But is there really any sizable constitutency . . .
The simple answer is yes.
I hope the Dems trot out Webb with a little Fire and brimstone.
will today bluntly warn the Democrats against committing the errors of Vietnam
Like actually going there and fighting instead of finding a stateside sinecure which will be considered even more courageous in forty years? I think we've learned our lesson.
Oh, so if we withdraw there might be millions of desparate Iraqi refugees and our former allies might be targetted for death? What the fuck does he think is happening right now? I fucking wish Bush showed as much regard for Iraqi refugees as Gerald Ford did for Vietnamese.
The "Cambodian genocide is all the liberals fault" thing is also increasingly common and drives me crazy.
1: Really? When you put it that explicitly? I'd like a whole bunch of questions put to anyone who endorses this saying: "Seriously, you're Nixon, and it's 1972. Are you saying that the right thing to do would have been to escalate the war indefinitely?"
(this isn't deny that things might get even worse for Iraqi civilians when we go. They probably will, but we can't stay there forever and nothing we're doing now is going to mitigate it getting worse later.)
Well, anything to avert the ongoing charnelhouse that is Vietnam since we left them alone. Better they should all have died then live in the hell they do now.
LB, are you saying the US can't do literally anything it wants just so long as it ignores the whinings of liberals? I find that hard to believe and it would be somewhat frightening if true.
8 to 6, and 7 is of course true. I'm just stunned by anyone who can stand up and say that ending the Vietnam war was self-evidently a disaster.
the new push is definitely to try to highlight the deaths after a pullout.
"If we pull out, people will die!!!! Do you want women and children to die!??!?"
The Cambodian genocide was stopped by the Vietnamese when they invaded in 1979. And then the Reagan Administration funnelled mountains of cash to the Khmer Rouge.
There is a very persistent myth that the only reason we lost in Vietnam was because liberal doves here at home eroded support for our military effort. That's what he's appealing to. And I doubt he's even *hoping* it will convince the opposition to quiet down (since now, as then, staying longer would only postpone the inevitable). I think he's just setting the rhetorical foundations to repeat that story all over again: the failure in the completely fault of the antiwar liberals.
I think he's just setting the rhetorical foundations to repeat that story all over again: the failure in the completely fault of the antiwar liberals.
absolutely correct. We would be winning if the terrorists didn't know that the liberals were defeatists.
I love how that story conveniently elides the role of massive, unrestrained U.S. bombing of Cambodia and the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of Sihanouk in the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
More proof that the Iraq adventure was designed for domestic policy reasons: military-industrial complex profits, jingoism, and an endless supply of material to smack the Democrats around with. They're soft on defense. They want to appease terrorists. And now: they want America to lose a war.
It's a widely held belief in some circles. e.g.:
"Leftists in America never seem to learn from their past mistakes. Of course, they don't see aiding and abetting the enemy as a "mistake." ... The fact that in the case of Viet Nam leftists gave strength and hope to an enemy ready to admit defeat, seems to have no effect on them."
April 10, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/stock/040410
we lost in Vietnam was because liberal doves
And its corollary, that we could have won if we hadn't fought with such restraint. Except:
During World War II, the Allies dropped 2 million tons of bombs. On Indochina during the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 8 million tons of bombs. During World War II, 70 percent of bombs were aimed at individual targets, while 30 percent were dropped in ''areas,'' a designation of territory in which distinctions between civilians and military were meaningless. In Indochina, where ''carpet bombing'' and ''saturation bombing'' dominated, 80 percent of bombs fell not on individual targets but on ''areas.''
Napalm makes no distinction between civilian and military targets in the area on which it falls, which is one reason why its use was relatively less before Vietnam. During World War II, 14,000 tons were used. During Korea, 32,000 tons. During only part of Vietnam (1963-71), 373,000 tons of napalm were used.
When the going gets tough, the Democrats are quitters.
You know, the other day I was remarking on the fact that I really wish I lived in a country where the president was capable of apologizing for Vietnam - and not for the tens of thousands of Americans who were pointlessly killed, but for the two million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians this country murdered. But instead I live in a country that looks at Vietnam and says "I want me more of that."
17: We will never know how many American soldiers died in the rice patties and jungles of Viet Nam...
"Shit, man! The fish sauce has got me! Go, save yourselves!"
I wish we could focus more on the mental trauma inflicted on people who go to war. We are destroying the mental wellbeing of our young men.
But, instead, we get "We [meaning someone other than me or my children] need to go over there [meaning anywhere brown people exist] and send them back to the Stone Age."
I suspect Brock and apostropher are right. To a certain kind of person, the only reason America lost ("Victories like North Vietnam?" "We did not lose in Vietnam. It was a tie.") was that we showed laudable restraint in refusing to use nuclear weapons, and that the hippies back home systematically undercut the morale of our troops so we had to pull out. And to that certain kind of person, the horrors of the aftermath of the war originated solely because we left.
The belief that something that could be characterized as a worthwhile victory in Vietnam was possible, not just at some early stage but at practically every stage, had the will and resources been forthcoming, reaches deep into the ranks of the rational, and gives the necessary cover to the more obviously delusional popular version. I've met very few officers who don't share it to some degree.
