65 Comments

1. thibaud:

I think it was Thomas Mann who said (forgive me if I mangle the exact quote), Anyone who’s not a leftist at age 19 should hang himself. Anyone who’s still a leftist at age 39 should be shot

Apr 21, 2005 - 11:56 am 2. asher:

Neo-neo is one of my favorite new bloggers. I’m glad to see her getting a well-deserved post here.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:11 pm 3. Former CNN Watcher:

It was Winston Churchill said, “If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:24 pm 4. someone:

This is so, so telling:

I was getting my news from several sources: network TV, Newsweek, Time, the Boston Globe, and the NY Times. I was under the impression that this represented a broad spectrum of news.”

Fascinating series, btw.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:24 pm 5. thibaud:

I wonder how many would have been leftists had there been a web and access to Vietnamese bloggers 35 years ago?

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:33 pm 6. yama-arashi:

The internet–thank you Al Gore!??

Thibaud, as I am infinitely lazy, I was wondering if you had an answer to your interesting question. And I’ll give you another one to play around with: how would the liberation of Iraq be playing out in public opinion without the web? Also, would there have been a 9/11 without the web and its technological compatriots (global positioning et al)? I hated the seventies but part of me wishes it had all ended there. Always a double-edged sword, this “technology” and “advancement” stuff. I mean here I am in Japan asking Thibaud, who is somewhere in the world, a question after having read a wonderful series of writings by Neo-Neocon, also somewhere in the world, while hoping in the near future to watch Roger on C-Span appearing before Sen. Coleman’s committee giving the U.N. and the MSM a whuppin and I am doing this as I wait for the live broadcast of the Yankees to start so I can cheer on Matsui. I am pretty sure there is a game tonight, er this morning, and in a second or two I can find out for sure. I am not complaining but today is glass half empty day, so even the seventies was way too late, and I will come down on the side of boats with sails and the pony express and wish it had all ended there.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:02 pm 7. Buddy Larsen:

fascinating post, link, and comments!

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:02 pm 8. thibaud:

Greetings, yama-san. I can think of one crystal clear implication of oru alternate hypotheses: with a web and access to bloggers both military and civilian on the ground in Vietnam at the time of Tet in 1968, Cronkite never would have been able to transform victory into defeat.

Likewise, without the web in 2003 and 2004, the Iraq War would almost certainly have been viewed by the public solely through an MSM lens as a catastrophic failure and bloodbath requiring our immediate departure.

Point here is that the patterns of reality we form concerning current events are inevitably a product of the data and information available to us. Increase the data available and you increase the individual’s ability to apply logic, sense, experience and imaginative understanding so as to shape his own understanding of reality. Decrease that data flow and you get conformity and sterile, cliche-ridden “shortcuts from thought,” in Orwell’s apt phrase.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:14 pm 9. Buddy Larsen:

Me, too, Yama. All sorts of high-water marks in human centeredness seem to me to’ve been reached in the 19th century. Letters home from soldiers in our Civil War are one favorite clue; spelling, syntax highly individualistic, but sentiments expressed so brave and poetic that one does indeed question ‘progress’ as a given per-se. And that’s just one little thing. The slower pace, the fewer–and thus more valuable–possessions, the value placed on simple plain virtues, all would make good ideals for today’s seekers. I know, silly, we need max growth and innovation at all times or the Bear will eat us…but we can dream.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:17 pm 10. thibaud:

One more huge implication: bad news for elites of all sorts.

Patients can research their own ailments and challenge their doctors. Investors can do their own research and stock-picking. And citizens can challenge the crap, and it really is junk, that passes for most “informed reporting and comment” by the journalistic apparat.

Interesting that our politicians, with a better nose than most other elite groups, have learned how to forestall the inevitable atomization of politics with gerrymandering. Screw the people in the center and the independents. Divvy up the pie so that incumbents of both parties need not listen to anyone but their respective extremist echo chambers. This is how you get a 99% re-election rate in the House.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:19 pm 11. thibaud:

Another emperor whose apparel’s now found wanting is the professoriat.

