
suited as our "real" adversary than North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, just
as Bush prefers to focus on Al Qaeda rather than Iraqi nationalists.
"They are trying to shake our will in Iraq - just as they [sic] tried
to shake our will on Sept. 11, 2001," he said.

My draft was approved by McNamara, national security advisor McGeorge
Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, but it was not delivered
because it was a clarion call for mobilizing the Reserves to support
an open-ended escalation of troops, as Johnson's military commanders
had urged.

LBJ preferred instead to lie at a news conference about the number of
troops they had requested for immediate deployment (twice the level
he announced), and to conceal the total number they believed
necessary for success, which was at least 500,000. (I take with a
grain of salt Bush's claim that "our commanders tell me they have the
number of troops they need to do their job.")

A note particularly reminiscent in Bush's speech was his reference to
"a time of testing." "We have more work to do, and there will be
tough moments that test America's resolve," he said.

This theme recalled a passage in my 1965 draft that, for reasons that
will be evident, I have never chosen to reproduce before. I ended by
painting a picture of communist China as "an opponent that views
international politics as a whole as a vast guerrilla struggle .
intimidating, ambushing, demoralizing and weakening those who would
uphold an alternative world order."

"We are being tested," I wrote. "Have we the guts, the grit, the
determination to stick with a frustrating, bloody, difficult course
as long as it takes to see it through..? The Asian communists are
sure that we have not." Tuesday, Bush said: Our adversaries "believe
that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent, and with a
few hard blows they can force us to retreat."

His speechwriters, like me, then faced this question from the other
side. To meet the enemy's test of resolve, how long must the American
public support troops as they kill and die in a foreign land? Their
answer came in the same workmanlike evasions that served Kennedy,
Johnson and Nixon: "as long as we are needed (and not a day longer) .
until the fight is won."

I can scarcely bear to reread my own proposed response in 1965 to
that question, which drew on a famous riposte by the late U.N.
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban missile crisis:

"There is only one answer for us to give. It was made . by an
American statesman . in the midst of another crisis that tested our
resolution. Till hell freezes over."

It doesn't feel any better to hear similar words from another
president 40 years on, nor will they read any better to his
speechwriters years from now. But the human pain they foretell will
not be mainly theirs.



"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary
act."-George Orwell



~~~~~

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of
authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was
made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.
There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to
govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be
masters."  -- Daniel Webster



~~~~~~~~

"Great empires cannot subsist without great armies, and liberty
cannot subsist with them." - Cato, anti-federalist

Life may have no meaning.  Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0912800909/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'>Ashleigh Brilliant

[Anonymous]

Cool, Daniel Ellsberg is exposing the propaganda machine.

"His speechwriters, like me, then faced this question from the other  
side. To meet the enemy's test of resolve, how long must the American  
public support troops as they kill and die in a foreign land? Their  
answer came in the same workmanlike evasions that served Kennedy,  
Johnson and Nixon: "as long as we are needed (and not a day longer) .  
until the fight is won." "

That last quote there is about how people say things that will trigger an automatic response from the people listening. Like people respond to "...as long as we are needed", and instead of thinking "What the hell kind of answer is that?" they are thinking "Yes, it is good to work for as long as you are needed. To do otherwise would be to let people down and fail at the task. that would go against my values. That's not good. The President won't let us do that, therefore what he is saying is good and he is a good leader."

This kind of speechwriting is clever, and it is a known fact that the Republicans spend a lot of money figuring stuff out like how to hijack the language and value system in order to persuade people.

[Anonymous]

This speech was Bush's lowest rated prime time speech yet. People are so fed up with his bullshit they won't even watch him anymore. 19 million people saw the speech. I was asleep 10 minutes into it... "Iraq, terrorist, democracy.. blah blah blah"

[Antigen]

On 2005-07-06 04:51:00, Anonymous wrote:

This kind of speechwriting is clever, and it is a known fact that the Republicans spend a lot of money figuring stuff out like how to hijack the language and value system in order to persuade people.

Rebublicans? Sure, technically true. So do Democrats and Socialists and Communists and monarchs, etc., etc.  

Don't kid yourself into thinking the next Dem admin will bring home all of our troops and quit the Empire business. They'd describe it differntly. They'll call it aid instead of invasion (as in Plan Colombia and Plan Bolivia). But it's all the same in the end.

It really puzzles me to see Marijuana connected with Narcotics - Dope and all that crap?it's a thousand times better than whiskey - it's an Assistant - a friend.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002ORZ/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'>Louis Armstrong

[Anonymous]

I am saying that I have heard that the Republicans, specifically, have spent a lot of money getting together, uniting their front, and figuring out how to hijack the language.

