During
the Vietnam War, we were told a steady stream of lies regarding the
rationale, conduct and outcome of America’s intervention in Southeast Asia.

Supposedly a battle to
secure the world for democracy, the U.S. was actually engaged in an
imperialistic effort to make the region’s natural and human resources
readily, cheaply available to profit-seeking multinational corporations.

In his memoirs, Dwight
Eisenhower admitted that access to “tin, tungsten and rubber” was what the
unfolding debacle actually entailed.

From a fabricated Tonkin
Gulf incident to the myth-shattering Tet offensive -- with numbing
revelations such as My Lai in the bloody mix -- America took heavy blows to
its collective psyche...as returning aluminum caskets piled up on airport
tarmac.

Repeated promises of light
at the end of the tunnel proved bleakly false.

We sank deeper into the
heart of darkness. The tallied dead formed a legion of ghosts that would
haunt us for decades.

Instead of contrived
assertions that the naval vessels Maddox and L. Turner Joy were attacked off
Vietnam’s coast, we have George Bush claiming there were weapons of mass
destruction where plainly none existed at all.

Again, just as thirty-five
years ago, communities across our land have been emptied of their best and
brightest, for a fundamental falsehood.

If you’re too young to have
learned that painful lesson through family members’ sacrifice, visit the
Vietnam Memorial to become grimly acquainted with the consequent cost.

Perhaps the most tragic
parallel is the deliberate misrepresentation of people’s loyalties.

Where have we previously
heard that flags and flowers would profusely wave to welcome us as
“liberators”? Yes, in Vietnam, just before the locals started rolling hand
grenades under GIs’ tents.

Whether Vietnam or Iraq,
what’s a kid from Kansas or Ohio to do when it turns out that everyone hates
the Yankees? Very likely, shoot everything and everybody in sight.

Civilians fleeing from Fallujah tell uniformly shocking stories of
women, children, and the elderly being attacked by advancing U.S. Marines.
Their description is validated by reports from journalists who happened to
be in the Iraqi city when the American assault began.

The dead are being buried
in two soccer fields. An easy third of the bodies are noncombatants.
Confronted with evidence of even ambulances being fired upon,
Human Rights Watch is calling for a prompt, independent investigation.

Fallujah resembles nothing
so much as the smoldering aftermath of Ariel Sharon’s brutal attack on the
Palestinian Jenin refugee camp two years ago, tinged with the flowing
crimson of German collective punishment meted out on the Warsaw Ghetto.

“As I was there, an endless
stream of women and children who'd been sniped by the Americans were being
raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front as
their wailing family members carried them in."

His report continues: “One
woman and small child had been shot through the neck -- the woman was making
breathy gurgling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amongst her
muffled moaning. The small child, his eyes glazed and staring into space,
continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life.”

The Arab satellite network
Al Jazeera and other foreign outlets are running grisly footage of the dead
and dying. But the U.S. media play deaf, dumb and blind.

Long years of being
culturally attuned to a racist portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as “raghead”
and “camel jockey” terrorists make the trigger pulling that much easier.

Having gone for more than a
decade with demonized Saddam being equated with Iraq per se has blurred a
key, moral distinction. Is it any wonder that a “kill ‘em all and let God
sort ‘em out” mentality is obscenely taking hold, much to our nation’s
eternal shame?

It’s disturbing enough to
contemplate how a teenager who was playing high school football and dating
his pretty sweetheart just a few months ago is now in the town cemetery
because of a crazy, needless war.

Even more soul-devouring is
pondering the phenomenon we came to stunningly first experience in
connection with Vietnam:

Propaganda and deceit by
those in power can make murderers -- instead of just dutiful soldiers -- out
of “good kids” thrust into situations where reality often totally conflicts
with what they’d been duped to expect.

Transforming innocence into
the surpassingly bad and ugly -- on the most basic human level -- is the
reactionary warmongers’ greatest sin.

And a monstrous crime far
beyond any possible forgiveness.

Dennis Rahkonen,
from Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary and verse
for various outlets since the ‘60s. He can be reached at
dennisr@cp.duluth.mn.us.