25 Comments

1. Ron:

Our service men and women gave their all, as they usually do. They won the ground war in Viet Nam but lost the propaganda war waged by 5th columnists talking heads and Walter Duranty types who should have known better. Our country lost 55,000 men who’s travails came to naught and freedom still remains lost in ‘Nam. The relocation camps, boat people and Pol Pot aren’t mentioned as ‘collateral’ damage by the people who were involved with back stabbing in the states but they should be, they were the cause of million of deaths in South East Asia.

May 12, 2005 - 10:31 am 2. ricpic:

From neo-neocon’s article:

“War is not pretty, it is brutal, it involves doing things that most of us don’t like to think about and usually don’t have to watch. The young in particular tend to be soft hearted and vulnerable to the sight of human suffering…”

Not in my experience. The young are in fact far more hard hearted, generally intolerant, and impervious to human suffering than the middle aged or elderly. Of course there are exceptions. But in general it is only with experience that doubt, uncertainty and therefore a softening of ones attitude toward others sets in.

Anyone who can so misread the psychology of the young doesn’t exactly inspire trust when it comes to explaining the effect of Vietnam on those who were young at the time.

May 12, 2005 - 10:34 am 3. jerry:

Neo-Con seeks to explain the hold that the reigning Viet Nam narrative has on the boomer generation from the perspective of conventional wisdom. As usually the case, the conventional wisdom is generally wrong. That in itself may account for “a mind being a difficult thing to change.” To change a mind you must find ground truth.

To cite several examples:

Conventional Wisdom: We couldn’t win because we were fighting the last war. Vietnam was so different. Oh yeah? Tell to the Marines who fought on Guadalcanal. We beat the Japanese in jungle with fewer advantages then we had in Vietnam. Not only were we not fighting the last war, we were fighting smarter and better in the tropical jungle then we did against the Japanese.

Conventional Wisdom: Americans didn’t see the threat nor did they like the way the war was fought so they lost heart and interest. Then explain why we are still in Korea. The American Public’s attitude toward Korea was no different then it was toward Vietnam. The failure to seek victory was a major cause of conservative and anti-communist liberal abandonment of the project. But then again that’s why we elected Ike. He was going to end the war one war or another. So, the attitude toward the threat was the same as it was in Korea.

The reason for the US defeat was the revival of the influence of the Communist movement in the post-McCarthy era. Communists and their fellow travelers had been restored to respectability and were therefore able to exert the kind of influence that they did in Pre-WWII American and had been prevented from doing in Korea. For all their talk of anti-Fascism, the Communist left supported Hitler until the invasion of the USSR. There is a major overlap between the leadership of anti Vietnam War movement and the Left opposition to FDR’s support of Great Britain, US rearmament and the draft in 1940-41. 6/22 is a more important date to the WWII generation left then 12/07.

The real story, and the one that the left refuses to face, is that without a return to respectability of communism, the 1960’s pro-Hanoi movement would not have gained any traction.

May 12, 2005 - 12:21 pm 4. Lan Nguyen:

Right on ricpic. If the young is soft hearted and vunerable to the sight of human suffering, army of all ages don’t mostly recruit young people. But that’s not the case.

May 12, 2005 - 12:29 pm 5. Lan Nguyen:

“The real story, and the one that the left refuses to face, is that without a return to respectability of communism, the 1960’s pro-Hanoi movement would not have gained any traction.”

I think it’s rather the return of respectability of socialism, the twin evil of communism. American don’t get destroyed by communism but by socialiasm, a soft porn of the hard porn communism.

May 12, 2005 - 12:34 pm 6. Rick Ballard:

The malleability of young minds is hardly worth discussion. The only fault that I find in Neo-neocons descriptive narration is a lack of awareness as to the effectiveness of the propaganda used to manipulate her and that subset of the boomer population which possessed an overdeveloped sense of empathy coupled with an underdeveloped awareness as to reality as it existed outside the artificial hothouse of academy.

Those who seek power through the abuse of rhetoric and logic, who seek to steal that which they cannot earn, are still with us as much today as they were in Chicago in ‘68. Same lies, many of the same liars and much the same target group of emotionally driven and logically impaired children who do not even understand that they have become fellow travellers in a movement whose leadership would not hesitate to put a bullet in the back of their pretty heads in less than half a heartbeat if it would advance the attainment of the power the keadership so desperately seeks.