Look at the current head of the American Middle East Studies Association: this academic claims expertise in a country he’s never set foot in, whose language he can’t speak well, and whose recent history he knows only from the same secondary sources available to you and me, and a citizen blogger from that country calls out the perfesser’s posturing, ignorant ramblings for all to see, in near-real time.

See entry for Sunday, November 21 [or just hit Ctrl+F and type "cole"]: http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/archives/2004_11_01_iraqthemodel_archive.html

http://sandbox.blog-city.com/read/1059457.htm

and see comments at bottom of page: http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2004_11_25.htm

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:30 pm 12. Buddy Larsen:

Point taken per Delay; Ouch. But, gerrymanderers today are always repairing the other party’s gerrymanders of yesterday–espesh our boy in the current crosshairs over it. But to stay with the high perspective of the thread, yes, thibaud, a third leg would sure stabilize the stool we have to sit in…er, on, today. We must have a center party, somewhere around here, all the other democracies do, where’s ours?

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:32 pm 13. Kyda Sylvester:

“If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”

I hate to disappoint one of my favorite historical figures, but at 20 I was going through my Ayn Rand stage. But then, I was raised in a Republican house and the Episcopal church so any lack of heart should come as no surprise. (Might have had a leg up on that brain thing, though.)

Have been following Neo’s posts for a while now. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a mindset I never shared (looking forward to Roger’s book for the same reasons). I’m delighted to be sharing common ground with folks as wise and thoughtful as Roger and Neo-Neocon.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:35 pm 14. thibaud:

Yama,

would there have been a 9/11 without the web and its technological compatriots (global positioning et al)? I hated the seventies but part of me wishes it had all ended there. Always a double-edged sword, this “technology” and “advancement” stuff. … I am not complaining but today is glass half empty day, so even the seventies was way too late, and I will come down on the side of boats with sails and the pony express and wish it had all ended there.

Had the world ended in the seventies, we’d all be wearing leisure suits, driving 30 defects-per-car Chrysler Cordobas and fending off amphibian killer rabbits: http://www.newsoftheodd.com/article1021.html

I have utterly no nostalgia for the pre-internet era. This is truly a golden age for anyone who believes that people provided with access to light and reason will eventually choose truth and progress over illusion and darkness. And f*** the jihadists.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:38 pm 15. Michael B:

Most recently read study on Vietnam: The Vietnamese Gulag, co-written, but auto-biographical by a reformed N. Vietnamese national, post-1975, who did the time in their gulag system and does not dilute America’s mistakes in his telling.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:52 pm 16. yama-arashi:

Thanks Thibaud. Well done. And I am in total agreement about the seventies. It was a terrible time to be brought up in America. I want to sue!! But I don’t share your optimism (it is after all cup half empty day for me) about the “golden age” we may be on the verge of realizing. I’m not as enthusiastic about the “people” as you seem to be. I don’t want anyone to take this sentiment in an elitist vein, for my judgment is based more on self-reflection than on observation of others. And the “masses” and other like terms I detest. I also concede your point, after the seventies how happy I am we have “progressed,” and this is why I finally decided, seemingly with Buddy, for things to end somewhere in the nineteenth century (technology wise). . Thus neither the awful seventies nor now. I could’ve done without a few holocausts as well. And think about it, Roger wouldn’t have been riding freedom buses, but hitching rides on freedom mule trains going down South.

I couldn’t be in better company Buddy. Maybe we should drop out, or better put–drop back between a few centuries and two or three millenia during the weekdays, and come back into this “advanced” (hah) world on just the weekends. (Of course this doesn’t include watching the Yankees on satellite t.v. whenever possible. The refrigerator is also one of my favorites. I did get rid of my car years and years ago.) Listen to me I sound almost like a hippie. Tho an anti-communist hippie who supports the troops and loves it when cowboys mess up the best laid plans of the UN and France and when the sound of tyrants dropping dead and running scared begins to echo around the world.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:56 pm 17. Kyda Sylvester:

… as I wait for the live broadcast of the Yankees to start so I can cheer on Matsui.

