On e-motions
Mary Anne’s Blog
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Iran: Santorum's Vietnam?
Rick Santorum's new campaign video beats a drum for war with Iran. It also -- albeit unwittingly -- explains why we get into dumb wars, like Iraq and Vietnam, and possibly even Iran.
It has to do with fear vs. love.
Santorum's video opens with a series of conditions in American life, none of which we are experiencing. We are, in fact, experiencing the opposite of those conditions.
Here's the interesting thing. A well-written, compelling book about Vietnam explains how we got into that ugly, dumb war: Into the Quadmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, by Brian VanDeMark. In it, VanDeMark convincly explains that Johnson escalated the war to appease Southern evangelicals in Congress who were afraid of communism. He did it to get their votes for his Great Society programs.
Fear.
VanDeMark's point is backed up in this excellent Modern Libray ebook about Vietnam: Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall. Numerous opportunities for peace were missed. They weren't even noticed. Johnson's focus was elsewhere. It was on pleasing Southern evangelicals in Congress.
Fear again.
Now we have Rick Santorum's fear to deal with. At what cost.
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