Bob Herbert had an emotional conversation with an American parent, who bluntly asked him, "My child should die in Baghdad? For what?" Herbert wrote a column about this in the June 3rd issue of the New York Times. Here is my summary of his June 3rd column:
Herbert writes that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is clueless. I would go farther and say the whole military leadership, right up to the Commander in Chief, is clueless. We don't have a clear standard for when we should start a war. We don't have a clue what we should do if our superior firepower doesn't do the trick. We don't have a clue how to plan an exit strategy. We don't have a clue how to win the peace. We don't have a clue how to sell the public on the need for war. All of this is the responsibility of the Commander in Chief, and he has failed.
This war is a failure of leadership on the part of this administration. He has failed to convince the people whose opinions matter most to American teens -- the parents -- that it is necessary for them to convince their children to enlist in the military.
In fact, the administration's heavy-handed tactics have backfired. Support groups like Leave my Child Alone are springing up all over the country. This group, sponsored by several peace groups, is encouraging parents across the country to opt out of the requirement that schools share teens' personal information with military recruiters. In fact, the administration's heavy-handedness has backfired so much that Leave my Child Alone has the ambitious goal of getting 1 million parents to opt their children out of the military recruitment lists.
Incidentally, I suggest that is the only real reason that the administration passed No Child Left Behind. They don't really give a rat's behind if the schools pass or fail. That is the only reasonable explination of why the administration, in the HHS/Labour/Education bill, is underfunding No Child Left Behind by $40 billion.
There is a trick that professional magicians use all the time -- if you look at your left hand, the audience will look at your left hand as well. In the meantime, the right hand is busy preparing the illusion. This is what the administration is doing with No Child Left Behind. They were constantly touting the benefits of forcing schools to prove that their children were actually learning and making progress. They were also touting the benefits of NCLB to minorities as a way of levelling out the playing field in order to get people like Senator Kennedy to sign on. But what they didn't tell people about was the provision requiring schools to provide private personal information about teenagers to military recruiters and allow military recruiters the run of the school or lose federal funding.
In the same issue of the New York Times, they ran a front-page story and picture which says it all -- a packed school board meeting with a grim-faced parent protesting military recruiting at the school, with many grim onlookers listening with intense interest.
This is not just a partisan issue; as I wrote in response:
Angry parents all over the country are demanding schools limit access to military recruiters for their children. Many of these parents also protested against the draft in Vietnam, but many said they simply don't want the government to be that intrusive in people's lives.
Many Conservatives are just as angry at the administration's heavy-handedness as 1960's peace marchers are; they simply don't want excessive governmental intrusion into people's lives.
I also wrote that this could turn into a major backlash against the Republicans, as the Times reported that many of these parents got involved into politics for the first time ever.
In today's New York Times, Herbert suggests this has permanently crippled the administration's credibility and its ability to maintain an all-volunteer army:
The war in Iraq was sold to the American public the way a cheap car salesman sells a lemon. Dick Cheney assured the nation that Americans in Iraq would be "greeted as liberators." Kenneth Adelman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board said the war would be a "cakewalk." And Donald Rumsfeld said on National Public Radio: "I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
The hot-for-war crowd never mentioned young men and women being shipped back to their families deceased or maimed. Nor was there any suggestion that a broad swath of the population should share in the sacrifice.
Incidentally, Rumsfeld has now flip-flopped on how long the war would last; he now thinks the war could last another 12 years.
Hebert suggests that the administration's combination of heavy-handedness and used-car-salesman tactics is damaging to our national security:
Now, with the war going badly and the Army chasing potential recruits with a ferocity that is alarming, a backlash is developing that could cripple the nation's ability to wage war without a draft. Even as the ranks of new recruits are dwindling, many parents and public school officials are battling the increasingly heavy-handed tactics being used by military recruiters who are desperately trying to sign up high school kids.
I go back to World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt successfully convinced the whole country that fighting the Germans, the Japanese, and the Italians was necessary for our survival. Manufacturing plants were running 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, and the government intervened regularly to settle strikes so that the production could continue. Everybody bought war bonds so that the government could have enough money to spend on manufaturing supplies for our troops. Local newspapers ran features every week about local servicemen who had joined the armed forces, along with their biographies. People put off graduating from college and even high school so they could serve in the military. School teachers didn't always talk about the stuff they were supposed to teach; they would have whole class periods where they would scrap the subject material and talk about the war instead, simply because they knew that our children were so anxious and fearful about their parents that their minds weren't on their work.
This is the kind of self-sacrifice that Presidents must require from our people if we are to wage a successful war. This is the kind of self-sacrifice that our President has failed to inspire in our people today. If the President is unable or unwilling to instill that kind of self-sacrifice in our people, then the war is not worth fighting in the first place.
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In other news:
Iraqis turn to books to escape from war.
While we struggle with how to pay the bills, American soldiers deal with life and death.
NY Times editorial: Pataki forecloses discussion by not allowing art critical of America at Ground Zero site.
Bush targets assets of companies suspected to be selling weapons to insurgents; how many innocent companies will be affected?
Former CIA agent in Op-ed: Administration must earn back respect.
Another Bush flip-flop: First, he promises to destroy Abu Girhab; now he plans to expand it.
US helicopter crashes in Iraq.
Baghdad airport reopens after 48-hour strike.
The psychology of a suicide bomber.
Bush, generals at loggerheads on Iraq assessments.
Newsweek analysis: Stalemate in Iraq due to inability of US to maintain troop levels after 2006.
Newsweek: The massive costs of the War in Iraq.
British, American oil companies to carve up oil supplies in Iraq.
American casualty rates at all-time high; US companies playing politics with human lives.
Iraqi resistance orgainzations deny meeting with US officials.
Cheney compared to Humpty Dumpty.