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Home » Tet, Cronkite, opinion journalism, and a changing press: Part II (changing the course of history)

Tet, Cronkite, opinion journalism, and a changing press: Part II (changing the course of history)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I here.]

In his introduction to that Cronkite interview featured in Part I, Dick Gordon writes:

It was February 1968, and in a three minute editorial essay on the CBS Evening news Cronkite quite simply changed the course of history. On that night, the anchor told Americans that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable; that the generals and pundits were wrong…

Think about that for a moment. Cronkite, a news anchor, goes on a trip to Vietnam (I can’t find any information on how long it lasted, but my guess is a couple of weeks at most). This happens around the time of the Tet Offensive, and he’s briefed on that, among other things. Then he returns home. With no particular military expertise—and, as it turns out, no basic understanding of the strategic realities of the Tet Offensive itself—he comes to the opinion that the war cannot be won.

Although prior to this he’s always considered his role to be the reporting of facts and events, he now develops the idea that he must use his bully pulpit, and the influence he’s gained thoughout his years as a solid and relatively nonpartisan newsman, to tell the “truth” that the government and the military have been keeping from the American people.

Why Cronkite decided to make that transition is still somewhat mysterious, although I aired some theories about it in Part I. Of course, there’s no doubt that Cronkite had—and has—a right to his opinion; but we’re not talking about merely having an opinion. Did he have a right to leap over the traditional boundaries of news reporting and to intone, in a voice almost all Americans had grown to implicitly trust and revere, that the situation was hopelessly stalemated?

The rules about reporting were there for a reason, after all. The responsibility journalists have is an awesome one; we rely on them for the information on which we base our votes in a republic. Journalists need to make sure that the information they convey is correct, properly sourced, accurate. But anchors are generalists, not experts—except in a very narrow field, that of conveying the news. They are good writers and talkers. They are able to keep their calm with a camera on them, and even to ad lib if necessary. But reporters should guard against the hubris of thinking that they’ve become expert in every field they cover.

In his broadcast of February 1968, Cronkite was careful to say in his introduction that what he was about to say was “speculative, personal, subjective.” He then indicates he doesn’t know who won the Tet campaign. He goes on to list a series of battles and conflicts that haven’t been resolved to his satisfaction; it’s all a stalemate, the whole thing.

He then makes a rather extraordinary leap, saying it’s clear this will always be the case. He knows that North Vietnam can—and most definitely will—match us for every measure we can come up with, not just in the past but in the future.

In fact, in clinical terms, one might say Cronkite is speaking of his own weariness and depression in the face of the ongoing conflict. He offers no proof of his assertions of hopeless quagmire, even for Tet—he just doesn’t know. But his language is the language of emotion, not facts or strategy. He is dispirited and disillusioned, experiencing a loss of faith more than anything else:

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.

He calls the conclusion that we are “mired in stalemate” the “only realistic” one. And then he makes the most peculiar declaration of all:

…in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

So, even if Tet turns out to have been a last-ditch effort for the North and the Vietcong, and if the enemy really does prove to have nothing left (“his last big gasp”) before submitting to negotiations—Cronkite sees the US “not as victors, but as honorable people who…did the best they could.”

But under the circumstances, why wouldn’t the US then be negotiating as victors? We see that, even when Cronkite posits a relatively optimistic position as a hypothetical, he still can’t bring himself to draw the proper conclusions from it: that it would represent at least some sort of victory. What comes across instead is an utter weariness, a personal one: that of Walter Cronkite himself.

Cronkite remains exceedingly proud of this broadcast. He’s often called “avuncular,” but I think the following statement of his could be more rightly called paternalistic:

There is a point at which it seems to me if an individual reporter has gained a reputation of being honest, fair as can be, and helps the American people in trying to make a decision on a major issue, I think we ought to take that opportunity.

This illustrates better than anything I can think of the slippery slope that comes from being a reporter and especially an anchorperson. For it’s clear that Cronkite had come to believe in his own persona, and to feel that it conferred a certain amount of wisdom on him. If he is honest and fair and trusted in his reportage of the facts, then he seems to think it follows that his own personal opinions and judgments—even about matters outside his field of expertise, journalism itself—are also reliable ones. And that he is therefore qualified to advise the American people in decisions they make on matters of national and military policy.

So, how wrong was Cronkite about Tet? About as wrong as can be, it turns out. History has declared unequivocally that there were winners and losers in Tet: it was a grand strategy that failed miserably for the North in the tactical military sense but succeeded beyond its wildest dreams as a propaganda ploy—due in large part to Cronkite and his colleagues in the MSM.

