A couple of readers have pointed out that I was unfair to Geoff Garin, Hillary’s top strategist, in my suggestion that he was milking the Rev. Wright controversy on MSNBC Monday. They’re right. Turns out Garin was actually saying it was time to move past the Wright business; it was Andrea Mitchell who was milking it. (I was making lunch, so the factchecking department was drinking wine…) Geoff Garin’s a kind person and on the left; he’s not the type to exacerbate racial divisions.
That said, I want to return to Garin’s writings from college. Yesterday I wrote about his call for violent revolution. To be fair, a temporary mood on Garin’s part, confined to 2 pieces at age 20. But a leftwing radical spirit characterized his work. That is the reason I as a young Jewish lefty looked up to him. He was clearthinking, he had figured out what he thought, he was never egotistical, and he had moral vision (at a time in my own life when I was immature and intellectually turbulent).
Garin often hit a theme I hit today: the need for accountability by our leaders and thinkers for a disastrous war policy–the Vietnam war in his case. And as I do he even blamed the meritocracy for producing the war:
Then there is the problem of meritocracy itself. Do we want, or does the rest of the world need, a Harvard that picks out an elite to do society’s work when society’s work means bombing Asian peasants… [emphasis mine]
Garin wanted war-crimes prosecutions. In 1975, at 22, he opposed the mood of let’s-move-on. When Vance Hartke, an Indiana senator famous for opposing the war, said there must not be fingerpointing over who got us into the war, because it had been started by "desperate men caught up in a process that had a momentum of its own and which they neither understood nor could control"–which is sort of Hillary’s line– Garin wasn’t buying. He wrote:
That way nobody gets hurt, at least not until the next time around… A conspiracy of silence will rob the United States of its Vietnam heritage: the moral, legal and political questions that American involvement raised but never quite settled.
Beautiful. Here’s another inspired passage:
Most American public officials have never exhibited much willingness to discuss the subject of war crimes in Vietnam, either while the war was going on or now that it is over. The shooting has stopped in Vietnam, but My Lai, free-fire zones, napalming citizen populations, massive bombing of non-military targets, torture, herbicidal warfare and "forced-draft urbanization"–in sum, the tactics used by the American war machine in Indochina–all raise moral and legal questions that did not go away with the victory of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. The war crimes issue lingers, despite the silence of liberal and conservative politicians, and the American future that Ford says he will now concentrate on cannot be so easily separated from the sins of so recent a past.
Garin also wielded a concept of institutional responsibility: "soul searching about its [Harvard's] relationship to the seats of power." I share this idea–in Iraq’s case, soul-searching by the Jewish leadership and the liberal intellectual establishment that signed off on the debacle. Garin aimed his darts at intellectuals who served "the political and economic elite." He pinned blame on Harvard graduates:
If Harvard ever had a just pride in the role its alumni play in American politics, that pride can not be restored so quickly after the moral disgrace of Vietnam.
Just think how many Iraq hawks (or those who served them) went to Harvard or used Harvard as a platform. Daniel Pipes, Noah Feldman, Bill Kristol…
Garin granted no amnesty to heroic Democrats. Here he is condemning Kennedy for his role in Vietnam:
There is no forgiving Kennedy the Bay of Pigs, the expansion of our imperialist involvement in Indochina, his incredibly belligerent cold war rhetoric or his brinksman handling of the Cuban missile crisis. Nor can Kennedy be forgiven the domestic surveillance he allowed his brother to institute or the wiretaps he permitted to be placed. There is no escaping the fact that many of Johnson’s and Nixon’s most repressive policies have their antecedent roots in the administration of John Kennedy.
I am of course playing Gotcha here, which is no kindness to a friend. But Garin was writing during a great spiritual crisis for this country, and we are in another one today. Iraq has destroyed my country’s promise in the eyes of the world and mutilated an Arab society, causing untold suffering. Now Hillary, pandering to Jewish voters, is talking about "obliterating" Iran. I wish Garin was working for Obama now, I wish he was using that subtle brain of his, and his evolved values, to help Obama reach out to blue-collar whites. Though maybe he will inject some of his Vietnam ideas into Hillary’s discussion of the Iraq war. She could begin by apologizing.
Related posts:
- Hillary’s Top Strategist Once Called for Violent Revolution
- Vietnam, Iraq–and Suspicions of the Israel Lobby
- If Groton School Gave Us Vietnam, What Gave Us Iraq?
- Why Iraq Isn’t Vietnam: Public Opinion Matters
- Abu Ghraib’s a Moral Fig Leaf for the Disastrous Decision to Invade (and Other Wit n Wisdom of Linc Chafee)
{ 19 comments }
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We don't even have to draw analogies between Vietnam and Iraq. Geoff Garin's assertion that "the tactics used by the American war machine in Indochina raise[d] moral and legal questions that did not go away" remains true today.