It's funny -- I know about the idea Brock and Apo are talking about. I just can't believe it doesn't collapse, for most people, when it gets phrased explicitly as "We should have stayed in Vietnam until we 'won'".
I imagine the military isn't immune from the sort of wishful thinking that everyday officer workers indulge in: if I had been in charge, this cockup would have been avoided.
69% of Americans in 2000 thought the Vietnam war was a mistake.
Let's hope this backfires enormously.
25: I think most people [of that mindset] would say "yes, absolutely, provided that we should have taken the kid gloves off. It wasn't doing anyone any good for us to stay there half-assing it indefinitely." And both our withdrawal (read: failure) and our half-assing were completely the liberals' fault.
23: But certain kinds of persons are few, and their ranks aren't swelling. Right? Bush has composed this little ditty for the choir.
Bush Will Liken Vietnam, Iraq; Warning Democrats Not To Repeat Errors:
Errors like bombing neighboring countries?
Those arguments ridiculous fantasies are almost always accompanied by "the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the NVA and we were right on the verge of defeating them except those defeatist liberal Hippiecrats wouldn't approve Westmoreland's request for 200,000 additional troops."
And in both cases, so many things obviously were cockups, from the getgo, that it can be claimed we'll never know.
This is a separable issue, but a vital one: I've come to believe half-assed commitments always leave this impression, particularly to those who have made major investments in it, and suffered losses.
Rational preparations, a coherent and consistent strategy would have flushed this issue out in both cases. We wouldn't have wanted to do what it took to win, it wouldn't have been worth it.
29: 27% crazification factor, plus another 20% saying, "Well, Vietnam was a mistake and we should have left in 1972, but if we'd had the stones to really go in hard in 1968 instead of a series of pussyfooted measures, maybe things would have turned out differently and we wouldn't have left so many civilians to die."
31- Also the General Abrams was finally a leader with a strategy to win.
we wouldn't have left so many civilians to die
As opposed to killing them ourselves, as per the quote in 18.
LB, you should read, as just one of countless examples, Nixon's "No More Vietnams". He wrote:
We won the war in Vietnam, but we lost the peace. All that we had achieved in 12 years of fighting was thrown away in a spasm of congressional irresponsibility.
25, 28: Yeah, the mentality isn't "we should've stuck around for another ten or twenty years until we won," the mentality is "we totally could've won if we started getting tough on those bastards." The fact that America was already committing mass slaughter on a grand scale doesn't enter into the picture. Occasionally you hear these idiots talk about using nukes, and how that would've really shown everyone we meant business. Again, the actual repercussions of using nuclear weapons in a proxy war with China and Russia don't matter, because all that matters is "winning," and these mental and moral midgets were never the ones who had to make these kinds of decisions anyway, so they can jerk off to holocaust fantasies as much as they like.
: I think most people [of that mindset] would say "yes, absolutely, provided that we should have taken the kid gloves off. It wasn't doing anyone any good for us to stay there half-assing it indefinitely."
People always seem to forget that the other side had backers with unconventional weapons, too. Post-USSR collapse, it's easy to imagine that the Soviets and China would have backed down if we decided to go truly nuts.
I think the same thing is sort of happening now. People don't want to admit that we go into these conflicts with constraints that are there not solely for moral reasons.
Have we discussed Guiliani's Foreign Policy article yet? It seems to fit nicely here.
What strangasmelo said. Only I'd have used the word 'fuck' more.
so they can jerk off to holocaust fantasies
That, precisely. Plan 9 for victory!
Say, is it just me, or is the entire blogspot network nonfunctional?
Never mind, I just got the "down for maintenance" page.
Just how, exactly, did the idea that the hippies lost Vietnam get so cemented in popular consciousness? Throughout the '70s, Vietnam was regarded as a disgrace and the Vietnam-era military was genuinely demonized in ways that I don't think were entirely healthy*, right? What changed all that? Much as I'd like to, I don't think I can put the whole weight on First Blood.
* Not just by the defeatocrats, either -- the VFW ignored Vietnam-era veterans concerns, leading to the formation of the VVA, etc.
Just how, exactly, did the idea that the hippies lost Vietnam get so cemented in popular consciousness?
Because the right is determined to re-run the 1930s NSDP playbook, verbatim?
From William Kristol's article Why Bush Will Be A Winner:
But Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq.
To quote Berke Breathed: "IT'S REAGAN'S FAULT!!!!!!"
I'd have to think about it for a bit, but it's something like that -- the cultural conservativism that hit with Reagan involved hating hippies (just as Ogged still does), and Vietnam was a genuine disaster that hippies were standing near and being annoying about. Blaming them for it, while insane, was natural.
Moreover, George W. Bush is in no way qualified to lecture anybody about the lessons of Vietnam he learned while not showing up to defend the Texas coast from the North Vietnamese.
45: Be a little more optimistic. The 31% that thinks the Vietnam war wasn't a mistake is close to the ~25% that still likes Bush. This revisionist history is only cemented in one kind of consciousness, and it is not very popular.
