Bill Maher is celebrating his
show’s 10-year anniversary. Every week he shows a memorable clip from a past
show. In the August 31 show’s clip he was speaking to Ron Paul in May of 2007. Paul said, “The
peace candidate always wins. Logic tells us we can make a better world in a much easier way than causing wars.” Paul was talking
about the 2000 election when George W. Bush said he opposed Clinton’s
nation-building adventures and the attempts to make America the policeman of the world. Bush had insisted that his administration wouldn’t do those things
(which they of course proceeded to do but it was too late then), and that’s one
of the reasons W. beat Gore.
I was struck by this comment
because I have had the opinion that Americans are a war-like people. Maybe
that’s not true. Maybe we’ve just been manipulated over and over again. I
thought of WWI—Woodrow Wilson won because he promised to keep America out of
the European war, but as soon as he won Wilson started figuring out how to get
us into the war. The U.S. didn’t join in WWII until we were actually attacked.
Nixon won in 1968 partly because he said he had a “secret plan” to end the
Vietnam War—he didn’t but we didn’t find that out until after he was elected. I’m
sure a historian could provide plenty more examples.
In 2008 McCain was joking about
“bomb bomb Iran” while Obama talked about healing our relationship with the
world. Obama won. Romney just made clear in his acceptance speech at the
convention that he has embraced the neocons of the W. era. Romney used
bellicose rhetoric not only about Syria and Iran but also about Russia. I found
myself wondering, ‘could this Republican war-mongering mean Obama will be
re-elected?’
In this show’s New Rules Maher
made a fascinating comment about the Republican Party’s attempts to erase the
past. For a party that positions itself as the guardian of traditional values,
of the Norman Rockwell-America of our dreams, in last week’s convention they worked
hard to obscure their own recent past. The most recent Republican president and
both the most recent view-president and vice-pres candidate weren’t invited: no
W., no Cheney, no Palin.
For historical perspective, Roosevelt preached peace and isolationism, but wanted to get us into war as well, after he was elected. So he cut off oil supplies to Japan, which ticked them off, and Japan attacked us to preserve their oil supplies from Southeast Asia. That, in a sense, was a manipulation as well. My contention is that we have been manipulated into war for a long time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing another example. I knew we had provoked Japan but I wasn't sure how much "peace" Roosevelt had preached. It's pretty obvious that Americans didn't want any part of the European war--it had been going on for over two years before we finally got in, and that happened only after we were attacked.
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