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I don't have time to look them up again, but yesterday, I saw several references to this, admittedly strange to our western eyes, behaviour is an old SE Asian way of showing respect.
Google it and it will come up.
And Webb had witnessed this display while a soldier in Viet Nam. Did Allen serve, BTW? Just asking, I don't know.
Webb was a republican when he wrote those books. Where was all the hoopla from his fellow republicans at the time? Or are they only shocked now that Webb is a democrat? If it is a moral issue, they would have complained back then. If it is merely a partisan issue; no surprise.
I read several of Bill Cohen's novels when I was in high school, and was surprised to find them pretty explicit as well, for spy-thrillers. Of course, as a member of Clinton's cabinet he's not exactly a conservative paragon, but he was a Republican Senator for many years. Agreed, let's keep "fiction" separate from "reality."
Staggeringly desperate Allen idiocy aside, a good insight into the cultural backstory on what Webb cites in that passage can be found in Waldo Jaquith's excellent editorial:
http://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2006/10/webb-lost-soldiers-attack/
- Aaron
