Editorials

Monday’s “revelation” that the Tonkin Gulf resolution, the basis for U.S. entry into the Vietnam conflict, was somehow “doctored” provides yet another opportunity to marvel at the apparent inability of the people who are supposed to be running this country to find out what’s going on. If we are to believe Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of defense, it’s news to him. According to the New York Times, “Mr. McNamara, 89, said he had never been told that the intelligence might have been altered to shore up the scant evidence of a North Vietnamese attack.“ 

Well, we’ve never believed McNamara before, so there’s no real reason to start now. But if he’s telling the truth, it’s deeply shocking. He’s a bright guy, and was well placed at the time to find things out, and he didn’t know?  

The news accounts this week indicate that a historian looking at old National Security Agency documents figured out what went on with the Tonkin Gulf incident back in 2002, but intelligence officials kept his findings secret because they might engender public doubt about the rationale for entering the war on Iraq, just then being ginned up for the 2003 invasion.  

Well, yes. Those of us who were pretty sure, at least by 1965, that the push to get into Vietnam was based on phony evidence were not surprised to see the pattern repeated in March of 2003. But just about everybody in Congress except Barbara Lee endorsed the Iraq invasion. So did most of the self-important newsies—not just the obvious neocons but “liberals” working in the major media, like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and David Remnick of the New Yorker. They didn’t seem to remember the Tonkin Gulf resolution, or perhaps didn’t know that it was a fraud.  

The philosopher George Santayana is often quoted in contexts like this: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Sometimes the quote is modified to “those who do not know history,” but history can be falsified, as today’s story shows.) 

Those of us who have been around for a while have an advantage here. I was about 25 when I began to doubt what they were telling us about the Tonkin Gulf incident, and 40 years later I’m fortunate enough to be able to remember how the scam unfolded, unlike those who might not have been taught the true history of the Vietnam war in school.  

But how did I find out what was going on in 1965? I can’t quite remember any more. I wasn’t an important person, just the wife of a grad student, the mother of two babies, the part-time editor of a medical magazine and a Democratic Party volunteer. No special sources. I checked with my long-time partner in crime, and with another old friend and co-conspirator from those days, and they can’t remember how they knew either. “Everyone knew,” my friend said. By the spring of 1966, we’d found an anti-war candidate to run in the Democratic congressional primary. (Though he lost, because “everyone” didn’t know quite yet.) 

This has become a familiar theme in these pages. Why do many of us who are not highly placed in the U.S. power hierarchy know more about what’s going on than those who are supposedly powerful and well-informed? What caused the executive editor of the little Berkeley Daily Planet and many of its opinion contributors to doubt Judith Miller’s story about the aluminum tubes from the first moment they saw it, while the editorial executives at the rich and powerful New York Times claim to have swallowed it whole hog?  

One key factor is the role of the alternative media. In the mid-’60s we had only one real alternative, I.F. Stone’s Weekly newsletter. We probably found out what we knew about Vietnam from Izzy Stone, who found out what he knew by pouring over government documents. His secret weapon was that he’d taken a good hard look at the world, and had some idea of what he was looking for as he worked.  

Stone’s heirs were all of the alternative newspapers which sprang up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, fueled by their founders’ convictions as Stone had been by his. These crusading publications are sadly diminished in numbers these days because of the corporate acquisition of what turned out to be profitable businesses. One worthy survivor, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, is in the process of launching a crusade against a deal which the Bay Guardian first reported on in August. The two largest alternative newspaper chains, New Times Media and Village Voice Media, are planning to merge in a deal that will give Phoenix-based New Times Media control over 17 alternative weeklies, including the East Bay Express and SF Weekly. These papers by and large toe the establishment line. Their rhetoric is outraged, but their allegiance is conventional, with successful local real estate developers particular favorites.  

If the anti-trust laws have any purpose at all, it ought to be to prevent mergers like this one. The Bay Guardian is already suing the New Times chain for another unfair practice, predatory pricing of advertising: selling ads below cost in order to put the competition out of business. In an editorial, Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond noted that California Attorney General William Lockyer’s office is now looking into possible antitrust violations by the chain. He said that “in an era of increased news media consolidation, when major news outlets are the print and broadcast equivalent of McDonald’s, the pact could bring more homogeneity to the last bastion of irreverence and print muckraking. It ought to be a matter of public concern.” We strongly agree. Without the principled alternative press, there will be even more frauds like Tonkin Gulf and the fictitious weapons of mass destructions, repeated and amplified by an ever-gullible mainstream press establishment.