Refer to _Don't Think of an Elephant_ by George Lakoff. http://http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/elephant

[Antigen]

Oh, so have the Dems. They're particularly fond of hijacking the language at the elementary school level, while we're still learning it.


From: "Carl f. Worden"
Subject: BRING IT ON!!  -- Worden
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 11:48:00 -0700


BRING IT ON!

Carl F. Worden


"Bring it on!", remember that infamous Bushism?  Well, the Iraqi
Resistance brought it on, and it was blamed for a spike in American
casualties.  Here of late, we've heard the prez state that if we
don't fight the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, we'll have to
fight them here.  I've heard a number of other not-so deep thinkers
repeat that same absurdity, and I can't imagine what they are
thinking.

We fought the Japanese Army, Navy and Air Force island-to-island so
we wouldn't have to fight them on American soil.  We fought the
Germans in Europe so we wouldn't have to fight them here as well.
But to make such a statement about a guerrilla military/terrorist
force is to invite a reaction, and today's multiple bomb attacks on
Londoners during the peak of the morning rush hour was predictable.
Frankly, I'm surprised we didn't have a massive terrorist strike
somewhere here in America, and that is probably next.

It never ceases to amaze me just how stupid this president is.  Then
again, it never ceases to amaze me how stupid so many Americans are
to repeat an absurdity that suggests all of al Qaeda is in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and if we just stay the course of war in both nations,
the terrorists won't be able to get out and attack the U.S.A. or our
allies.  I'm sure when the terrorists heard that little boo-boo, they
said, "Oh yeah?  Watch this!".

The last report I saw indicated about 40 deaths and climbing, along
with around 700 wounded by a guerrilla force that somehow found the
time and opportunity to prove Bush and Rumsfeld wrong.  What is
terribly unfortunate is that too many people have to be shown the
error of their thinking by a harsh example like this.

Here in America, our president has done nothing whatsoever to
secure our northern and southern borders from illegal entry.  By
comparison, Britain is far more difficult to illegally enter, yet
they were the first ones to be hit by al Qaeda after Bush's speech.

I will once again repeat Worden's Rule of Guerrilla Warfare:  It is
impossible to militarily defeat a guerrilla force that is largely
supported by the general population, unless you are willing to
annihilate the general population.

Now, we know al Qaeda is not largely supported by the general
population of Great Britain, so the Brits might have a chance against
them.  But try to remember the Brits were unable to defeat the IRA
and finally resorted to a negotiated peace and cease-fire that
included allowing the IRA to remain armed.  That doesn't sound like a
victory to me.

We declared victory in Vietnam after 10 years and 58,000 American
lives lost, left, and within two years Saigon became Ho Chi Minh
City.  That doesn't sound like victory to me.

The Afghan Resistance went head-to-head with the powerful Russian
military in the desert, and kicked their butts back to Moscow.  Our
own guerrilla force, under the wise leadership of George Washington,
defeated the British military and sent them limping back to England.
And no matter how you want to look at the war in Iraq, the truth is
that our armed forces are fighting a guerrilla force that is largely
supported by the general population, and because we keep killing
non-combatant citizens in Iraq almost daily, that guerrilla force is
growing and getting ever more popular.

Now, I've seen it written that one indication of insanity is doing
something the exact same way over and over again, and expecting a
different result.  If anybody thinks we're going to get a different
result in Iraq than we did in Vietnam, they're just plain crazy.  We
tried the "free, democratic elections" thing in Vietnam.  The
Vietnamese people braved the Viet Cong and went out and voted.  There
was much hoopla in the press back then as well.  For some insane
reason, Bush thinks what didn't work in Vietnam will work in Iraq.
We made a big deal of building schools and whatnot during the Vietnam
War era, just like we're doing in Iraq.  It didn't ultimately work in
Vietnam, and it won't ultimately prevail in Iraq, either.

But there is one major difference that just revealed itself today,
and this time the guerrilla force has brought the war to the home of
the invader.  That tactic ultimately worked for the IRA in its fight
against Britain, so I'm curious to see how that tactic plays out
if successful terrorist attacks are carried out in homeland America.
You see, we've been made a lot of untested promises about the
effectiveness of this new Department of Homeland Security, and I
already know how easy it is to kill thousands of Americans
in coordinated strikes right under their nose, walk away and live to
pull it off another day.  You just saw a preview of how easy it was
to pull off in London.  Do you have to see it done on the streets of
America to be convinced of just how much trouble this arguably insane
president has gotten us into?

Carl F. Worden

The more BORING a child is, the more the parents,
when showing off the child, receive adulation for
being GOOD PARENTS -- because they have a TAME
CHILD-CREATURE in their house.
--Frank Zappa

[Anonymous]

People are talking about wanting the border closed. It just seems it could be dropping the iron curtain.