On November 4th, I found myself at a Chattup Election Party in downtown Chattanooga. We were a room full of mostly liberals and a few conservatives; an island with an endless sea of red outside the windows. A projector and a monitor displayed two news coverage feeds. There was beer, pizza, camaraderie, mobile social networking devices, constant twittering and a large roar as several networks declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 US presidential elections.

As everyone cheered, I simply smiled. I saw a crowd both on TV and in that room that was completely enamored with Obama, his campaign and legacy. I am a liberal and deep down, I did want Obama to win. Still in recent weeks I’ve come to understand why people look up to and support McCain, even if I did not think he would make a good president in these times. Still, waving a marking slogan of Change and Hope seemed cliche and trite and made me question if even Obama would be able to turn this country around.

“Changes means nothing. It’s just the word. And it’s a cliche. Just to repeat it has no meaning. You have to say, ‘What are you going to change?’ and I would argue, ‘You offer no change. You have the same foreign policy, you want more troops in Afghanistan, you’re not talking about only going to war with a declaration. You don’t want to deal with the monetary financial crisis in this country. You want to keep, you know, the system together for the benefit of the banks and the big corporations and politicians¹…” —Ron Paul

McCain’s concession speech came rather quickly after the announcement. His crowd seemed bitter, but had the election going differently, most likely the Obama would have been equally so. Obama waited a bit longer to give his victory speech keeping those of us in the Eastern timezone up past our bedtimes. It started with the traditional stump which I had heard the day before followed by thanks to specific supporters and family members and so forth.

One of the concerns I’ve heard about Obama is that he promises a lot, and with the condition of our world both economically and militarily, there is a chance his promises may not be fulfilled causing an generation to become disenchanted with the policies of progressive liberalism. At one point during his victory speech he said the following:

“…understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century…The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but America I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you we as a people will get there…”

He did two things with those words. First, he set the standard for success as a realistic one; far from the epic folds of hope and change that flowed from the river of his advertising campaign. Second, he prepared himself and all ready began to campaign for the following election by making a promise he could keep to his constituents.

As I listened to Obama and looked upon the crowds who cheered “Yes, we can” as well as the hopeful people around the room, I couldn’t help but hope myself that Obama would be able to live up to the expectations that, for him, have been set so very high. I saw a man who limited his attacks and tried desperately to run a clean campaign; a man who in doing so, showed that seeking peace was not something to be seen as a weakness, but that in that calm comes strength. I believe that strength is what helped him win the election; strength and a very strong youth campaign. Sarah Palin being grotesquely unqualified didn’t hurt either.

I hesitate to fall in line with those who are following his cult of personality, but part of me does want to believe his words are genuine. I think his desire for peace and equality and his ability to stay collected in extraneous circumstances may be a strong start. He may not be about real radical change, but he is a strong moderate that seeks to bring us back to an era of stability.

In the previous administration that has often said to the public, “Hands off, let us handle this,” Obama may have the personality necessary to bring American back to the point of believing its citizens have a vested interest in their nation. Again, from his victory speech:

“…This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice…”

Will Obama be able to move people to care for one another and work for the country in the way Franklin D Roosevelt asked Americans for “meat-less Tuesdays?” What real change will he accomplish within his first one-hundred days in office? At the very least he has captured the belief of more than half the nation and now we will see how that belief will play out.

But now is not the time for American to relax and think everything is going to be all right. There should be no false sense of security that the war will be over, that the economy will right itself and that justice will be served to those who have led our nation astray for so many years. No is the time for all people to stay just as politically active as they did during the election and to hold the new democratic majority government accountable to the people that they represent.

“I want young men and young women who are alive today to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing for them” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

The complete Obama Victory Speech:

Full Transcript

¹ Ron Paul’s Message to Obama Ron Paul Speaking at The Future of Freedom Foundation. C-Span. (Video)

Let’s step back in time to one of the defining moments in the Vietnam war. In the Tet Offensive of 1968, the North Vietnamese launched an all out offensive on several major cities. The simultaneous attack was massively well coordinated and a great blow to American morale. Walter Cronkite, who was voted in various opinion polls as the most trusted man in America, made statements about how the US no longer had any reason to have a military presence in Vietnam; powerful statements that turned the tide of American opinion.