Yama, if I had any lingering doubts that you you are a fine fellow with discerning taste, which I’m sure I didn’t, they’d be gone now.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:57 pm 18. Wallace:

I deeply appreciated Neo’s thoughtfulness in that post. The comment I left there I’ll repeat here….

Very good, thoughtful and somewhat tearful to some of us..thanks for your efforts in doing this. As another said here, I’m the same age as you and went went from childhood thru to manhood during this time. Literally.

I was in college and ROTC from ‘67-’71, thinking surely that the actual combat would be ending before I graduated. I went to Infantry, Airborne and Ranger school directly from college…..and then to Vietnam arriving in the late Fall of ‘71 and being withdrawn during the Spring Offensive of ‘72.

I didn’t relive, nor much talk about, my experiences for decades afterwards until I met and became close friends with Joe Galloway who wrote the best seller “We Were Soldiers Once and Young”…later made into the Mel Gibson film, We Were Soldiers.

Becoming friends with and being involved in reunions with the group of guys portrayed in the book and movie I began to see what good we had done, or intended to do, in Vietnam and how changing winds in Washington condemned a whole generation of young US servicemen and the Vietnamese people to live as an asterisk in the annals of history. I pray that we never again abandon the support of our troops or those in other countries where we have made the commitment of our military forces. Indecision killed 1000’s of young US soldiers and millions of Vietnamese.

On this the 30th anniversary of the fall of a Saigon, my friend Joe Galloway is leaving for Vietnam tomorrow with other members of the group who fought in the Ia Drang in 1965 to pay his respects and to remember all those friends who did not come home.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:12 pm 19. yama-arashi:

Kyda,

That was very kind of you to say. But I am wondering after my full disclosure if you’ll still feel the same. In Yankee’s matters I must confess I am a new convert. In fact I grew up rooting on the Orioles, the closest thing to a home team, during their glory years, much at the Yankee’s expense. Don’t hate me. At least I have finally seen the light. A big tent philosophy? Consider me a Matsui Yankee. A phenomenon not dissimiliar to 9/11 Republicans. And the shame of coming late to the truth I cover with loyalty and great energy to the cause.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:14 pm 20. Kyda Sylvester:

We must have a center party, somewhere around here, all the other democracies do, where’s ours?

Right here. All we lack is structure, money and candidates. Details, details, details…

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:15 pm 21. Buddy Larsen:

…and that PM of yours ain’t bad, either…I just need to get that Richard Gere foxtrot somehow surgically excised…i need eithe a pre-frontal lobotomy or a free bottle in front o’ me.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:19 pm 22. Kyda Sylvester:

Yama–I like to think I have a big tent. I accept all 9-11 Republicans and born-again Matsui Yankees.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:20 pm 23. Buddy Larsen:

…ah, them DAMNable details…but, I think you’re right, substantive-wise.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:21 pm 24. yama-arashi:

I highly recommend Wallace’s web-site (a blog plus all sorts of goodies). Just click on his name and you’re there. At the upper right hand corner you can then click on Big Gold Dog.Com, then on the right side bring the column down to “History” and click on “Battle at LZ-XRay.” That would be just for starters. The “Fishing Submarine” is another of my favorites. Pack a lunch. Spend the day.

Thanks for the big tent Kyda!

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:26 pm 25. Kyda Sylvester:

Wallace–We Were Soldiers is not only the best film about Viet Nam, it’s one of the finest films ever about war.