The top generals, certainly then and probably now, we'll have to wait and see, understood the real constraints, and the hopeless stalemate.
Matthew Ridgeway's The Korean War, published in 1968, when its author, who saved the situation in Korea after the intervention of the Chinese was one of the "wise men" who told Johnson to quit, is brutal against the hypertrophied notion of "victory." In some ways it's an answer to MacArther's "Duty, Honor, Country" speech.
Very much worth reading is Bruce Palmer's The Twenty-five Year War, about Vietnam. Palmer was very well placed to watch the war from the command positions, with many top level appointments including Deputy Commander there. He and Westmoreland and Abrams were the last-serving members of the West Point Class of '36. Palmer's portrait of his friend Abrams, picking targets for massive air strikes, in his trailer in the middle of the night, while his speakers played "Ride of the Valkyries" at deafening volume, is unforgetable.
Just how, exactly, did the idea that the hippies lost Vietnam get so cemented in popular consciousness?
I think we're dealing with at least two separate groups with their own internal stories about Vietnam. The Silent Majority and associated reactionaries bitterly opposed pulling out of Vietnam; they were freaked out by hippies and the other social upheavals of the late '60s; they correctly judged that the hippies had something to do with forcing a pullout, although not everything; and they saw withdrawal as defeat, not realizing that (as in Iraq) defeat was inevitable from the beginning given the strategic and political terms of the conflict.
Then there's the rest of us, for whom the above story sounds completely bizarre.
Much as I'd like to, I don't think I can put the whole weight on First Blood.
The 70s were a time when lots and lots of things seemed to be breaking down, bad outcomes associated with flux in the social order seemed to be becoming manifest, the hippies had taken control (or so it seemed) of the Democratic party, and that party was in charge during the 70s. The hippies didn't just make us lose Vietnam; they were responsible for everything. The difference is that the end outcome of a lot of the other stuff has been good: minority rights, women's rights, goo-goo govt. efforts. It's less clear that there's something to hold against them there. That's not true for Vietnam.
I heart stras.
First Blood is actually pretty key to Vietnam mythmaking; Reagan's anticommunist optimism was perhaps the main engine of making it impossible to acknowledge defeat. Michael Paul Rogin's Ronald Reagan: The Movie is good on this.
Going to war is an existential choice for soldiers and their families, and the leadership leverages that into a way of bullying the people still at home.
Bush is down to his 20%-30% core, and he's planning to whip them into a frenzy in order to intimidate the 70%. There are plenty of Freikorps crazies in that core.
Bush-Cheney will never surrender peacefully. People keep thinking that they'll learn and act reasonably. That's why I don't think that "Wait until 2008" is a viable plan. A lot can happen in 16 month, and CofC Bush is autonomous and has a lot of options.
$15-million, 20-state ad campaign by a new independent organization calling itself Freedom Watch, which is being run by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and which will feature Iraq veterans and the families of those who died there pleading: "It's no time to quit."This is how the pro-War side will get their point across.
Also...
If you are a nation completely wrapped up in the belief that you are the baddest-assed bad-asses, like, evurr, and that you are also unfailingly on the side of the right and the good, then the only possible explanation for seemingly 'losing' is that you lost because you defeated yourselves.
Only rational explanation, innit? Who else could beat the mighty US but its own citizens?
. The Silent Majority and associated reactionaries bitterly opposed pulling out of Vietnam
There was no fucking "silent majority". By the end of the war the majority of Americans favored a pullout because it was clear the U.S. would never win, and because the abominable results of our tactics were being covered graphically in the media. The idea that most Americans were opposed to ending the war is the product of strenuous right-wing mythmaking.
The spreading of the POW-MIA myth was a critical moment in grass-roots organizing that rethought the Vietnam War. The idea that there were still Americans in prison camps in the mid-80s was far-fetched, but tons of small towns hung flags and passed resolutions. All roads lead back to Rambo.
After the Vietnam War and after the Nixon impeachment a massive, heavily-financed program worked to recover control of public opinion, especially elite and media opinion, and also to move the Republican Party and the US to the right. (Nixon and Eisenhower were centrists). A lot of very talented people worked on this project, which probably cost a billion dollars.
It was successful.
First Blood was a pretty fucking fantastic movie at the time, though, you have to admit.
I see this as part of a larger framework of refusal to take responsibility for accomplishing one's own priorities which has sadly become the core of conservative political thought: inflating the government and blaming the government for its own expansion, starting wars and blaming the war's opponents for the war's failure, demanding that Wal-Mart wish everyone a Merry Christmas so they don't have to, demanding schools teach Creationism so they don't have to be fussed with making it to Sunday School on time, hating on immigrants rather than creating jobs, denying same-sex couples marriage rights as a solution to heterosexual woes, etc., etc. Bush is doing nothing more than exploiting that essential laziness of the right in order to hedge bets on how he's going to go down in the history textbooks.
The idea that there were still Americans in prison camps in the mid-80s was far-fetched
More than just far-fetched. It made no goddamned sense whatsoever.