One of the architects of the Indochinese war crimes, Henry Kissinger, remains at large in the U.S., although he's unable to visit much of Europe for fear of arrest. Kissinger continues to interfere in our politics, having endorsed John McCain last year. Reference:
http://www2.nysun.com/article/68421
If it was unacceptable for the minor war criminal Kurt Waldheim to serve as UN Secretary General, why it is acceptable for the top-echelon war criminal Kissinger to participate in U.S. political life, on the side of a candidate who has said the Iraq occupation may last a hundred years?
Kissinger belongs in a small cage in The Hague.
Even at age twenty, 1973 was late to be thinking about violent revolution. '68,'69,'70–sure. But around the time that Weatherman town house blew up, the fever broke for most people. Nothing wrong with "accountability" for the war planners though, then and now.
I don't know how heroic it is for Phil to do this blog but I imagine that it costs him something. I do believe he is being a great Jew. For one, he is putting being a decent human being ahead of survival of his tribe, or at least giving it equal weight. Surely there are unversalist, humanist values in Judaism. Isn't this the positive ideal of western civilization? Haven't the Jews contributed mightily to that civilization? I am sorry that he suffers pain at the comments he gets. Many of them express a bitterness that I try not to express but that I often feel. I wish Phil and other Jews could understand this bitterness. Yet we who are bitter need to put true value on the service Phil is doing. It is such a great service that I regret any pain that we cause. Are the people who post frequently valuing his largeness of spirit? A largenss that I don't see in the posts by the way.
This is material for a magazine article or newspaper piece.
What is/are the base or core cause(s) of this bitterness?
Should what Obama said on Bittergate be a model?
Why?
Why not?
What the Rev Wright said?
What a settler says?
Is the sermon on the mount any guide?
How does give to Caesar what is Caesar's, fit in?
"A largenss that I don't see in the posts by the way."
Amen ;)
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Jimmy Carter is expressing the kind of sentiments today that Geoff Garin did 35 years ago. Too bad Geoff's client isn't going to qualify for Carter's endorsement. She isn't willing to say things like this:
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[Carter] mused openly about how Mr Obama might harness this feeling [of a fresh start] in an inaugural address.
"If the first statement he made was while I’m president of the United States we will never torture another prisoner and while I’m President of the United States we will never go to war unless our own security is directly threatened…it would transform the image of the United States in the minds of many people around the world.
http://tinyurl.com/5wycbj
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Wake up, Geoff. You could have honored your ideals and won. But the Clintons are too compromised to make any fresh starts.
We water boarded Khalid Muhammad, who cut off Daniel Pearls head. Ask me if I give a shit.
Now, there's a macro-perspective. One Jew is worth a million goys. Notice how I even cap one, not the other.
Khalid Muhammad isn't worth the shit from my dogs ass. Why do you like him?
You want my name, rank, and serial number?
I believe that your a veteran, what i asked is what's your problem with water boarding a piece of shit like Khalid Muhammad
What was Daniel Pearl doing in Pakistan, anyway? Why would a well-known journalist with family ties to the upper echelons of Israeli society show up in Pakistan? Did he expect to be met with flowers?
I'm sorry, but I don't believe there are "universalist humanist values" in Judaism. Classical Judaism teaches that for a Jew, his neighbor is another Jew. I guess that was the radical teaching of Jesus to his fellow Jews as exemplified in the Good Samaritan parable that the Pharisees could not accept. Thank God that not all Jews feel this way but that's not because of Jewish tradition but in spite of it. It is because there are Jews like Phil who have the courage to act as decent human beings first in spite of the pressure from their in-group to act like Jews first and human beings second, that survival of their tribe will be possible. You could say that Phil's postings are more valuable to "his people" than others since from what I've read it's nearly impossible to convince a Jewish zionist to look at an issue from the perspective of the "other", since the other is a non-Jew. The current state of affairs cannot be maintained forever and when the facts are laid bare people will be angry but remember that there were decent Jews like Phil and Ilan Pappe and Norman Finkelstein and Israel Shahak and many others who felt a real connection to the rest of the human race and spoke out when it mattered.
So Todd I guess he deserved it. Fine, ok. But what was Rachel Corrie doing in Gaza. I think she deserved what she got, the same way you think that Daniel Pearl deserved to get his head cut off.
And Ana, to be lectured on Judaism by some spic is a little rediculous. Keep it to yourself and keep chowing down on those refried beans
Gideon, the only "rediculous" thing here is your racist rantings. Why don't you do us all a favor and put that sword where the sun don't shine?
Gideon, I don't think that either Daniel Pearl or Rachael Corrie should have been surprised at their fates since they were both dealing with maniacs.
I understand what Rachel Corrie was doing in Palestine, but I don't really know what Daniel Pearl was doing in Pakistan.
I know from the records Rachel Corrie was motivated by humanism, pure and simple; it may be that Daniel Pearl was too–I have to check that out.
For Jesus to introduce the Samaritan as the caring person, after a priest and a Levite had neglected mercy, must have been intended as an especially biting commentary on what passed for "mercy" among the pillars of Judaism.
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