When will we ever learn?

Click below. Country Joe and the Fish. Have a quick listen to this classic anti-war song of 1969. Then flip back on the screen reverse arrow to return to text.

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Gen. William Westmoreland told Congress that they were winning in Vietnam. Peace talks in Paris were delayed for ten days in a dispute over who would sit where on a square, elongated table.  A round table was finally chosen.

The talks went nowhere despite Washington saying otherwise. Carpet bombing continued; napalm attacks burned through Cambodia next door. But peace was in sight, said the Americans. Sounds all too familiar,

Chicago police violently cracked down on anti-war demonstrators, some of them US army veterans who threw who their Purple Heart medals into the gutters. The National Guard killed four student demonstrators at Kent State university. John Lennon wrote his song Give Peace A Chance

Richard Nixon said to stop protesters “it helps if you kill a few.”  He said he wanted a deal in Vietnam. “If they don’t observe an agreement we will bomb the hell out of them.”

Henry Kissinger and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (right) were the hawks who didn’t want Americans to be seen as losers. Daniel Ellsberg leaked classified documents that became known as The Pentagon Papers showing massive official dishonesty over the war. He was arrested for espionage by the same agents who were soon to break into the Watergate offices of the Democratic party that ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.

He ordered the Watergate burglary as his popularity at the polls plummeted amid anti-war protests across the country.

The American departure from Vietnam in 1975 was as disastrous and as deadly as their withdrawal from the West’s Taliban war in Afghanistan in 2021. Look at Afghanistan now.

When will ‘Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth and the nodding dogs around their unhinged draft dodger boss ever learn?

McNamara, who oversaw more bombs dropped over southeast Asia than in the whole of WWII, kept his title as Secretary of Defence. Right: Strafed Vietnam village.

Back then, British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused American demands to send troops to help in ‘Nam but he did allow them to use the then-colony of Hong Kong for defensive purposes and intelligence gathering. Echoes of Europe’s “cowardly” predicament over Iran today.

Over to the bombing of Iraq – to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist – and Libya. The killing of their dictators left the two countries fractured and in chaos. Saddam and Ghaddafi were despicable rulers, but they kept hospitals and schools open, which is more than can be said for the still-warring factions that succeeded them.

Nor should it be forgotten that Iran and Iraq fought a horrific border war that killed nearly a million people over eight years until the United Nations negotiated a ceasefire in 1988.

Like Nixon, the White House Commander in Chief wants to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age where they belong” and if they don’t give up “all hell will rain down on them.”

Persia/Iran have been fighting all and sundry for hundreds of years. Capitulation is not an option for the fanatical ayatollahs and their hate-filled radical Islamic proxies. Death is no sacrifice; it is glorious martyrdom that surrender does not bestow. Right: Teheran this week.

Sadly for all pacifists out there, it looks like we’ll never learn …

Since time began duplicity in war has superseded sanity. And never before has a US president publicly ranted quite like this, complete with the F-word, in an official post.