57: As you no doubt saw last week, some of us feel this will never stop until the U.S. declines as a power. The object for prayers is how soft the landing. It can't be too soft, or it won't do any good.
And our decline, any decline will mostly be measured against the rise of someone else, with their own pathologies.
Crashed Economy + Losing War + Obstructionist Repubs in Senate stopping UHC etc = Democratic Presidential Hell = 2012 Reagan II * 10 = gutting entitlements + Nat Surveillance State ~ last election ever
And the next two generations will be about preserving the Republican Way of Life in the face of Peak Oil & Global Warming at the expense of the little brown people, by the billions
Bank on it :)
There was no fucking "silent majority".
Completely right. I intended the phrase as an ironic reference to Nixon's base. Scarequotes may have been in order.
Also, the Silent Majority didn't fuck, as we all know. So doubly right, mcmc.
If you are a nation completely wrapped up in the belief that you are the baddest-assed bad-asses, like, evurr, and that you are also unfailingly on the side of the right and the good, then the only possible explanation for seemingly 'losing' is that you lost because you defeated yourselves.
Only rational explanation, innit? Who else could beat the mighty US but its own citizens?
That is exactly how an overwhelming majority of US citizens think.
Not meaning to curse at you, Bave. It's just a phrase that can still make the top of my head fly off.
"Americans Don't Lose."
This is an actual Giuliani slogan.
63: Remind me to eschew understatement at Unfogged.
It doesn't just come back to First Blood. Rogin, whom I mentioned above, wrote his first book about Moby Dick, and H. Bruce Franklin, who has done the most academic work on POW-MIA, wrote about Moby Dick too. One of my favorite books in college was this weird little Heideggerian romp arguing that Moby Dick had been wrongly shoehorned into a liberal AmStud framework and really contained a critique of imperialism that anticipated the Vietnam War.
68: well, it's somewhat deserved. After all, we single-handedly defeated the fascists and the Nazis, and the Kaiser a generation before that. Oh, and we also saved the world from communism. Given that between them those represent more or less all the world's major powers at those various times (other than us, of course), it's not hard to believe we're invincible. Very much like Rome in its day.
Don't forget they way we whupped the mighty Granadan empire.
Just how, exactly, did the idea that the hippies lost Vietnam get so cemented in popular consciousness?
I don't want to get a reputation here for pimping Rick Perlstein, but somebody's got to point out excellent work like this.
After all, we single-handedly defeated the fascists and the Nazis
Stalingrad will be surprised to learn this.
You've got to be kidding me, stras.
There is a very persistent myth that the only reason we lost in Vietnam was because liberal doves here at home eroded support for our military effort. That's what he's appealing to.
It's that Dolchstoss meme again.
I presume 72 is taking the piss. Otherwise my grandfather would like a word with you.
72 is not my view, but it is not exactly a straw view, either.
re: 81
It's pretty much a straw view, if by straw view you mean 'largely fucking wrong'. If you mean, 'a largely wrong view widely held by idiots' then I completely agree with you.
81: Given that the first two claims are incorrect, and the third contentious, how is it not a straw view?
81: Given that the first two claims are incorrect, and the third contentious, how is it not a straw view?
Because real people hold it, not merely strawmen.
A straw view would be one that is assigned to people despite their not actually holding it.
82: It's a view widely held by idiots, but along with similar myths about settlement and the war of independence, it forms the modern core of the myth of American messianic exceptionalism (i.e., we're the biggest and the best and we were destined to be such).
Stalingrad will be surprised to learn this.
Little known fact: fully 90% of German casualties in WWII fell on the eastern front.
German popular culture generally depicts the war in the West as a picnic, or at least as a foil to the carnage in the East (see, for example, the transition between scenes one and two of Stalingrad).
89: Is that really so little known? If it made sense to name one country `the winner' of WWII in Europe, it would pretty obviously have to be Russia, not the USA. Not that it makes sense.
55: A lot can happen in 16 month, and CofC Bush is autonomous and has a lot of options.
These facts get too little emphasis even among people with a strong, healthy sense of paranoia.
Little known fact: SPAM won World War II. Not those damn commies.
German popular culture generally depicts the war in the West as a picnic, or at least as a foil to the carnage in the East
Except for air power. German units that stayed anything like coherent, and they stayed that way well past where losses would have destroyed ours, could dominate the land battle right in front of them with their superior weapons and tactics. But anything that moved, certainly by day and eventually by night, could and eventually would be destroyed from the air. Execution in Falais Gap was fearsome. This disparity of ground combat effectiveness held virtually to the very end.
89: a lot of that has to do with the widespread German belief that they were beaten solely because they were outnumbered - a belief shared by, among others, a lot of rather creepy Rommel or U-boat fans in the US. It was the "Asian Bolshevik hordes" that beat them; man for man, or general for general, the German army was superior to any of its opponents.
This is, of course, nonsense.
Hey, Tim, if you're interested, you hurt McArdle's feelings by calling her a schmibertarian and she's posting about it. God knows if you want to get into it -- I commented on the thread.
Is that really so little known?