Thank you for your service. I supported you back then, but I didn’t do nearly enough. None of us did.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:29 pm 26. yama-arashi:

Buddy,

I saw the same dancing P.M.. Wine worked for me. Lots of it. The nightmares ended a few nights ago. P.M. Howard was just here and there was no dancing, and I hope that for Bush’s next visit Koizumi doesn’t ask to be taught the two-step.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:31 pm 27. Buddy Larsen:

Wrt Wallace’ post, Joe Galloway was the ‘omniscient observer’ from whose POV the great Mel Gibson movie “We Were Soldiers” was framed…Galloway’s book (title?) based screenplay, I believe. Barry Pepper (the sniper in “Private Ryan”) played Galloway. The battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Some of the Ia Drang vets here in the San Antone area know Galloway, and love him for what he did with the history of that battle. It is as you say hard not to get tearful sometimes.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:31 pm 28. Buddy Larsen:

Yama, wine, good idea…will try tonite….

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:33 pm 29. yama-arashi:

Wallace,

Having said it over in my mind hundreds of time I just realized I have yet to say it to you. Thank you for your service and for all the work you have done since then on behalf of the troops.

Yama-Arashi

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:36 pm 30. Wallace:

Thanks Yama….of my 3 readers you’re the tops.

On the 30th anniversary, it is good to look back on some of the young faces that made the commitment to serve, fight and die in Vietnam.

Here’s the We Were Soldiers link:

We Were Soldiers

Disclaimer: we do sell these photos but most of the proceeds go to the Ia Drang Scholarship Fund…sending the kids and now grandkids of those 300+ killed here in ‘65 to college.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:38 pm 31. Buddy Larsen:

Kyda, that aftermath scene where the camera ‘walks’ toward Gibson from long-shot to close-up as he is staring at nothing and trying to hold his face together while trying to talk to Galloway/Pepper…I mean, it’s just a movie…but, oh, mercy…what a scene. Gibson was saying “thank you” to forgotten soldiers everywhere.

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:43 pm 32. yama-arashi:

“Battle at LZ-XRay” link

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:46 pm 33. Kyda Sylvester:

Yes, Buddy, I remember it well. Such depictions re-invigorate my awe of men and the things they do (and I don’t mean “men” in the generic sense, but you testosterone-laden creatures from Mars–never have been a girly-man kind of gal).

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:05 pm 34. Buddy Larsen:

Ha! Love it…to hell with emphasizing what we have in common, let’s enjoy what we DON’T have in common! Back to the thread, maybe the worst thing about neo-neo’s campus times was women thinking they wanted ‘new’ men, and men having to hate themselves–or put on a sleazy act to that effect–in order to be “in” (a telltale expression THAT was)…what a dumb culture-bomb the left snuck in from the Hell armory. Talk about a commonality of stuplicity among da gendahs! “Ahh, youth, too bad it’s wasted on the young.” (not my bon mot, think it was, uh, Winston Churchill?)

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:35 pm 35. chuck:

Buddy,

A quick google yields,

Youth is wasted on the young.

– George Bernard Shaw

which was right next to this goodie,

Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.

– Mark Twain

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:51 pm 36. charlotte:

Just so you know, I’m probably not the only person saving this thread. Keep going, please!

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:54 pm 37. Buddy Larsen:

Okay for offbeat, “synchronicity”…Roger’s new post mentions “Tijuana’ a click earlier I was at Wallace’s paen to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (from neo-neo’s thread-era), and I see a Mark Twain ref from Chuck just as I was thinking of passing on to Yama that the wrong-century thing at top of thread was wonderfully covered in Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. Well, you said keep going, Charlotte!

Apr 21, 2005 - 4:08 pm 38. charlotte:

Thanks and don’t stop now, Buddy. I have nothing to add here- most of what I remember from my junior high Nam days was the national debate resolution: That the Congress should prohibit US unilateral military intervention in foreign countries.

Seems we’re still debating the same thing today, only I guess it would be the UN or France instead of Congress.

Apr 21, 2005 - 4:34 pm 39. dr. sanity:

Neo-neocon has been one of my favorites for a while; and this is an excellent series.

