Letters to the Editor
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The bumper sticker war
McWarmonger can and does reduce his views to a bumper sticker. The other side needs to do that as well.
Most people just do not pay much attention. The right wingers who pay attention prove, over and over, that their attention wanders halfway through the first sentence.
We have seen this issue reduced to a formulation such as "generals are associated to the Pentagon, so what?".
There must be a way to make these points that will resonate with the wider public.
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Mindset
What is obvious is that Conservatives just consider Democracy and Freedom of Expression to be just very inconvenient items. How soon do we start hearing from Conservatives methods of "solving" that problem?
Then again, we are seeing how they will "solve" the problem right now, aren't we?
My (mostly rhetorical) question is, "How did the Republican party, formerly the party of individual freedom, sign onto this philosophy that the government know better and Americans should only know what the government deems it necessary for them to know" philosophy.
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Simplistic
Glenn:This simplistic message is all McCain has been saying for years about Iraq as well.
More troops. More bombs. No ideas; too confusing. Message plays pretty well in some places. Might get him elected. Simplistic. It worked. It catches on. Worked for eight years. McSame.
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Hey Glenn you're the lead story at Swampland today
Well you're mentioned by Joe Klein in it. You should really check it out a very interesting debate is going on over there (again it's the lead story) between Klein and a poster who called Joe out on his poor coverage of the Pentagon general fiasco.
More specifically the poster is on what Joe Klein terms as a "silly little crusade" to simply ask Klein if any of the generals on the Pentagon list were used as his sources. When Klein refused to answer the poster simply asked what Klein's methods were for using a source.
Joe gave a long response. Anyway you should check it out, as you are the only journalist he specifically cites by name in the article. Ever since the absurd Stepho semi-debate and these latest revelations on the Pentagon generals, the media is FINALLY being called to task.
Link: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/05/how_actual_journalism_works.html
Klein also tries to act like he did a fair and balanced job of covering the surge and didn't just buy the Petraeus kool-aid on the so-called "surge." We all know that's not true.
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Casualties
The Agence France Presse (French Press Agency) news release of 4 April 1995 concerning the Vietnamese Government's release of official figures of dead and wounded during the Vietnam War.
HANOI (AP) - April 4. Cinq millions de morts: 20 ans apregraves la fin de la guerre du Vietnam, le gouvernement de Hanoi a reacute veacute leacute, lundi, le bilan d'un conflit dent le nombre de victimes avait eacute teacute minore a l'eacutepoque pour ne pas affecter le moral de la population.
Selon Hanoi, il y a eu pres de deux millions de morts dans la population civile du Nord et deux autres millions dans celle du Sud. Quant aux combats proprement dits, les chiffres sent d'un million cent mille militaires tueacutes et de 600.000 blesseacutes en 21 ans de guerre.
Ce dernier bilan comprend a la fois les victimes de la guerilla vietcong et les soldats nord-vietamiens qui les eacute paulaient. Les preacute ceacute dentes estimations de source occidentale faisaient eacute tat d'un bilan de 666.000 morts parmi Ies combattants Vietnamiens.
Translation
The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population.
End Translation
Note: Given a Vietnamese population of approximately 38 million during the period 1954-1975, Vietnamese casualties represent a good 12-13% of the entire population. To put this in perspective, consider that the population of the US was 220 million during the Vietnam War. Had The US sustained casualties of 13% of its population, there would have been 28 million US dead.
http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
Not necessarily a great endorsement but that site is recommended by the History Channel and has a vey extensive breakdown of casualties for all parties to the hostilities, by year, unit, province, etc.
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Begging the question: How to decide when a war is won or lost
It is quite interesting to see the good old 'stabbed-in-the-back' myth over and over re-hashed. It was used by certain circles in Germany and Austria after the First World War went to Great Britain, France and the USA. even after World War 2 some die-hards thought the German Wehrmacht could have won if only home front politicians [that is, the Führer] would have listened to them.
As you point out, Mr Greenwald, American soldiers having been in Vietnam and civilians who never have been [probably even stronger than the soldiers] come out complaining about politicians and peacenicks. Part of this surely is political revanchism, but my guess is that soldiers need to believe in this myth to see their fighting as brave and meaningful.
Now, since in a war usually one side wins and the other loses, there will always be complainers, always be people talking about how brave and efficient the soldiers were; were it just not be for the back-stabbers.
Thought through in all its consequences it means
a) no war is ever lost by the military,
b) unless the fighting is over for a very long time it can never be decided when a war is lost or won, hence when to get out.
This state of mind is very consistent with the way wars usually start, be people out of words, out of thinking, out of creative ideas. In short, by people with a mindset similar to a 3-year old.
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The most important lesson from Vietnam
is that we "lost" the war but . . . nothing bad happened! There was of course some violence as the war wound down -- but less than the ongoing violence during the war and nothing like the "blood bath" we were promised. Collaborators had to spend six months in reeducation camps then they returned to society. Vietnam went into Cambodia, deposed the Khmer Rouge, left a tolerably decent government in place, and left.
Today Vietnam sells us a lot of our coffee and shrimp, and does a small business in tourism from the U.S. That's it. If the U.S. had never gone into Vietnam at all, we would have saved all the blood and treasure, the Khmer Rouge never would have happened in the first place, and we'd probably otherwise be about where we are now.
So "losing" was just fine, whether it absolutely had to happen or not.