However, the Tet Offensive was a strategic and tactical failure for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. The failed to cause the uprising and revolution in the south they had been hoping for and suffered massive causalities at the hands of the South Vietnamese and US forces. The effect of the Tet Offensive was purely a psychological one. John McCain’s father Admiral McCain never appears to mention in any of his writings that he viewed the Tet Offensive as a defeat¹.

Could the war in Vietnam have been won? It is a question that is still debated by historians today. However there is a critical reality about Vietnam: the rules of engagement. Many of the rules of engagement prevented US forces from attacking critical targets. The rules of engagement prohibited any types of attacks on the following²:

• North Vietnamese Surface-to-Air (SAM) sites that were not operational
• SAM that hadn’t first launched an offensive missile
• Any MiG fighter base designated as a “sanctuary”
• Any MiG fighter that did not have its landing gear retracted

• Any MiG fighter not showing hostile intent

Iraq suffers from the same apparent mismanagement. During the war planning, General Shinseki make it very clear additional tens of thousands of troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the initial invasion. His voice and others were ridiculed and silenced by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others. The Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) listed several historical sites that needed to be protected, were able to find former Iraqi commanders willing to reassemble the Iraqi army battalions, and provided numerous amounts of strategic solutions to the armed forces. The only building protected was the ministry of oil. The Iraqi army, of which every citizen is required to serve in one of the five branches, was disbanded. Many of the ORHA recommendations were ignored. Colonel Wilkerson, Ambassador Bodine, General Garner and several others in ORHA have all spoken publicly about the failure of the reconstruction effort³.

Ignoring questions of whether either the Vietnam or Iraq Wars were justified or necessary, could these wars have been winnable and left behind strong democratic governments? The chances of successful campaigns, if possible, was hindered greatly by what seems like a failure to listen to experts and correctly manage both war and reconstruction.

“…In one area, though, he [McCain] has been more or less consistent: his belief in the power of war to solve otherwise insoluble problems. This ideology of action has not been undermined by his horrific experience as a tortured POW during the Vietnam War, or by the Bush administration’s disastrous execution of the Iraq War. All this is not to suggest that McCain is heedlessly bellicose or reflexively willing to send U.S. soldiers into danger; he is the father of a marine and a Naval Academy midshipman…whose service he rarely mentions. And he opposed, presciently, keeping the Marines in Beirut in 1993….Senator Obama, though certainly no pacifist, envisions a world of cooperation and diplomacy; McCain sees a word of organic conflict and zero-sum competition¹…” -Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic.

McCain’s belief in finishing the war in Iraq comes from a deep sense of honor that is unyielding to ideology or public opinion. Both he and his father, according his interview with Goldberg in the October issue of The Atlantic, seemed to have a grasp of where the failures occurred in both Vietnam and currently in Iraqi. McCain truly believes he can right the failed policy in Iraq and restore American honor.

But the reality that McCain is unprepared for is not that of the senate or that of war planning, it is that he doesn’t understand that neither Vietnam or Iraq were never intended to be won. The ridiculous rules of engagement in Vietnam and the poor reconstruction effort in Iraq were less likely that of incompetency and negligence and more likely intentional policies that were intended to sustain the wars as long as possible.

Staying the course in Iraq will continue to fund the war industry and increase profit revenue for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Haliburton, Boeing, Blackwater International and all the other defense contractors who have sustained hundreds of billions of dollars in profit from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Goldberg’s interview with McCain makes it easier for liberals, democrats and other left-wing groups to at least understand from what direction McCain is coming from and the reasoning behind his policies, even if one does not agree with them. However, McCain’s honor and maverick tagline will not be able to sway an economic and political system that is solidly nailed in the direction of creating and sustaining conflict purely for the means of financial gain and the drive for global dominance.

¹ The Wars of John McCain. Goldberg. The Atlantic. October 2008. p40-54.

² Air Force Colonel Jacksel Jack Broughton & Air Force General John D. Jack Lavelle: Testing the Rules of Engagement During the Vietnam War HistoryNet.com. Retrieved on October 11, 2008

³ No End in Sight (Film 2007)