I have to admit, that like Kyda I was going through my Ayn Rand stage at that time and was completely puzzled by the entire hysteria about Vietnam. I was in college and mostly observed the craziness from afar. My main feeling was one of sorrow for all the soldiers who had to come home to such hatred directed at them. I remember thinking that maybe all of the anger and rage could have been avoided if the military draft hadn’t been used, but here we are with an all-volunteer military now and not much has changed. The same people still hate the military and still treat every war as if it were Vietnam.

Anyway, a great series.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:01 pm 40. Terrye:

Reading neo’s post gave me a kind of deja vu feeling.

I was 17 when I started school in 1969 and was radicalized right along with a lot of other people. Like neo I remember the war seeming to go on forever.

But I also remember my shock at what followed. I never expected things to get as bad as they did.

As for transformations I have not decided whether Viet Nam and Watergate transformed me and now I am back where I kinda sort belong or if 9/11 fundamentally changed me.

I remember reading about the early revolutionaries here in America and how they slowly, almost accidentally came to revolution. George Washington was one such revolutionary. But once the course was set the sense of the rightness of the cause was such that the war for American independence became something much larger. It became the beginning of the end of monarchial rule. It became the American revolution.

Perhaps 9/11 just brought the words life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness home to me again. It made them real.

Like neo neo con I have lost friends and family over this socalled transformation. But it seems to me that this is about our destiny, not just politics at all.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:08 pm 41. richard mcenroe:

Kyda — I hate to disappoint you, but a libertarian is just an anarchist with a necktie. *weg* Just finished L. Neil Smith’s The American Zone, and the Libertarian future is basically Disneyland with sidearms and no Gay Thursdays…

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:18 pm 42. Buddy Larsen:

Richard, that can’t be the only third choice, can it? Couldn’t the ladies just wear scarves or a string o’ pearls or something?

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:46 pm 43. Buddy Larsen:

BTW, Yama, PM Koizumi didn’t actually look bad–he saved himself with the “wot a couple o’ maroons!” facial expression. Actually kinda cool, really.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:56 pm 44. Fresh Air:

Thibaud–

I concur with your assessment regarding the American public’s understanding of the Iraq War in the event the Internet did not exist. An interesting question is, Why did the American public not want to give up in the Second World War? We got our asses kicked in Tunisia. Our Marines were getting pushed all over the Pacific. Wake Island and the Phillipines fell before we knew what his us. Operation Market Garden was an unmitigated disaster. Our fighters were, for the most part, slow and immobile compared with their German and Japanese counterparts. Our bombing of both German and Japan was terribly ineffective and costly, both to our pilots and to innocent civillians. And, truth be told, Operation Overlord was a FUBAR in many respects. And let’s not forget the Battle of the Bulge…

So why is it that our media insisted on their relentlessly upbeat coverage of the war? Why were they patriots then and not now? And who or what is to blame for this? Can it really all be laid at the doorstep of Vietnam? Something tells me it can’t be.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:02 pm 45. Skookumchuk:

Fresh Air:

So why is it that our media insisted on their relentlessly upbeat coverage of the war? Why were they patriots then and not now?

In part it was because we were helping Stalin. Certainly a good portion of the left here in America and in occupied Europe saw it in those terms.

Had Hitler not turned on Stalin, or to put it another way, if National and International Socialism had somehow learned to coexist, the leftist and academic enthusiasm for World War II would have been largely absent and the history of that war possibly much different.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:22 pm 46. Steve J.:

COn: mugged by Joe McCarthy

NEO-CON: mugged by 60s campus riots

NEO-NEO-CON: mugged by 9-11

MORAL: CONS are victims.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:23 pm 47. Terrye:

steve:

What does Joe McCarthy have to do with anything?

He killed himself after he was censured did he not?

I think the difference is that although I was always a Democrat, I was an American first.

I knew that in a fight with someone like Hitler the Repbublicans were on our side.

Today the Democratic party in general and much of the left has decided that in a fight you root for the enemy and demonize the Republican. Never mind if they are your fellow Americans. Never mind if the pay taxes and live next door.