One of the oddest things about Cronkite isn’t what he did then; it’s that he’s still proud of it today. I’ve read and listened to a number of his interviews on the subject; at no time does he even address the fact that he was wrong about Tet in the military sense—nor do his questioners bring it up. Is this reticence on their part a show of respect for the frailty of an elderly man? Or are both he and his interviewers largely unaware of the discrediting facts that have been uncovered and widely aired in the intervening decades? Or do they not care if they were wrong about those things, because, after all, they were pursuing that “higher truth?”

The “lower” truth (otherwise known as the actual truth) is that Tet was a disaster for the Vietcong and the North—especially the Vietcong, who never recovered from the blow. But, in the end , it didn’t matter. How they managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat was detailed in the definitive work on the subject, Peter Braestrup’s 1978 analysis of MSM coverage of Tet, entitled “Big Story.”

…the nationwide Vietcong offensive turned out to be an “unmitigated disaster” for the communist side. But the media consensus was just the opposite—an “unmitigated defeat” for the United States.

Cronkite, along with several hundred reporters from two dozen countries, focused on how the Vietcong guerrillas managed to blast their way into the U.S. Embassy compound (but didn’t make it past the Marines in the lobby). War correspondents were also impressed by the view from the cocktail bar atop the Caravelle Hotel: C-47s, equipped with three Gatling guns on one side, were strafing Vietcong pockets in Cholon, the capital’s twin city 2½ miles away.

Yet the Vietcong didn’t reach a single one of their objectives and lost most of their 45,000-strong force in their attacks against 21 cities. It was also a defeat that convinced North Vietnam’s leaders to send their regular army—the NVA—south of the 17th parallel to pick up where the Vietcong left off.

If you want to read a summary of the conclusions Braestrup—a seasoned war reporter and former Marine who had served in Korea—reached in his book, please see this. You’d do well to read the whole thing; it’s rich in important and informative detail.

Interestingly enough, Braestrup doesn’t posit press political bias as a major part of the problem. The real difficulty was sheer ignorance, especially about anything military. Here are just a few of the MSM-created myths about Tet that Braestrup effectively destroys:

There had been no warning of a coming offensive.

The offensive was a victory for Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese military initiative bared the unreliability and inefficiency of our own allies, the South Vietnamese.

The characteristic American response was to destroy city districts and villages with overwhelming, indiscriminate firepower.

The sapper raid on the American embassy, the fighting in Hue, and the siege of Khe Sanh typified the war.

Khe Sanh was to be America’s Dien Bien Phu.

How did the press get it so very wrong?

The press corps lacked military experience and the ability to grasp and present matters of strategy and tactics…The press’s lack of knowledge and maturity resulted in a lack of discrimination in the presentation of hastily gathered or incomplete facts and contributed to the disaster theme.

The views of experienced military commentators like Joseph Kraft and Hanson Baldwin and the analyses of Douglas Pike were virtually ignored. The press reflected American ignorance of Vietnamese language and culture, had no expertise in the area of pacification, and almost no sources on the South Vietnamese government or army.

…The press was impressionable. General Bruce Palmer succinctly summed up the problem when he stated that the foe “took the battle down around the Caravelle Hotel and, so, from the standpoint of the average reporter over there, it was the acorn that fell on the chicken’s head and it said ‘The sky is falling.'”

And then you have what I think are the three most important press failings of all, of which Cronkite is guilty as charged, their staying power reflected in his inordinate pride in himself even today, a pride that persists in the face of a book like “The Big Story” (one wonders whether Cronkite has even read it):

There was no willingness to admit error or correct erroneous reporting after the fact. The classic example was the Associated Press’s continued assertion that sappers had entered the U.S. Embassy building in Saigon more than twelve hours after it was clear the attack had been repulsed on the grounds.

…By the time of Vietnam, it had become professionally acceptable in some media to allow reporters to “explain” news, not merely report it…

…In their commentary on events in Vietnam, reporters “projected” to the American public their own opinions and fears based on incomplete data and their own inclinations.

Has any of this changed today? I think things have gotten worse, if anything; the MSM failures illustrated by the press coverage of Tet have become institutionalized in the intervening years.

Tet was a turning point all right, but in a very different way than Cronkite envisioned it: it marked the beginning of a special and destructive type of MSM hubris, in which our own media—without realizing it was doing so, and without meaning to—became, effective ly, the propaganda arm of the enemy.

Comments

Tet, Cronkite, opinion journalism, and a changing press: Part II (changing the course of history) — 100 Comments

  1. In essence, my disagreement with Ariel comes from his application of willpower in war. Will, willpower, ruthlessness, determination, and “stomach” so to speak are all simply words to describe the same thing. Which is, doing what you need to do, to accomplish your mission, whatever your mission is. WWII, mission was unconditional surrender, as soon as possible.

    Ariel says that Truman was afraid of a loss of will, so that was why he ended the war sooner.

