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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Iraq II: Royko Reaches From Beyond the Grave

Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.
Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, nice and clear.
And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first.
At first glance, this passage would seem to be a stirring repudiation of the Bush administration and its failed war in Iraq. But it's not.

It was written by Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko on January 24, 1973, following Richard Nixon's announcement that the U.S. was pulling out of Vietnam. Jazzmaniac found it this past weekend among his late father's personal effects and posted it at the Daily Kos.

American journalism has produced some great columnists: H.L. Mencken, Jimmy Breslin, Studs Terkel, James Reston, Nat Hentoff, Molly Ivins, Pete Dexter. But it's tough to top Royko, who wrote with a wit and honesty that makes his Vietnam column even more powerful today than when it was penned 33 years ago.

My father, like Jazzmaniac's, adored Royko, who died in 1997. Although a goodly number of Royko's columns were about life in Chicago and my dad had never lived there, he relished Royko's depictions of the city and its characters. But most of all, he shared Royko's deep offense at the misuse of power.

Anyhow, here's the column in slightly abridged form:
Mike, the newsstand man, was alone at State and Madison, shivering in the cold night.

"Nah, nobody's been around celebrating," he said. "What's to celebrate?"

The end of the war. Mr. Nixon said it on TV, half an hour ago.

He shrugged. "That so? Now maybe we can take care of things in this country, huh?"

It wasn't like 1945, when the end of the war brought a million people downtown to cheer . . . .

And that's as it should be. There is nothing to cheer about this time, except that it is over . . .

"Peace with honor." He had used the wilted phrase that has been with us most of the war. He said we obtained it.

It is hard to see the honor . . .

Before it ended, we had put our own men on trial for murdering civilians . . .

Almost 20 years ago another war ended in a draw and we were told that our boys had died for somebody's freedom. Now the South Koreans live under a dictatorship. And so will the South Vietnamese . . .

Why kid ourselves? They didn't die for anyone's freedom. They died because we made a mistake. And we can't justify it with slogans and phrases from other times.

It tore us internally. It left many with a lust for revolution, and others with a lust for repression.

If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this:

Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.

Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, nice and clear.

And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first . . . If we haven't, then we are as empty and as cold as the intersection of Madison and State.

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