If they are ‘right wingers” they are the bad guys.

end of story.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:39 pm 48. WichitaBoy:

Concerning the public’s understanding of Iraq without the existence of the internet, has the internet really made much of a difference? I submit that for the majority of the population of the West, it is as though we are back in the ’70’s. Witness Dan Rather. Witness the “what-oil-for-food-scandal?” NYT. The internet is only making a difference for a small fraction, and only half of that fraction at that.

neo-neocon’s essays are excellent and I can’t wait to read the next installment.

Fresh Air, I think a big part of the answer has to do with whether the war is perceived as optional. WWII was not viewed by most Americans as anything we had any choice about. So it didn’t matter how poorly it went or how many screwups there were: it simply had to be done. Vietnam was initially seen as necessary, then public opinion shifted and it was believed to be an optional choice made by bad Presidents, and then finally the United States came to be viewed as the nefarious party (partly with the help of Soviet propaganda, as John Moore has documented). There was a massive “transvaluation of values” in which we the good guys became the bad guys in many people’s minds. Finally a point was reached where there developed a substantial and important group of people who believe that in every war, under any circumstances, we are the transgressor, we are evil, and morality dictates working directly against the interests of the United States.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:44 pm 49. Buddy Larsen:

But maybe it is the key, fresh air. Broadly simplified, one could say that Vietnam created a liberal orthodoxy that Ronald Reagan’s heretics insulted, and like a bad marriage, it’s just gotten worse and worse. Florida 2000 plus 911 then left the left so internally cross-wired that only a high-integrity 2004 presidential candidate could’ve restored psychological stability.

But alas, the unfortunate campaign has just left the left more convinced than ever that the only hope is to keep the in-party on the constant defensive.

Yes, I believe it does trace directly back to the vietnam split. One side says the split ended the war early and thus saved lives, the other side says it cost them the victory and wasted the lives that were lost.

I don’t see a heal until the Nam generation heads on off to the great beyond. The tragedy as many see it is that the left has reacted to the reformation so personally that it will sacrifice anything right up to and inadvertantly beyond national survival, in order to re-stablish the orthodoxy. We were in a religious war long before the jihad loomed up.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:46 pm 50. Buddy Larsen:

Skookumchuk makes an awfully good point ab/ our alliance w/ Stalin. It opened the academy to Marx, thus to communist propaganda, and when Vietnam went hot, the Berkely Free Speech Movement et al was in place to sap the national will to win in Vietnam.

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:02 pm 51. Kyda Sylvester:

I have to admit, that like Kyda I was going through my Ayn Rand stage at that time and was completely puzzled by the entire hysteria about Vietnam.

See? They don’t call her Dr. Sanity for nothing.

Rick–The Libertarians lost their future years ago when they began confusing libertarian with libertine. Now they’re just garden variety moonbats (and no Libertarians up in my neck of the woods wear ties). BTW, looking for some late night reading, I followed a link of yours in a previous thread to the SCOTUS obscenity cases. Fascinating watching them grapple with intangibles. I found myself usually with the minority, but that’s nothing new. Thanks for the link.

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:17 pm 52. Rick Ballard:

Kyda,

That was Richard McEnroe on Libertarians. I doubt that you will ever see a comment from me concerning that peculiar manifestation of egocentricity. I agree that the Supremes sure did grapple with intangibles, I give game, set and match to the intangibles.

WB,

I concur with you about the importance of the Internet but I think the forces of darkness might have prevailed had it not been for talk radio. Reinforcement is a wonderful concept.

NNC’s post was great. The only thing missing was Jerry Rubin quoting Angela Davis quoting Herbert Marcuse.

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:34 pm 53. Buddy Larsen:

And Rock. Ten million sons and daughters of the middle class wandered off into the purple haze on the advice of the Beatles, Stones, and others, and because of the slow-down effects of pot and acid, required a decade or two to realize they didn’t actually have the show-biz careers, nor any of those album royalties rolling in.

Apr 21, 2005 - 8:02 pm 54. Kyda Sylvester:

Yes, I believe it does trace directly back to the vietnam split. One side says the split ended the war early and thus saved lives, the other side says it cost them the victory and wasted the lives that were lost.

