LYSISTRADA ANYONE?

The death of Lady Bird Johnson at 94 on July 11 should make us pause and salute her probable role in one of husband Lynden Johnson’s finest moments as President.

On March 31, 1968, President Johnson gave a televised speech on his efforts to end the disastrous Viet Nam War he blundered America into three years earlier. Although American GI’s had been dying in Vietnam since 1961, our fate was not cast till 1965 when he decided to surge American forces up to 525,000 rather than, in his words, not be the first American president to lose a war.

Problem was he intervened on the doomed and losing side, South Viet Nam. Three years later he knew full well the enormity of our inevitable defeat. He ended his March 31st speech stating he had to work full time to end the war and would therefore drop out of his re-election campaign in the 1968 presidential race.

In that moment those of us in the anti Viet Nam War movement saw the villain in the Viet Nam quagmire stripped of his stubbornness and insensitivity. Johnson came as close as any American president to admitting failure in a senseless military venture. The scope of his tragedy and his awareness of it was painfully visible that evening.

Lady Bird, LBJ’s closest confidant as well as wife, is said to have deftly maneuvered him to the realization that he must give up his re-election bid to begin healing a terribly divided nation.

Alas, Johnson’s moment of grandeur was lost on President Bush, the author of our current un-winnable quagmire in Iraq. Bush clung relentlessly to his lies and delusions on Iraq long enough to win re-election before the extent of those lies and delusions became plain to all.

Unfortunately, he still doesn’t get it even as Republican Congressmen flee from his failed policies.

Bush would do America a great favor by leaving office early, along with Vice President Cheney, to allow leaders un-burdened by the enormity of their wrongdoing to solve the catastrophe they ignited.

Could there be a little bit of Lady Bird in Laura Bush and Lynn Cheney?

Originally publushed in Daily Herald, July 17, 2007
Also published in Glen Ellyn Sun online edition, July 27, 2007

IMMIGRATION TWO-STEP

Has there ever been a bigger exercise in futility than the Congressional death dance over the immigration reform bill?

It may be that every Senator and Congressman in the Beltway understands consciously or un-consciously this truth: De-facto amnesty in the current state of affairs allows the millions of un-documented foreign workers to keep our economy, and more importantly for the privileged, their stock portfolios, humming along just fine.

Why tinker with a system that works for the ruling affluent? They figured out pretty quickly that trumpeting the red herring of no amnesty for immigrant lawbreakers is a perfect way to sabotage any plan that might upset their gravy train.

If all those folks railing against these lawbreakers who landscape our lawns and flip our hamburgers were really interested in righting wrongs, they would demand an end to the rampant lawbreaking in the White House and Vice Presidential Palace that has led to hundreds of thousands of casualties and four million on the move to safer habitats in Iraq.

Originally published in Chicago Tribune, July 15, 2007