Global Policy Forum

By Derrick Z. Jackson

With attacks continuing to claim the lives of US soldiers, a reporter last week asked President Bush what the White House was doing to get France, Germany, and Russia to join the American occupation of Iraq. Bush did not discuss France, Germany, or Russia. He chose to brag that he was the fastest gun in Western civilization.

''There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us,'' Bush said. ''My answer is, bring 'em on! We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. Of course we want other countries to help us ... but we've got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure.... The enemy shouldn't make any mistake about it. We will deal with them harshly if they continue to try to bring harm to the Iraqi people.''

Echoing Bush was General Tommy Franks, who just retired as the commander of the invasion of Iraq. Franks told ABC's ''Good Morning America,'' ''The fact is, wherever we find criminals, death squads, and so forth who are anxious to do damage to this country and to peace-loving countries around the world, I absolutely agree with the president of the United States: Bring 'em on!''

Such arrogance harkens back to Vietnam and the observation of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 that Americans were ''strange liberators.'' We say we are there to liberate the people, but then we turn around and try and taunt Saddam's remnants out of the saloon so they can all show off in high noon showdowns - wild firefights that are sure to result in yet more civilian deaths. We bragged ourselves literally to death four decades ago. According to King in his speech ''A Time to Break Silence'':

''It should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over....

''As I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula.... They must see Americans as strange liberators.... Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not `ready' for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long....

''The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs.... They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.

''They wander into the hospitals with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for one `Vietcong'-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them - mostly children. They wander into towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers....

''We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators!

''Now there is little left to build on - save bitterness.... If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play....

''If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.''

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