Yes. Absolutely. Whenever I’ve been to the Wall, I’ve wept for those 58,000+ fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, sweethearts who died not without honor and not for an unjust cause, but, as it turned out, died uselessly just the same. And I’ve wept for the ones who came home damaged, especially those for whom the damage was irreparable. And for the the millions of SE Asians who died in re-education camps and the killing fields because we didn’t have what it took to finish the job. And how about a tear of two for the millions still living under the Communist yoke.

But, it wasn’t just the Vietnam split. For the 60’s radicals, everything had to go. There was no value worth preserving. If our “elders” were wrong about Vietnam, they must have been wrong about everything. Can’t trust anyone over 30. Trash it all and build a new society based on the Dawning of Aquarius and the Summer of Love. I feel like I owe a personal apology to everyone born afer 1960.

Apr 21, 2005 - 8:05 pm 55. Kyda Sylvester:

Rick–Now that you mention it, I did find it a bit out of character and Richard, in my generation but not of it, what I said to Rick above. I’ll try to keep my Rick/Richard’s straight in the future.

Apr 21, 2005 - 8:18 pm 56. richard mcenroe:

Kyda ó So you have your Dicks in a row, now?

Fresh Air ó That’s a major oversimplification. Once the Japanese ran off the edge of their opening strategy in 1942. they never held the initiative again. As for the Germans, it was Rommel who said the Americans learned faster than any other opponent he ever faced. He also said, “War is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos to a high degree,” which ties in to another senior German general’s (Manteuful? von Rundstedt?) sour comment that “it is useless to study American tactical manuals, because they don’t.” And nothing the Germans ever pulled off matched Patton’s turning the entire Third Army 90 degrees in less than 24 hours to relieve Bastogne.

Apr 21, 2005 - 10:19 pm 57. VietPundit:

Moving essay from neo-neocon. My reaction, as a Vietnamese-American, is here:

http://vietpundit.blogspot.com/2005/04/changing-mind.html

Apr 21, 2005 - 10:53 pm 58. Fresh Air:

Richard Mac–

I take a backseat to no one in my admiration of Gen. Patton. You have to go back to Hannibal to find a winter march that was the equal of his relief of Bastogne.

While I’ll grant you it was inevitable we would win (though it was thanks in large part to the Soviet Union’s unimaginable sacrifices), there were numerous times when things looked quite awful, even dire. (Remember “Black ‘44″?) The point of my post was to explore why, in the face of such adversity, did our popular press never forget which side they were on, and who the bad guys were.

Going back and reading old news accounts, I am constantly struck by how upbeat (sanitized of course) and patriotic the reporting was. If A.J. Liebling and Bill Maudlin read some of the things coming out of Iraq today, they’d assume the writers were working for the enemy.

Apr 21, 2005 - 11:26 pm 59. jerry:

Richard:

Patton’s execution of the 90-degree wheel to counterattack in the Ardennes was indeed one of the greatest operational maneuvers in the annals of modern warfare. However, there is more behind the story then most people know.

Third Army planning for this operation began in November upon the receipt of a series of warning messages about a possible German counter-attack in the Ardennes. Allied intelligence correctly predicted the attack but the Germans postponed “Wacht An Rhein” three times before December 16th. By the third warning Allied commanders discounted the intelligence as a cry of wolf. All that is except 3rd Army. Patton had his G-3 staff develop a just in case contingency plan to meet the possibility of a German surprise attack. When the attack came he had a fully developed “O-Plan” on the shelf. What made Patton a great Commander was ability to foresee, plan and execute operations against threats that other commanders could not imagine. He had an extraordinary sense of what we call today situational awareness.

Apr 22, 2005 - 6:35 am 60. Buddy Larsen:

Enigmatic human being, and tragic figure. The German General staff could never understand why the commander they feared most was second echelon, and always under suspicion, to the point that every point he ever sold was doubly hard, as he first had to prove that he wasn’t crazy, and only then could beating the enemy become the issue. Gulliver figure.

