Thirty years ago the United States turned Vietnam back to the Vietnamese people. Richard Nixon’s exit strategy was realized under his hand-picked successor, Gerald Ford. Ford had become our first appointed President when first Spiro Agnew and then Richard Nixon himself had resigned from the nation’s seats of power. Ford lost the Presidency to Jimmy Carter in the following election.

Last night the President, faced with the news of a determined revolt against the continuing American occupation of Iraq reiterated his promise to turn that country back to the Iraqis on June 30 – a little less than sixty days away. Those of us who were adults in 1974 remember what happened after the Vietnamese were handed back their war-torn country. We remember the Marine helicopters lifting off from the roof of the embassy in Saigon with the enemy at the gates and we remember the despair of the Vietnamese clients that we left behind. Is Baghdad to suffer the fate of Saigon?

The myth of a benign American occupation assisting the Iraqi people in reconstructing their country and erecting democratic institutions in their ancient land is blowing away on the winds of war. The thin veneer simulating a substantial structure but concealing a cardboard core is eroding before our eyes. The images of American mercenaries roasted, quartered, and swung from the girders of Fallujah’s bridge by the Sunni mob had barely faded from out television screens when they were replaced with pictures of Shia militia facing down Abrams tanks. The subsurface war of ambush and sabotage that tool one and two lives a day has become one of pitched gun-battles in which a determined enemy engages as then swims away into the population. Americans are dying in the Kurdish north, the Shia dominated south as well as in the Sunni Triangle. Fallujah and Sadr City have become “Indian Country” where occupation forces are increasingly unable to operate unless deployed in overwhelming force. Iraqi resistance is not weakening and fading away. It is becoming stronger and bolder and its depth and breadth is growing despite the overwhelming power of the American war making machine. .

Power may grow, as Mao said, from the barrel of a gun but democracy does not. This morning the television screen was filled with attack helicopters flying and tanks rolling. A missile streaked toward what the talking heads said was Sadr’s residence. The mission was retaliation. The only thing missing was the blood rousing shrieks of the Ride of the Valkyries accompanied by the whap-whip-whap of the rotors. Imperial power was being unleashed. Democracy for the Iraqi peoples was not in the picture.

When, a year ago, the armies drove on Baghdad the White House and the Pentagon hawks believed that they were seeing the dawn of a New American Century. Now a year has passed and the view is of the Twilight of the Gods.