Conservative Consistency

For most of my life I’ve been baffled and annoyed by what I believed was a conservative distain for consistency. Republican responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have cleared up a lifetime of confusion. The Vietnam War was the first place I witnessed, up close, the odd inconsistency my parents’ demonstrated with their professed “pro-life” positions and completely uncritical view of our government’s invasion of a 3rd world country that posed no threat to the United States. Since the 60’s, I’ve watched conservatives form up behind US invasions of Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. We’ve mindlessly and pointlessly bombed cities and civilian populations all over the world, with and mostly without, the support of a few other nations. There was a lot of talk both in the US and the rest of the world that G.W. Bush and his cronies might be prosecuted for war crimes under the conventions established in Geneva and Hague Conventions and such US law as the War Crimes Act, the Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws. But Republican and conservative voters and talking heads ignored all of that criminal behavior under the guise of “patriotism.”

Today, most of the country appears to be somewhat upset that Putin has decided to overturn a neighbor’s democratically elected government under the pretense of defending a minority Russian population in that country. The argument ought to be familiar. Eisenhower justified dipping into the Vietnam conflict after extracting the country from another unpopular war in Korea by claiming “the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following… now you are talking really about millions and millions and millions of people. The possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world.” “Free” meaning corporate (US corporations, at the time) control of resources, people, and property. As a justification based on the US retreat in Korea, Kennedy said, “Now we have a problem in trying to make our power credible, and Vietnam looks like the place.” Johnson said, ““I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.” The military mental-midget, General Curtis LeMay, was one of the first to threaten to “bomb them back to the stone ages” and almost no one even winced at that viciousness. And Nixon followed that with the words of an international war criminal, "I refuse to believe that a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point." —National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger All of that to justify spending as much as the nation has invested in infrastructure in the last forty years.

When the US decided to mindlessly dive into the Vietnam War, based on a phony excuse provided by the CIA and the , there were warnings that this was a classic over-reaching-empire miscalculation, “I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake.”—Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) Even a Republican voiced as rational a policy as was possible when he advised Johnson to “Declare the United States the winner and begin de-escalation.”—Senator George Aiken (R-VT) And South Dakota’s Senator, George McGovern stated the obvious, “We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it. I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.”

Conservatives were, predictably, all-in on the Vietnam War and regularly labelled as “traitors and cowards” antiwar protestors, war opposition candidates, draft evaders (including those who went to prison for their beliefs), and anyone who didn’t fall in line behind the military effort and propaganda. Likewise, during the propaganda build-up for invasions of Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest, conservatives were immediately all-in on war. [That is, likely, a big part, or all, of their opposition to what they call “revisionist history,” which is nothing more than an honest look back at the country’s history without the propaganda filters.]

The same characters have followed the “love it or leave it” script for every US foreign invasion from Korea to wherever-the-hell our military, CIA, and NSA are screwing around today. If there is a war or an opportunity to squash democracy anywhere on the planet including the US, they want to be in on it and if there is money to be made doing that, all the better. And there is always money to be made creating misery and destruction.

Today, all of this kind of talk is rampant in Russia’s media both in Russia and Russia’s spokes-characters in the US. “I’ll stand on the side of Russia right now,” Joe Oltmann. Fox News, Tucker Carlson is a regular contributor to the state-owned Russian media as are more than a few other Fox and NewsMax squawking heads. The Q-Nuts and, of course, Putin’s pet, Donny Trump (I and II), and more than a Republican politicians regular Russian cheerleaders. As usual, follow the money. And that propaganda has been at least as effective in Russia as it has been in the US. "58% of Russian people approve of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, while 23% oppose it, according to a poll taken by independent survey research organizations last week. That result is flipped for young people aged 18–24. In that group, 39% oppose the operation, and 29% are for it." I’m not sure “flipped” is the right word, with 29% of the younger group all in on the Russian invasion, but those numbers are pretty typical of the propaganda effect in the US’s history, too. Older people are more gullible and since they are unlikely to be asked to make any real sacrifices in war they are more likely to buck the party line.