Apr 22, 2005 - 7:24 am 61. thibaud:

Wichita Boy -

Concerning the public’s understanding of Iraq without the existence of the internet, has the internet really made much of a difference? I submit that for the majority of the population of the West, it is as though we are back in the ’70’s. Witness Dan Rather. Witness the “what-oil-for-food-scandal?” NYT. The internet is only making a difference for a small fraction, and only half of that fraction at that.

Perhaps the internet sways only a “small fraction”, but that fraction, like any swing vote constituency, is crucial to the outcome of a close election. Rick B may never be convinced, but I still maintain that the evidence we have suggests that it was pro-Iraq war, national security Democrats crossing over and voting for Bush who made the difference last November. I would also submit that these centrist and liberal hawks make up a disproportionate share of the internet and blogosphere audience, which overlaps pretty neatly with the nat-security/neo-neocon demographic: tech-savvy, older, predominantly male and well-educated.

Another way in which the internet’s political impact was and is disproportionate to the size of the audience: the availability of rival memes has helped greatly to undercut the credibility of Rather, the NYT etc., which today is down around 20%, ie used-car salesmen range.

People gathering around office coolers or in barbershops or beauty salons or ballfields will be exposed to those alternate memes and views by others who now, thanks to bloggers and the internet, have solid evidence with which to demolish the c-BS that in an earlier day would have gone unchallenged. It’s primarily the internet and the rival voices and viewpoints it enables that has caused the public’s trust in the MSM to fall from ca 45% trusting them in 1995 to s.t. like 20% trusting them today. Note that conservatives’ trust of the MSM fell before 1995; it’s non-conservatives whose trust level has fallen most sharply since the availability of web browsers.

Apr 22, 2005 - 7:35 am 62. richard mcenroe:

Kyda ó If you’re looking for interesting reading on censorship issues, let me recommend The Single Source of All Filth, available through Amazon.com. It’s a collection of pamphlets from the time surrounding the suppression of the Restoration stage and the establishment of censorship in Britiain, with biographic and historical context. Some things really don’t change

Apr 22, 2005 - 7:36 am 63. Tom O'Bedlam:

The value of the internet as a psychological bulwark should not be discounted. Those of us who are naturally reticent are given psychological support (as well as talking points)to venture forth and do verbal battle when we otherwise would not.

I spent 1968-1972 in a liberal eastern college — Dartmouth as a matter of fact. I got through those years by keeping my head down and my opinions largely to myself (and, in practical terms, getting lucky in the draft lottery). The constant exposure to a largely monolithic point of view on the part of everyone around you — with no resource to provide you a balancing perspective — has its own wearing and modifying effect on the formation of one’s own opinions, as well as inhibiting the expression of those dissident opinions one may have left after the modifying influence has done its work. I now realize this in retrospect, particularly in view of the present contrasting situation.

I find the Internet to be a huge difference between then and now. Part of it is no doubt the increased confidence that comes with age. But just reading the intelligent commentary of others with whom I agree gives me more confidence in airing my own views in the workplace and other public venues, and reassures me that my opinions are not some oddball lunacy.

Apr 22, 2005 - 8:21 am 64. yama-arashi:

Tom O`Bedlam,

Very good point. A friend of mine, raised a Democrat, and educated by the usual suspects, had quite a difficult time of it after 9/11. I could provide him some relief, but Roger’s site was exactly as you put it: a “psychological bulwark.” The anonymity and thus equality of the internet, when at its best, for its beyond all the silly categories that hem us in, provides a type of freedom and support that can be very beneficial and intellectually productive.

Apr 22, 2005 - 10:51 am 65. Buddy Larsen:

Agree completely with youse guys & gals. Harking back to the ‘Nam topic, anybody who missed Vietpundit’s statement should go read it. Few have less reason to be so generous of spirit.

Apr 23, 2005 - 6:52 am

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