Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 594 Editor's Choice: 8
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@RobbySh
[Read the article: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Knowing a little a bit about "history," and about Korea after 1953, you seem(1) to forget that history is written by the historians, so "factoids" are the elements of the narrative that is created by the historian. We are far past Ranke's delusions about a scientific history and I hope, marxism which is based on that delusion.
History doesn't follow ironclad scientific laws- but it's absurd to simply contend that history is nothing more than "what historians write." That's perilously close to another delusory paradigm that's been known to unbalance the discipline of history- the postmodernist conceit that everything is subjective, reducing history to a type of solipsism that requires nothing other than the undergirdings of Power to enforce narrative legitimacy. That's even more spurious than Marxist scientific materialist theories-of-everything, which at least have the benefit of attempting to find anchors in the reality-based world. Despite fatal flaws like its insistence on inflexible dogmatic shoehornings, compared to the facile nihilism of postmodernist history, at least Marxist historical analysis provides some evaluative tools and flashes of insight.
My God, you have to have some standards. History may not work like science, but it is a discipline, and doing it properly requires more than artful sophistry. Like striving for honesty, to name one oft-underestimated value.
And history isn't built of Mailer's literary coinage, "factoids"- it's built of facts.
2) You seem unaware how ALIEN a place like South Korea was in 1953 to the average American soldier. To be sure, the Koreans are more open than the Japanese to our interpretation of reality, but all in all the place seemed as hellish as Iraq must seem to the average troop today. Just ask a few people who were there.
Well, actually, my Dad was there- several times, beginning with his deployment to combat in Korea in 1951, and later on as part of the US military contingent. I heard a little bit about it from him. But I never once got the impression that he ever considered his life to be in dire peril simply by going about everyday business among the people in the city streets. Neither did he feel that way in much of South Vietnam, for that matter.
There are numerous differences between the historical cases of Iraq and Korea. For one, the Koreans were favorably disposed to Americans for having recently defeated the Japanese in WW2. For another, the infrastructure of South Korea wasn't nearly as devastated by three years of war in 1953 as Iraq was in 1991, by the first week of Desert Storm- much of which was still in disrepair (and yes, this is Saddam's fault) when the US-led coalition returned in 2003 to do it again- with results that smack of massive overkill, in retrospect. In 1953, we didn't station forces and have bases in unfriendly North Korea, land of our enemy in the Korean War- we maintain our garrison in South Korea, the friendly side. Compare that with the case of Iraq- treated as an hostile enemy nation in both 1991 and 2003.
I mean, it should have been plain that if the Iraqis were going to celebrate their liberation from Saddam's rule, the liberators were obligated to provide the party favors. Well, never mind the flowers and roses, the liberators didn't even provide the population bottles of clean water. As it happened, we didn't even supply enough water for our own troops (contrary to the statments of the liar, then-JCoS Chief Myers, who I heard on the radio in the summer of 2003, assuring a public gathering that the troops were receiving nothing but the best in the way of supplies and equipment.)
Admittedly, the troops were supplied with Skittles for the invasion, to hand out to the children.
I could go on, but you should have the idea by now. The "winning the hearts and minds" thing hasn't managed to go over as well in Iraq as it did in South Korea. To understate the case. And once an opportunity for goodwill is squandered, it's some doing to get it back. Reconciliation may still eventually be possible- but given the circumstances, as a general rule of social etiquette the best first step for a guest is generally to make ones excuses and depart from the home of the host.
But that brings up yet another problem in the case of Iraq: quite a number of Americans still don't seem to be clear on which is which.
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Really...
[Read the article: The unbearable whiteness of being]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]a lot of those boomers stopped dropping acid and picked up briefcases and NIV Bibles and became neocons and the Christian Right and brought us Reagan and the Moral Majority
Set of all boomers who "dropped acid"- not very many
Set of all boomers who "picked up briefcases and NIV Bibles and became neocons and the Christian Right and brought us Reagan and the Moral Majority"- some. Fewer than their parents generation.
Set of all boomers who did both- negligible
Seriously- who could that fable possibly be referring to? Newt Gingrich? Paul Wolfowitz? Bill Kristol? Ralph Reed?
Not an iota of social insight in it. Yet somehow, the Bogus Narrative survives- even dominates, in some quarters- in the discourse of white bourgeois youth, ever since around 1984 or so. I view it as a version of a "stab-in-the-back" story, used as a catch-all explanation of the political swing toward Reaganism. I mean, go on, look at the stats- do some legwork and figure out how many Baby Boomers held high political office, religious leadership, news media or corporate power in 1981.
Remember, kids...the divided are easily ruled.
(I know, I know...look, the comment thread was down the tubes anyway. Anyway, snark is so white...)