Outside the realm of scholars/students of history (and sometimes not even then), I think it's a safe bet. The fetishization of D-Day, for example, is viewed with mild bemusement outre Rhin.
I don't mean to minimize the sacrifice of the Western Allies, or the significance of that sacrifice for the well-being of post-war Europe. It's just a fact that the Russians beat the Germans, and the U.S. came in and helped pick up the pieces. That said, the U.S. won the war in the Pacific pretty much single-handedly.
95: Yeah, she's even whining about it with Dan Drezner on bloggingheads.tv. (Note: I haven't watched it; Drezner plus McArdle equals too much smug self-satisfaction for me in one sitting. One of the topics of their dialogue appears to be the Drezner/Greenwald thing; I wonder which side Megan comes down on!)
Huh. It's funny, my father used to work in an architectural firm with a surprisingly large population of Luftwaffe veterans (also, entirely separately, a guy who used to bring in a small cake and sing the Horst Wessel song on Hitler's birthday. But that guy wasn't German -- just a lunatic Italian from Queens). He used to make fun of them for all having claimed to have been on the Eastern Front: according to him, this was intended as a polite fiction: "Oh, I never shot at anyone you know, I was only killing nasty Russians." But I'd never done the math, obvious though it is, that the Eastern Front is where most of the fighting actually happened.
Except for air power.
Especially the "strategic bombing" of German population centers. A lot of people from that generation have a pretty pronounced sense of self-pity on account of the air raids.
But I didn't mean to hijack the thread with an extraneous discussion of the second world war.
95: She's awfully hard to pin down on that point. She says she doesn't support torture, but it seems rather like the Bush administration not supporting torture; just redefine the term a little smaller.
The German hippies lost the second world war, you know. Fucking Joschka Fischer.
I stopped trolling Galt/McArdle a long time ago, but just now I posted this. I'm also posting it here just for the record, in case something happens to my post there.
McArdle:
I was surprised because this is what I've said about Padilla: i.e., nothing. Here's what I've said about Hamdi: also nothing.
Me:
A libertarian would have said something. Case closed. You also tried to split the difference on torture.
When Bush started to institutionalize authoritarianism, I actually hoped that the people who had rightly opposed Clinton in this respect would have joined ACLU Democrats (who did oppose Clinton, as I did) in opposing Bush. Some did, but most didn't. Bob Bar did, but he was out of office.
That was a real turning point in American political history, and I'm not at all sure that we'll ever turn back.
The wartime exemption and the terrorism exemption have to be rejected. Those are the arguments authoritarians always use ("War is the health of the State").
Most libertarians, to my knowledge, are complete frauds. They're just non-homophobic, dope-smoking, right-wing Republicans who screw a lot. They have no function in American political life except to give a veneer of coolness to Tom Delay and George Bush.
101 - Blame Sophie Scholl, that damned dirty hippie.
But I didn't mean to hijack the thread with an extraneous discussion of the second world war
Not extraneous: that's where the myths are. When I was a kid in the early sixties, Vic Morrow would fight the whole German Army to a standstill every Tuesday night, and Sgt. Fury and His Howlin' Commandos would literally kick their butts.
Lest I seem admiring of the Germans, let me say it's a matter of emphasis and resources. The Americans and British put theirs in the air. In ground attack capability alone, it was worth it, and both Western Air Forces were very efficient at it. By contrast, as James Gavin, a WWII American general who emerged as a Vietnam critic put it,
more emphasis was placed upon victory through air power than victory through better infantry...Our problems stemmed very often from lack of imagination, if not lack of intelligence, of those responsible for developing infantry weapons.
Individual weapon, squad machine gun, grenade, anti-tank rpg—ours, the famous bazooka, simply didn't have a big enough bang—tank guns and armor. You name, theirs was better.
Not to get too technical, but First Blood had nothing to do with Vietnam. It was the sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II in which the Vietnam story line took place. This was followed by the forgettable Rambo III, set in Afghanistan.
Also, a fourth film, John Rambo, will be released later this year.
Also, a fourth film, John Rambo, will be released later this year.
Wherein John Rambo leans on his walker and screams at Hamas to get off his lawn.
Not to get too technical, but First Blood had nothing to do with Vietnam
Wasn't set in Vietnam, but all the tropes were already there. Remember Richard Crenna as former commander, in full Green Beret uniform, to serve as backgrounder and chorus?
Which one does Rambo say to Crenna "This time, are they gonna let us win?" in?
108: I meant to be referring to the POW/MIA aspect. Yes, obviously it had something to do with Vietnam.
Also, a fourth film, John Rambo, will be released later this year.
John Rambo goes to... Burma. What the hell?
Not extraneous: that's where the myths are.
While we are slaying WWII myths, I will point out that the French fought a much better war than they are generally given credit for, and that the Maginot Line, far from being a boneheaded mistake, worked exactly as intended (i.e. it deflected the German offensive to the north, albeit not as far north as the French defensive plans called for).
I recall my mother being firmly convinced there were hundreds or maybe thousands of American POWs being held in Vietnam at least through the mid-90s. She may believe they're still there, I don't really know; I stopped talking to her about it.
