The Departing Congress of the United States has perpetuated the continuing war on the middle class in an act that cannot go unnoticed even though the members who betrayed their constituents wish it would.
Two weeks ago in a public and straight up and down vote, the so called normalization of trade relations with Vietnam was voted down. The normalization of trade with Vietnam will bypass all the standard safeguards that address the documented failure of basic human rights in Vietnam and allow for the entry of Vietnam into the World Trade Organization – just as China entered five years ago to the now clearly understood destruction of tens of thousands of American manufacturing jobs. This will be a huge attack on the remaining few manufacturing jobs left in the United States and ignores the basic premise of our Nation – that we believe in the need to protect fundamental human rights of all peoples of the world – at least that is what this President is stating.
In fact, it is even clearer in the case of Vietnam where 58,000 Americans died and countless tens of thousands more were physically and psychologically injured fighting for those basic human rights – so we were then told. The generation that inherited the legacy of American values from the greatest generation of WWII was told that it was their responsibility to prevent the communist domino effect in South East Asia and secure for those peoples the basic rights of democracy and free government that we as Americans would recognize. We went to war after being told that American naval forces were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin, an attack that was later shown to be a blatant lie. In fact the entire reason that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed was based on a now known and documented pack of fabricated lies perpetuated by then Secretary of Defense McNamara. I watched his two hour apology to the American people delivered in the form of a documentary that stepped through the rationale and reasons for this vast and destructive deception.
Now, Congress, in the dark of night and as part of an orgy of last minute 30 Billion dollar spending passed the normalization of trade relations with Vietnam only weeks after it had been voted down in the light of day. Many of the very same Congressmen, Randy Kuhl among them, who voted against the trade agreement when it was a public stand alone issue, voted for it when it was thought that the their support could be camouflaged. The will of the American people has been subverted and an insult to legacy of the Vietnam memorial has been perpetuated upon a generation of American fighting forces who have been insulted for forty years. Young men were told to go and die in the jungles of Vietnam so that democracy and basic human rights could be established in South Vietnam and now those very same rights are being trampled upon so that corporate America can ship more manufacturing jobs overseas and increase operating profits. For the sake of dollars, backed up by corrupting campaign contributions, members of both parties bypassed the clear will of the American people and granted normalized trade relations to Vietnam in yet another flawed one sided open ended free trade deal with a nation that no more shares our American values than it intends for any real form of democratic reform.
And yet the press is silent with virtually no reporting on this issue or any issue that accurately portrays just what happened when this Congress ran from it’s responsibilities in Washington DC and returned home to it’s 30,000 dollar guaranteed pay raise, it’s jewel encrusted health care plan, and it’s retirement system that allows for a federal pension after serving only two terms in Congress.
What is worse is the reality that the same President who fought so long and hard to create this outsourcing of American jobs to China, Central American and now Vietnam - this same President has committed the single largest strategic blunder in the history of our Nation by bringing us into a war without a definition of mission, victory, or purpose. His stated claim of expanding basic human rights and creating a democracy in Iraq sounds ominously similar to what was being told to my father and the thousands of others who answered their nations call to service and served in the steaming jungles of that far off land. I can only expect that 40 years from now, when we are still trying to explain how it was that we failed to create a Jeffersonian democracy in Baghdad we will, in the dark of night and against the will American people pass a preferential open door free trade bill with whatever regime climbs to the top in Iraq. How can we look in the mirror?
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