Voters in 1972 did not have any historical context for understanding what was happening in Vietnam.I occasionally listen to Michael Savage's radio program as an excercise in masochism and also because he is, though a sick, sick man, perhaps the finest radio performer currently on air (that's an entertainment industry judgement, but there it is). I'm beginning to think he may be right when he says that liberalism is a mental illness.
-Anonymous Liberal at Gleen Greenwald's place
No context for understanding Vietnam! UH-HUH. "The Forgotten War" indeed.
In any case, what truly irks me is this remarkably smug attitude: The critics are wrong because we're nothing like those damned pacifists protesting Vietnam. You're damn right you're nothing like them. You lack their courage. You lack their moral vision. You certainly lack their music. The antiwar movement in the Vietnam era lived up to its name. It didn't oppose the war because it had been waged "incompetently," nor because it was "a distraction from the real war on terror/communism," nor because it was fought with "bad intelligence." They were not concerned with the petty gains of electoral victory, and they didn't compromise themselves with endless chatter about how goddamn tough and intelligent they were, how much better and more skillfully they'd wage war if only someone would put their liberal fingers on the trigger. They didn't whine endlessly that the war was "degrading the quality of the military" or "hurting troops" or "overextending the military," which of course we need to keep our clients in line.
The antiwar movement of the Vietnam era, unlike today's pallid non-imitation, was brave enough to say not simply that the war was incompetent, unwise, or a distraction from some bigger, even more ephemeral war, but that it was wrong. It was wrong in all its aspects. There was not an ounce of right in it. There was not an ounce of goodness in it. It diminished us. It made us villains.
They were willing to say so and damn the consequences. Today's antiwar Democrats aren't fit to drink their bongwater.
4 comments:
Touche. That last line is great, by the way.
For the record, though, in my first draft of the post, I had a paranthetical mentioning the Korean war, but I thought it was too much of a digression, so I left it out. There are indeed some important parallels between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, ones which I'm sure people noticed at the time. But there was an important difference too. The Korean War wasn't a total loss. South Korea's autonomy was preserved. Many people believed that, at the very least, we should try to do the same for South Vietnam.
There really wasn't any historical template for a total loss, a military venture that accomplished nothing. Now we have one: Vietnam.
Thanks for stopping by. It seems to me that noting "important parallels" not rising to the level of "historical template" is making a distinction without a difference. You argue that the since the territorial integrity of South Korea was more or less maintained, whereas Vietnam . . . I don't need to rehash your argument; you stated it well and clearly.
But by the same token, I could write that Vietnam doesn't provide an "historical template" for Iraq because it wasn't a preemptive war to remove the regime of a territorially integrated (more or less) nation not, at the outset, in the midst of civil conflict. There are any number of other differences, just as significant, it seems to me, as those you cite differentiating Korea and Vietnam.
It's false to say that Americans, particularly in the government and military, had no template for understanding the decisions they were making it Vietnam. Korea was, regardless of the end result of an independent south, an ambiguous, limited conflict in East Asia fought as a proxy war against the sphere of communist influence. What was Vietnam?
And regarding the politico-military classes who actually decided upon and waged the war in Vietnam, they also had decades of watching the French founder in that very country with plenty of American observers about. That too was an "historical template," even if not to the generally oblivious public.
Thanks again.
In the post by Barbara O'Brien linked to in the Anonymous Liberal post she explains that the sixties anti-war movement really couldn't contrast their ability to wage the war in Vietnam with Tricky Dick because Vietnam was perceived as the dems war. She also points out that Nixon wasn't for 'staying the course' in Vietnam, he was actively working to remove the US from that debacle.
The hippies got Dusty Springfield, The Byrds and Bob Dylan. We get Pink and the Dixie Chicks.
We got robbed.
Given the quality of the company, I hope you don't mind me interjecting myself into the conversation.
When I think of parallels to the Iraq War, I think more of the Spanish-American War than anything, in terms of my (admittedly cartoonish) understanding of its puruit in the Phillipines. (Evidently, George Bush made this horrid comparison some time back as well.)
Bad excuse to get in there? Check, sinking of the Maine. Imperialism? Check. Democratizing the natives? Yup. Unquestioned by a jingoistic media? Uh huh. Stumbling into local factional conflict? Yes. Extended insurrection we did our best to murder out of existence? We're getting there. (Granted, Manila has no special abundance of resources to my knowledge.)
You could map that with some success onto Viet Nam as well, and indeed many of the proxy conflicts of the twentieth century. I agree with IOZ that it's unwise to look for a template (you should be able draw lessons from any of them, and in generalizing, you'll get badgered with unimportant contrasts). But I also agree with a.l., in that the outcome of Korea probably did leave a sense in the public of compromised success, as well as a sense of precariousness in the balance of power and of the need for proactive state foreign policy to maintain it (for the worse when it came to Viet Nam).
As far as the anti-war movement is concerned, some members were principled, but I find the brainless kum-ba-ya crap pretty hard to stomach myself. Always a shame to confuse the cause with its proponents. (And my grandparents hated Dylan as much as my parents hate the Dixie Chicks.)
K
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