George and Bobby

When my boyfriend Phi and I saw the movie Bobby on our first date, at the end, I turned to him and said, "Imagine how different the world would be if he were still here."  Last night, we heard a president address the nation once again without addressing any of the causes of our current crisis.  His solution to rectify his admitted mistakes?  Send yet more troops to die for a cause which can at best only be described as dubious.  How different is that from what Bobby Kennedy had to say about Vietnam?

A bit shy of three years ago now, my dad and I sat at a table at (if I recall correctly) the Saigon One restaurant in Virginia Beach and talked about the then-upcoming presidential election.  I said, "Imagine you're a business owner and one of your employees has committed a grievous error that has cost the company millions of dollars, several of its best clients, and created a mess that will likely take months if not years to clean up.  That employee doesn't even acknowledge that his actions were in error.  Now even if you know that no new employee will be able to undo the damage any quicker than the existing employee even under the best of circumstances, do you still keep the employee who so damaged your business and tarnished your reputation on your payroll?"

The obvious answer then, as now, is a resounding "No!"  The reason is that you cannot trust the current employee to not repeat his error because he still refuses to admit his error.  In fact, you can't even count on him to even attempt to clean it up and undo the damage in the first place.  The only logical answer to that question is to fire him.

Now we stand here, a bit over two years after millions of Americans voted for Bush anyway, watching Bush commit yet more lives to a failed policy based on flawed logic and perhaps even less than idealistic intent.  We cannot trust this man to not repeat his error or even to correct it for he still refuses to acknowledge the original error in any way shape or form.

The mistakes to which he referred last night are a farce.  Things could have been done better?  We should have had more troops in Iraq after Saddam's fall?  We shouldn't have disbanded the army?  All true, certainly, but those mistakes are all superseded by the greatest mistake of all, which was entering into a war under false pretenses and then using Americans' fear of a completely unrelated enemy to cow them into supporting it.

Folks that doesn't look like a mistake so much as criminal intent.  Anyone who voted for him once that became clear was complicit in that crime and should personally apologize to every soldier they can find.

So now that we've seen Bush's response to his error, what might Bobby's have been?  This was posted last night on Progressive Historians, and I think Bobby's words regarding Vietnam are especially relevant to our times.

Bobby Kennedy Revisited
by: FWIW - Wed Jan 10, 2007

I have wondered what kind of world we would live in today if Robert Kennedy had been elected President in 1968 instead of Richard Nixon. Bobby Kennedy had name recognition, experience as the Attorney General of the United States and as a Senator from New York, and was well positioned to finance a presidential campaign. He won the Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and California Democratic primaries. Hubert Humphrey, the eventual 1968 Democratic Presidential nominee ran an underfunded campaign and didn't enter a single state primary. Even so, Humphrey lost to Nixon by less than 1% of the popular vote. I am convinced that if Bobby Kennedy had not been assassinated, he would have been the 1968 Democratic nominee, and he would have won the presidential election. If Bobby Kennedy had become the 37th President of the United States, would things be different now?

...

"I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all that I can.

"I run to seek new policies - policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.

"I run for the presidency because I want the Democratic Party and the United States of America to stand for hope instead of despair, for reconciliation of men instead of the growing risk of world war.

"I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them. For the reality of recent events in Vietnam has been glossed over with illusions...

"... At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country. It is our right to moral leadership of this planet."

Will there be a new Bobby in 2008?  If so will he survive?  I hope to whatever God might be out there that there is and he or she will.  This country desperately needs that kind of restoration.  The world yearns for it.

Read the full essay - Bobby Kennedy Revisited