I do commend Neo-neocon for her efforts. I only wish she would turn some of the introspection out towards the the institutions that robbed her by promoting a cynical emotionalism whose final reward will always be the serf’s collar.

May 12, 2005 - 1:51 pm 7. neo-neocon:

Thanks, Roger!

Just a clarification on my statements about “the young” and “softheartedness”: the context of my remarks (or, at least, what I was attempting to make the context of my remarks–perhaps I was not clear enough) was primarily the young adult observer of that war, as it was presented on television without much background to understand it. To many, it seemed like so much random violence and suffering.

This sort of softheartedness and compassion for the underdog and the sufferer is indeed one of the reasons that the young are somewhat overrepresented among liberals. By the way, I don’t think compassion and softheartedness are a bad thing. But this phenomenon is one of the reasons Churchill said, in his famous quote (the details are somewhat variable, but this is the gist of it): “Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”

That’s pretty much what I was trying to get at.

May 12, 2005 - 1:59 pm 8. neo-neocon:

To Rick Ballard–that’s my plan for some later installments, the post-9/11 ones. It’s a long and winding road.

May 12, 2005 - 2:01 pm 9. David Thomson:

Errol Morrisís documentary film where Robert S. McNamara discusses his role in Americaís foreign policy challenges. The man simply not perceive Communism as a vile threat to the world. McNamara was a essentially a game theorist who saw the conflict as something of a glorified chess match. John Kenneth Galbraith was far worse. This silly human being thought that Communism may even be a more productive economic system than American capitalism. He constantly advised President Kennedy not to make a big deal out of South Vietnam.

We should never forget how popular socialism was by the mid 1960s on our college campuses. Galbraithís idiotic books were major sellers. Socialism is merely a luke warm version of Communism. Many were willing to concede that Communism may have its faults, but thought its core principles were sound. The dream was supposedly worth achieving. And what about the human suffering resulting from Communism? Dude, donít you realize that a few eggs have to be broken to make an omelet?

May 12, 2005 - 2:19 pm 10. Rick Ballard:

Neo-neocon,

I look forward to all future instalments. You know, you’re heading toward a book length treatment. Hope you find a publisher. And I hope you find the time to thumb through Horowitz’s ‘Radical Son’ as you go along. Just to refresh your memory as to who was really running the propaganda show – or you could look at the people at ANSWER today. Spirtual heirs as well as direct descendants.

David T.,

You left out Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Mustn’t forget the intellectual who turned a bootlegger’s dunghill into Camelot – he’s still at it, too.

May 12, 2005 - 2:39 pm 11. Lan Nguyen:

If you do want a good book at the dawn of Vietnam War by an American who’s living and travelled in Vienam before the war started, that a Vietnamese like me would read and don’t feel like being lied to the face as I am a stranger in my homeland, it’s the book by an author whose name escaped me but the title is “A Death in November”. She is honest and subtle but to the point with all facts presented. I just know her too late. That’s the only book and the only author I have very high respect for, if it means anything.

May 12, 2005 - 2:47 pm 12. Lan Nguyen:

about Vietnam War of course. The rest I have to subtract minimum 30% of credibility

May 12, 2005 - 2:53 pm 13. David Thomson:

ìYou left out Arthur Schlesinger Jr.î

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has always been an ardent anti-Communist. He even long ago alerted us to dangers of political correctness. I highly recommend his 1991 book, The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. Nevertheless, the man has caused a lot of harm. Schlesingerís New Deal liberalism—and lifelong relationship with Harvard University renders him incapable of aligning himself with those fighting against our ideological foes. At he end of the day, he will not rock the boat. Schlesinger will make excuses for Democrats which border on the absurd.

Harvard University is a vile institution. It is very fair to initially mistrust anyone graduating from this school with a soft science degree. They should be considered idiots until proven otherwise. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr is merely another example of Harvardís deleterious influence on our nation.

May 12, 2005 - 3:14 pm 14. David Thomson:

ìit’s the book by an author whose name escaped me but the title is “A Death in November”.î

I found this information on Amazon.com: A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963

by Ellen J. Hammer

I was utterly unaware of this book. It should, though, be delivered to me in about a week. I just ordered a used copy from Amazon.com for $1.20 + shipping.

