Vote or die, all day, every day
Mission accomplished — voting occurred in Iraq. For who? For what? Who cares, we did it! Um, right? …..
“United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of
turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong
terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from
Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their
ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the
Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in
President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional
processes in South Vietnam.”
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, ‘U.S.Encouraged
by Vietnam Vote,’ September 4, 1967.
No Comment
There are so many parallels between the two conflicts it is disturbing. Wasn’t the whole idea of Korea and Vietnam to stop the ‘domino effect’ of communism from spreading accross the region, thus destablizing it, and causing the US to live in fear? Take any theory on the spread of communism, from the mid-20th century , insert ‘terrorism’ for ‘communism’ and now you have Condi Rice’s speaches. And when you remember that Condi went to Harvard and wrote her dissertation on stopping the spread of communism…and communism is all but gone…and she knows nothing else…hmmm. Communism, terrorism, they both end in ‘ism’, I suppose Rice needed something to do so she would feel like she didn’t waste her entire life.
I’m still wondering how we can succeed at “spreading democracy around the world” when we failed in the 60s & 70s to accomplish our much less ambitious goal of “making the world safe for democracy.”
I just can’t believe that even now reporters, media, and audience somehow believe that “voting” in an “election” somehow represents even a piece of the democratization of a country. It’s preposterous. But I guess that’s where questioning and analysis ends for most folk. Whether it’s their job or not.
I really don’t see how it’s relevant to the conversation we were having, but I really have been curious where to play poker online.