The flags are still all over the place. I wonder what people who fly them think -- I mean, we've got peaceful diplomatic relations with Vietnam these days. What do they think the Vietnamese are holding all these POW's for?
108: Rambo II: "Sir, do we get to win this time?"
Trailer warning - do not watch if you don't want to see a disemboweling.
The flags have kept up with the times. Just yesterday I saw a black POW-MIA magnetic ribbon on a car. (in freakin' Cambridge!)
I've given up, like many have, complaining about the POW/MIA flags. I think of them now as tribal ensignia, gang symbols.
I was thinking yesterday, when the list of reasons why this country will never progress, if it can keep from going completely fascist had become almost overwhelming, how many of us, here, have very close relatives on the other side. Neither position is bred in the bone.
re: 111
Yes, counter to the cheese-eating surrender monkey myth, the French lost (relative to their population) a huge number of men fighting in the first months of the war.
The flags are still all over the place. I wonder what people who fly them think.
In partial (and I emphasize *partial*) defense of the flag-fliers, the recovery of the remains of MIAs remains an ongoing process (with the full cooperation of the Vietnamese government, it should be noted). At some level it speaks well of our country that we go to such extraordinary lengths to bring the mortal remains of fallen soldiers back to their families. The flying flags symbolize that commitment (along with a bunch of other, more distasteful things).
Naturally, I wish our government showed similar solicitude on a number of other issues, so you could argue that the priorities are skewed. But still, for someone grieving over a family member missing in action, the knowledge that people are leaving no stone unturned to find out the circumstances of their love one's death give them some solace.
117.2 is painfully true. My brother joined the Marines in 2006, and is wishing that his upcoming deployment to Bahrain is code for Iraq. I've given up arguing with him, because he just calls me a "lib."
The saddest thing is, if he's ever hurt in any way, I'll never be able to convince him of who it was that hurt him.
117: I guess. That's one that I've just never discussed with someone flying the POW-MIA flag -- what their actual beliefs are with respect to whether there are in fact POW's still being held in Vietnam.
119: Oh, I guess if what people are thinking these days is just the recovery of remains, that's not insane. Doesn't have anything to do with the flag as currently designed, but it's not insane.
95: I retracted the schmib charges against McArdle, and all other self-described libetarians, here. (Or, if too conditional, I retract it now.) I'm more or less willing to treat Henley, who is great on all of the issues I care about most, as capo di tutti capos with regard to libertarians. I appear to have a somewhat simplistic understanding of the philosophy, and cop to having exposure to it only in its most vestigial form. I haven't much had the stomach to read McArdle for a while, and I really don't have it at the moment. Maybe I'll look in at some later point.
I was surprised because this is what I've said about Padilla: i.e., nothing. Here's what I've said about Hamdi: also nothing.
I have clear recollections to the contrary. Specifically, I recall in comments in response to mine that she addressed the Padilla policy by saying (paraphrasing from memory) that some smart lawyer had told her it was a really hard issue, and dismissing the resolution of Hamdi by saying (again, from memory) that, well, he gave up his citizenship so.... It is, of course, possible that I am misremembering, or misattributing someone else's statements to McArdle. I don't know if her archives still exist intact, or if they're in the process of being moved over to the Atlantic, or what. In any case, at the moment I also lack the stomach to try to trawl through them to find the relevant references, assuming those comments were in fact made. Again, maybe later.
120: Best of luck to him. Nothing you can do but send him care packages (when my cousin was in, desirable things were drink mix, because the water tastes bad, babywipes, because you're always dusty and don't have enough chances to get clean, and of course books and so forth.)
123: Yeah, that retraction was what she posted about.
111 - I thought the other thing that happened was the development of the recoilless rifle. Do I have the chronology wrong here? Were advances in German munitions not really important, as the Maginot troops just hunkered down until France's surrender?
124 - Science fiction novels and comic books tend to be popular, but this may be selection bias on my part.
Oh, I guess if what people are thinking these days is just the recovery of remains, that's not insane. Doesn't have anything to do with the flag as currently designed, but it's not insane.
I don't deny the insane aspect of it: this includes the no doubt numerous parties still worried about our poor POWs in the secret camps in Laos. And the flag design is of course obsolete. Hence, my *partial* defense.
125: Fine. More power to her.
I thought the other thing that happened was the development of the recoilless rifle. Do I have the chronology wrong here? Were advances in German munitions not really important, as the Maginot troops just hunkered down until France's surrender?
The strategic thinking behind the Maginot Line wasn't flawless, but it wasn't as boneheaded as it is commonly made out to be. The myth is that the French wanted to re-fight the Great War--a static front (on French soil!) in which the armies pound each other with artillery.
The reality is that the French fully intended to fight a war of maneuver. The Maginot Line was intended to induce the Germans to attack through Flanders and the Picardie, where France's best armoured units were stationed.
The strategy failed because the Maginot Line wasn't long enough. It stopped at the Ardennes, which were considered topographically impervious to an invading army. Turns out they weren't, and the Wehrmacht broke through the lightly defended gap and flanked the French units to the north and south.