May 12, 2005 - 3:22 pm 15. Rick Ballard:

David T.,

Schlesinger talked anti-communist but every time he gave advice concerning resisting the communists he took an accomodationist view based upon a very serious misreading of their real, rather than apparent, strength. He was consistent from the building of the Berlin Wall through the Bay of Pigs and up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He thought Reagan was wrong and had terribly misjudged the strength of the USSR. I’ll grant the “talked a good game” but he played a lousy one.

May 12, 2005 - 3:51 pm 16. thedragonflies:

I think that neo-neocon accurately describes the emotional intensity of liberals who became obsessively attached to the new narrative of the times – don’t trust the government, do trust the media, America’s power is suspect and should be limited, blame America first, etc.

I think she does a good job of pointing out that since their world-views were based on emotional trauma, they adopted a kind of new “faith” that gave them comfort. And they are thus impervious to reason and fact, clinging instead to the comfort of their emotion based “faith.”

May 12, 2005 - 4:34 pm 17. David Thomson:

ìAnd they are thus impervious to reason and fact, clinging instead to the comfort of their emotion based “faith.”î

Never underestimate the fact that so many of these individuals are now financially comfortable. Their affluence allows them the luxury of creating a social milieu reinforcing the bovine excrement. This is why I suspect areas of the country like Manhattan are going to get a lot bluer. It is no accident that many of these folks can legitimately claim that ìeverybody I know voted for Kerry.î

May 12, 2005 - 4:52 pm 18. Lan Nguyen:

Good for you and yes, that’s her.

May 12, 2005 - 5:00 pm 19. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

“Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.” (quote has also been attributed to Clemenceau)

This may have been true at one time…but I see very little evidence of “heart” in many of today’s self-defined “liberals” or “progressives.” They care neither about Kurds gassed by Saddam Hussein or about generations of children who missed out on education due to a dysfunctional public school sysem. All they seem to really care about is maintaining the rigidity of their belief systems.

Neither heart *nor* brains.

May 12, 2005 - 5:31 pm 20. David Thomson:

Do you really want to understand the differences between the red and blue states? If so, I highly recommend viewing the 2002 film, Tadpole, staring the late John Ritter along with Signourney Weaver and Bebe Neuwirth. This movie is about about wealthy liberals living in Manhattan. These people are elitist weirdos and the ìTadpoleî is a 15 year old precociously brilliant male who sleeps with a friend of the family, a 40 something woman. This relationship is considered ho-hum by the teenage boyís allegedly sophisticated parents. They could care less. A red state family, needless to add, would minimally put an end to such nonsense. Calling the police might even be seriously considered. Seeing Tadpole might be more useful than reading 20 books devoted to explaining how blue staters differ with families living in the predominantly red states.

“All they seem to really care about is maintaining the rigidity of their belief systems.”

And living the good life. They also want fat wallets. It helps to be very affluent if you wish to maintain the rigidity of your belief system.

May 12, 2005 - 5:50 pm 21. thedragonflies:

“Never underestimate the fact that so many of these individuals are now financially comfortable.”

You’re right. Denial is a lot easier when you live in a bubble of sameness.

May 12, 2005 - 7:29 pm 22. Wallace:

Speaking of books on the subject. Two I recommend for a better understanding of our tortured trail in Vietnam are:

“A bright Shining Lie”, by John Paul Vann

“Vietnam, A History”, by Stanley Karnow

May 12, 2005 - 9:31 pm 23. Yehudit:

“This is why I suspect areas of the country like Manhattan are going to get a lot bluer. It is no accident that many of these folks can legitimately claim that ìeverybody I know voted for Kerry.î”

I live in Manhattan and I disagree. I have met many who underwent 9-11 epiphanies. In fact, Bush increased his % of the vote over 2000 a lot in Manhattan. It is still overwhelmingly blue, but slightly less so. Guiliani is still popular even with liberals.

May 13, 2005 - 4:23 am 24. Steve J.:

YEHUDIT:”In fact, Bush increased his % of the vote over 2000 a lot in Manhattan.”

2004

MANHATTAN

KERRY 81% BUSH 17%

May 13, 2005 - 6:09 pm 25. Kyda Sylvester:

As I’ve made my way through Neo’s posts, I’ve felt like the proverbial stranger in a strange land. So interesting, these tales of awakened enlightenment. I’ve been a conservative all my life and never considered myself heartless (although I admit it seldom bleeds). Pragmatic, yes, often, but never heartless. Conservativism just always seemed so…logical.

May 13, 2005 - 8:01 pm

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