[Marxism] Obama on the Vietnam antiwar movement

[Eli Stephens]

Thanks to Louis for catching this (i.e., bothering to read this drivel), but it 
shouldn't be a big surprise, since Obama said something very similar back in 
January:

http://lefti.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html#898445430426742762

"I didn't come of age in the battles of the 60s. I'm not as invested in 
them...Even when you discuss war, the frame of reference is all Vietnam. Well, 
that's not my reference. My frame of reference is 'what works.' Even when I 
first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was, 'I don't oppose all wars,' 
specifically to make clear that this was not just an anti-military, 70s love-in 
kind of approach, rather, that I thought strategically it was a mistake for us 
to go in."

And Walter, do you really have to be a "Bolshevik anti-Zinovievist Marxist" in 
order to have supported the fight against the war in Vietnam, or to realize that 
the claim that the antiwar movement "fail[ed]to honor those veterans coming home 
from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day" is just one 
more repetition of the right-wing lie based on the non-existent "spitting on the 
GIs"? Do you really have to be a "Bolshevik anti-Zinovievist Marxist" to 
recognize that opposition to the war in Vietnam was not "an anti-military, 70s 
love-in kind of approach"?

Face it, us antiwar activists and especially those of us who are remnants of the 
"counter-culture" (or, as Obama puts it, "so-called counter-culture"), are to be 
the "Sister Souljah's" of the 2008 campaign.



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