Not the recoilless rifle. The Belgian fortress of Eban Emael was captured by a small force of paratroopers, who used shaped charges to partly disable it. But it had all kinds of problems. The Maginot Line was never cracked.
Shaped charges are what rpgs project. They can't be from rifles, recoilless or otherwise, because the spin scatters the effect.
KR: Are you thinking of the John Mosier book? Not that there aren't other good sources for this view.
People who follow these things are enthusiastic about the Russian T34 tank, which had iconic status in Soviet imagery. When first built it outclassed the German tanks, and when better German tanks came along they couldn't be built in sufficient numbers. Like most Soviet weapons, it was very durable and relatively easy to repair.
Also, the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" thing goes hand in hand with the stab-in-the-back Vietnam mythos. Losses only happen because of a failure of American will! Certainly having roughly 10% of its fighting-age male population killed or captured during the Battle of France was a setback, but if France had possessed red-blooded American can-do spirit, they would have triumphed.
Uh, without the US shipping Russia hundreds of thousands of trucks, tanks, and airplanes, don't things on the Eastern Front turn out a bit differently?
There was an interesting page or two in Cadillac Desert about the Grand Coulee Dam (and smaller siblings) winning WWII for the allies by enabling huge production of first aluminum and then weapons-grade plutonium. Not sure how it holds up to reality, but interesting nonetheless.
131: Strange Victory by Harvard historian Ernest R. May tells the story quite well.
"This was followed by the forgettable Rambo III, set in Afghanistan."
Lucky thing. Since he was basically helping the Taliban in that one.
Oops.
134: Lend-Lease started after the German attack on Russia had already stalled and begun to be rolled back. Its major influence was to allow the Russians to beat Germany faster and with fewer casualties than they otherwise would have suffered.
The problem with you guys is that you don't believe in Love. Dennis Kucinich believes in Love. I just received this letter from his campaign:
This week is a very special week for Elizabeth and I. We are celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary. I know we are newly weds and all, but I felt the undying urge to share this occasion with our supporters. The love Elizabeth and I share encompasses all of the reasons you support our campaign and all the reasons we exist as human beings.Our nation has tremendous challenges that are facing us today. But through the Power of Love I know we as people can meet those challenges. Love is a very powerful word. Love has the ability to eliminate millions of children going hungry every night. Love has the ability for us to work together to ensure that everyone has the same access to healthcare. Love has the ability to bring our troops home now. Love in its purest essence enables us to look at things in hope and not in fear.
As Elizabeth and I celebrate our love for each other, we invite those we love, and that believe in love - to share in our celebration. We want the world to know that we not only celebrate love we believe it its power to create a better place for everyone. We need your help to do it and this is how.
Elizabeth and I have been married for a total of 730 days. We want 730 of our supporters to contribute $25, $100, or $250 to our campaign by the end of the week. Our goal is to raise $50,000 on the fundamental premise of Love. Your donation will help continue our momentum our campaign has built over the past several weeks, and spread our message love, strength, and peace to the voters.
The loving message in 138 was me.
Didn't France actually lose more casualties in WWII than we did? Not to mention the disaster of WWI.
Kucinich's people screwed this one up. He should have demonstrated his powerful virility by saying, "we do it, a lot. Because I am a powerful man who can lead this country."
Uh, without the US shipping Russia hundreds of thousands of trucks, tanks, and airplanes, don't things on the Eastern Front turn out a bit differently?
Impossible to say, but quite possibly so. My point was not to argue that the Americans sat on their asses (although they did mostly do that until late 1941 thanks to Republican isolationists in Congress), but to puncture the mythology of D-Day as the turning point of the war against Hitler.
I believe his wife answered that one when they all got asked when they get up in the morning. Explaining that they like to get up for breakfast and then hang out in bed all day like John and Yoko seems to make the implication clear.
Psheeew. LB's still around. I was getting worried that the boys were talking too much about tanks and guns and the girls would go off and post about clothes or somethin'
133: That is a weirdly persistent myth given that the Third Reich is also cited as the most horrible war machine ever. It's blitzkrieg, it's tanks, it's covering the entire world in darkness, warring them is the Fight of Fights... but you know, the French should have been able to stand up to it.
About the T-34: When Guderian saw it, he wanted German industry to just copy it. The legend is that after evaluation, it was reported that this was impossible, as it would not pass quality control.
There were a lot of features not up to German standards, particularly communications, aiming optics, and ergonomics. Mobility, survivability and hitting power were not among those things.
The Russians could use absolutely everything we sent, the scale of fighting was so vast, but their best formations used superior Russian Equipment, with one exception: The Bell P-39 Aircobra, which had been phased out of U.S. use by-and-large because it was optimised for a kind of ground attack not consist with US doctrine as it developed. But the Russians loved it.
LB can talk about tanks and guns better than most men.
Both absolutely and in precentage, the French lost more than we did. The highest casualties were in Russia, Germany, China, battleground countries in Eastern Europe, and Asia. Of the W. European nations, the Netherlands had the highest casualty rate.
