Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Speaking of the Iraq-Vietnam comparisons, there is an excellent piece in the National Review by Mackubin Thomas Owens on the wrongheaded conventional wisdom about Vietnam. As someone born after Vietnam was essentially over, I have grown up with the following preached as gospel truth: 1) Vietnam was unwinnable 2) We should have never been there 3) All Vietnam Vets agree with points 1 and 2. What I am learning is that that wisdom is revisionist. We could have and should have won Vietnam (click here for Owens article making the point that we had it won before giving it away) but for the lack of support and outright sedition on the part of American liberals and communist sympathizers (ala Hanoi Jane Fonda). Second, we were absolutely right to have been in Vietnam even if our strategy was often flawed. Vietnam is still a backwards country, full of repression. Compare that to the vibrant democracy of South Korea and you see why we should have stayed the course in 'Nam.

The problem in large part was that war weary Americans had raised self-indulgent children that wanted to do nothing but get high and have sex. Gone were the generations of young men willing to sacrifice all to defeat the scourge of Nazism, fascism and Japanese Imperialism. After the war, the comfort and prosperity of the 1950's led to a generation of Americans that didn't have to work for anything and thus refused to sacrifice for anything. I have been watching Band of Brothers on the History Channel and am amazed by the contrasts. Those boys didn't want to kill and be killed in Europe but they had a higher calling and purpose. I was struck by the one vet that recalled young men he knew that failed their physicals to get into the army that killed themselves because they were so distraught at not being able to serve. Look at Bill Clinton and his ilk cowardly hiding during Vietnam in foreign nations and you see the difference.

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