House Editorial: Nothing new under the sun
Current events strikingly reminiscent of another long, drawn-out invasion
Posted on January 29, 2007

History has a pesky habit of repeating itself. In what was the most predictable appearance this week (save for President Bush declaring once again that the state of our union is strong), Jane Fonda made an appearance at a peace rally in Washington, D.C., this past Saturday.

But we also know nothing stays the same; Fonda’s cameo proved much less controversial than her foray into the peacenik movement 30 years ago. During the heyday of  the Vietnam War, Fonda made quite a scene in Hanoi when she posed with a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. Decried as unpatriotic and even treasonous, Fonda earned a prominent spot on the societal “black list,” and her enduring nickname: Hanoi Jane.

Three decades later, Hanoi Jane is upgrading to Fallujah Fonda. Appearing with a handful of celebrities and members of Congress, Fonda declared to the thousands massed on the National Mall that, “silence is no longer an option.”

As Fonda gets back in the spirit, Canada has also begun to grapple with another Vietnam-era problem: what to do with defecting and deserting U.S. soldiers. According to CBS News, anywhere from 100 and 250 soldiers have sought refuge in Canada, admittedly a fraction of the 50,000-some-odd in the 1960s and 1970s.

Unlike Vietnam, in which the ranks of the military were filled (and refilled) by means of the draft, the current U.S. army is a volunteer force. But for many of the volunteers who have deserted, the horrors of — and false pretenses for — the war have caused them to flee.

Some have even served already, having done one or two terms in Iraq before deciding they have had enough. Dean Walcott, a former marine, served six years and two tours of duty in Iraq before he realized he couldn’t take any more. Walcott told CBS News, “A lot of guys who you couldn’t recognize literally from their face to their feet. Missing arms, missing legs, couldn’t breathe on their own, couldn’t feed themselves.”

While dealing with the mental and emotional repercussions of two tours in Iraq, Walcott was assigned with a non-combat unit, only to find out that his job was to prepare reservists to ship out.

“So basically instead of me deploying and me being psychologically or physically injured,” he said, “now we’re pulling them away from their family for over a year — and telling them “‘Well, while I sit here in the office drinking coffee and being safe, you go to Iraq!’”

Walcott could not bring himself to do such a thing; he fled for Canada, automatically earning himself an outstanding arrest warrant back home.

An old adage tells us that, if we do not learn from history, we will be doomed to repeat it. Clearly, we have a lot to learn.