? I mean, I can talk about most subjects, including things I don't know anything about, better than most people, but tanks and guns aren't a specialty.
But my tears do cure cancer. Sadly, this does no one any good, because I have never cried.
The WWII era Soviet armaments industry is really something of a puzzle. Given their fucked-up economy, how the hell did they manage to come up with such elegant and suitable designs, and produce them so well what with reassembling their factories and such?
LB can talk about tanks and guns better than most men.
In the other thread, she mentioned that her guns look great in summer tanks.
LB would have been a darn cute tank commander, but the sexist military never gave her a chance. At least in consolation she has two wonderful kids to bake cookies for.
Army green is totally my color.
I especially like the part at the end of the Lizardbreath movie when she drives her tank into the Whitehouse and aims the cannon at the head of the fictional President Hubs.
Sorry to distract from a discussion of LB's military exploits, but how does this rank compared to other dumb things Bush has said. I think it has to be in the top five. Why would be ever want to embrace the Vietnam parallel? Didn't he realize that he is simply inviting the reply "Do you mean we should have stayed in Vietnam?" (which seems to be what all the commentators are saying.)
Unlike other utterances, this isn't simply a misstatement like "I know how hard it is to put food on your family" or a bald lie that achieves his goals like "we know saddam has WMD" or even a indication of insularity, like "heckava job, Brownie." This is a GWB going on TV and asserting that one of the biggest criticisms of his presidency is true. It's like he has decided to publicly jam a fork in his eye and call himself a surgeon.
how the hell did they manage to come up with such elegant and suitable designs, and produce them so well what with reassembling their factories and such?
The designs because serious, sustained effort and support was behind it. That outburst of creativity in so many fields that followed the Revolution, that is still often astonishing us in art and criticism, for instance, never stopped in design engineering. The purges did effect it, but not fatally. Tupolev and Yakovlev were national figures with enormous prestige and resources at their disposal, compared with an American, equally brilliant equivalent like Ed Heineman. And the designs were for rationalized simple manufacture from the start.
On production, all countries in WWII found it surprisingly little effected by massive disruption, like bombing: machine tools are tough, standing undamaged surrounded by the rubble of the building that housed them; workers who've lost their homes have nothing else to do. The move to the Urals created similar conditions for the Russians, but they could overcome them. The first year or so, production was often in the open air.
It's like he has decided to publicly jam a fork in his eye and call himself a surgeon.
Hee.
like John and Yoko
142: This may not quite captures the machismo that will found lacking.
Very simply, there were some things the Soviet economy was really good at: tanks was one, artillery another.
Electronics they always struggled with; interestingly, as well as radios and food, another of the things they needed from the west was trucks. Lots of trucks. And, oddly, quite a lot of steam locomotives. And Rolls Royce Merlin engines.
Sorry to distract from a discussion of LB's military exploits, but how does this rank compared to other dumb things Bush has said?
By now I just toss them into a box unsorted and unexamined.
First Blood was a pretty fucking fantastic movie
This explains so much about Brock's beliefs re: the deliciousness of fast food
160: By now I just toss them into a box unsorted and unexamined.
I keep fishing them out of the box and staring in awe and disbelief. I suppose this is not a productive habit.
Nothing odd about the locomotives: American ones, from Baldwin in Philadelphia and ALCO in Schenectady were terrific.
No army except perhaps the US ever had enough trucks, certainly the Germans didn't. There'd been Ford factories in Russia since before the revolution, and the later, Model A truck was made there under license. A characteristic Russian mobile formation, in contrast to the confusing and incompatible inventories of any other army, often had only two kinds of vehicle in it, in the thousands each: T-34s, and Ford Trucks.
Just now I was thinking of Bush and getting that little mental tickle of "there is someone he is reminding me of". A moment's thought revealed that it was Paris Hilton.
I can't tell if IDP is in the pay of Ford or the CPUSA.
McArdle sometimes really reminds me of Althouse.
You can hear the singing and strumming balalaikas?
Do you want someone to come and keep you warm, comrade?
Yes please. Mature and full-figured.
But through the Power of Love I know we as people can meet those challenges.
Kucinich/Huey Lewis '08! Whoo-hoo!
re: 156
Yeah, I own about seven or eight Russian cameras, the earliest from the immediate post-war period. Despite what people on internet forums will tell you ['quality control is terrible; only one in eight works properly', etc.] all of them work near enough perfectly and take fantastic pictures. The Russians were really good at that sort of engineering.
I keep trying to explain to my honey why more people aren't taking Kucinich's campaign seriously. Saying mean things about Kucinich is like stomping on baby bunnies, though.
Regarding the original post, did no one think to tell Mr. President about the analogy ban?
He could get in real trouble if he pursues this line of reasoning.
Hey, I contributed to Kucinich, and I'll probably doing it again. He speaks the straight-up truth on the Iraq war. Plus, once you're on his mailing list you get the most entertaining emails of any candidate in the race. With the possible exception of Ron Paul, who I also contributed to.
It would be a fun idea to have a Kucinich/Paul house party. Kucinich/Paul '08!