 |
Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Cinema of the subversive and 41 years after Tonkin
I recently interviewed Jordy Cummings...a Canadian writer and blogger (http://purepolemics.blogdrive.com) who’s writing a book about anti-war films.
Jordy says: “My politics were heavily shaped by film. I had a very eccentric and left wing high school social sciences teacher, with a cut-out that he made of the five Marx brothers, Groucho, Chico, Zeppo, Harpo...and Karl. On Fridays, we would watch what he believed, or so he said, were historically important films, ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ ‘Citizen Kane,’ what have you. Since then, my passions have been radical anti-authoritarian politics, and film, and they often intertwine.”
To read the complete interview, please click here:
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz080620051
For more on Jordy’s anti-war film book, please visit: http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/cummings11282004
Anyone have a favorite anti-war flick they want to tell us about?
+++
It was 41 years ago today that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed...a few days after a series of ambiguous events described by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as such: “While on routine patrol in international waters, the U.S. destroyer Maddox underwent an unprovoked attack.”
The Washington Post headline on August 5, 1964 blared: AMERICAN PLANES HIT NORTH VIETNAM AFTER SECOND ATTACK ON OUR DESTROYERS; MOVE TAKEN TO HALT NEW AGGRESSION.
Asked to explain North Vietnam’s actions, Secretary of State Dean Rusk chalked it up to “a great gulf of understanding between that world and our world, ideological in character.”
By a nearly unanimous vote by Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, thus authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Over the next two years, 400,000 U.S. soldiers shipped out to South Vietnam.
Of this scenario, we can ask the same question being proposed today: Was this military response based on a legitimate threat or a fabricated pretext?
Squadron commander James Stockdale, who would later serve as Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992, was a navy pilot flying over the Gulf of Tonkin that night forty years ago. “I had the best seat in the house to watch that event,” Stockdale recalled, “and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.”
One year after the dubious incident, even President Johnson admitted: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”
Who's Online
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