    I think Truman ended the war sooner because his will was strong and America’s will was strong, in acquiring unconditional surrender as soon as possible. A failure to acquire unconditional surrender as soon as possible, by Operation Olympus for example, would be a failure of will. Or in this, a failure of the leadership to properly apply military expedience, which is almost interchangeable with how will is used in this context.

  3. I agree. Great post. And very informative for this 30-something reader.
    It may be just me, but the description provided of how thoroughly anchormen used to be perceived and deeply trusted by the public brings to mind the Ron Burgundy character in the movie .

  5. “Did he have a right to leap over the traditional boundaries of news reporting and to intone, in a voice almost all Americans had grown to implicitly trust and revere, that the situation was hopelessly stalemated?”

    Yes, unfortunately that is part of the price of Freedom. Rather – should he have done it. No, not by a long shot.

    “But reporters should guard against the hubris of thinking that they’ve become expert in every field they cover.”

    Good luck with that one. It is not just the MSM it is journalism in general. For a number of years I worked in a govt research lab, from time to time we had to deal with press (trade magazines). Some actually were experts in the field – rarely did this people think absolutely wrong ideas (at the very least they were no worse than all the other real experts – sure of their ideas and able to back them up to anyone). Some realized they were not and did the best they could. Most thought that their position granted them some great insight and would consider their ideas on how the piece of software works or the intent when designing it superior to even the people who wrote the software.

    Usually the idea is that the experts are so focused on their little piece that they can not see “The Big Picture”. Journalist, by being able to read everything and having no bias, are in a unique position to wade through all that and arrive at the correct answer. At least that’s what I have been told (both by some journalist and in the one intro class I took in college).

    I have also seen a few other professions that tend to claim that they have the ability to understand anything at a level to tell experts in a field they are wrong (many Language people and Mathematicians believe so, often to the point of being amusing to the people who *are* experts).

  6. Neo describes the problem well, but not its cause. The fact that Johnson decided not to run again forced the interpretation of defeat on the minds of Americans more than the editorializing of Cronkite. Cronkite may have persuaded Johnson but that was Johnson’s error. And Cronkite’s description of the war as a stalemate was at least approximately true on a timescale of a year or two — the problem was that this was a dreadful disappointment that dispirited the nation, not that the war would last at least another 3 years or more.

    There is no substitute for quality leadership and the US did not have quality in Johnson. All his expertise was in domestic affairs, and that was considerable. The lesson is that domestic experience doesn’t prepare a leader to be President.

    And neo misses the errors of the military. Instead of gaining the trust of the reporters they pumped up their results, losing trust. The military stuck to reporting a pretty constant 10-to-1 kill ratio after every battle; this soon became unbelievable.

    Antiwar and Communist propaganda of the time focused on the horrors of war for the Vietnamese people and on the popularity and successes of Ho Chi Minh, especially against the French and Japanese. The Johnson administration and hawks in general never were able to come up with a good answer for that. Today’s conservatives and neocons would do a much better job than the hawks of the 60’s.

    Left propaganda of the time simply described the Communist defeat at Khe Sanh as a diversion to bring US troops away from the upcoming Tet offensive.

    The fact remains that the Tet offensive was a surprise for the American people and a wake-up call for many who had been misled to believe that the war against the Communists in Vietnam was nearly won.

    And finally, let us not forget that the fresh faces of college students protesting the war were more appealing than the tired old wrinkled face of President Johnson.

  8. strcpy:
    The problem is that experts in a field very often lack ability to see a big picture. Somebody really is needed to frame experts opinions into more wide perspective. That is, we need not only specialists, but also a very rare breed of people called polymaths. There is always a huge deficit of them. And, IMHO, mathematicians are best equipped to this role. (At least, some of them.) Journalist hybris is a problem everywhere; the best of this profession never had a specific journalism education but have a much broad, may be, not formal; they are self-taught persons, like K.H.Chesterton, Mark Twain or Mark Steyn.

  10. Credibility is all-important. I well remember hearing at the time the idea that Tet was a victory for the US and not the Viet Cong. But this was just not believed by me or by anyone I knew.

    And I think it is the memory of this loss of credibility (the famous “Credibility gap”) that current supporters of the insurgency in Iraq are trying to recreate with the slogan “Bush lied — people died”. While in fact Bush has kept to the truth, the slogan still works.

  11. What are legal and political perspectives to re-create something like McCarthy Senat Commission on Anti-American Activity? If Buch vision of 40-year GWOT is correct, such institution is badly needed.

  12. Some links on the credibility gap:
    wikipedia entry on the gap.

    And Helen Thomas getting some facts wrong on Iraq. Note that Thomas is correct when she criticizes the Bush administration for emphasizing Saddam’s nuclear weapons — they did not exist. But Thomas is wrong about Saddam trying to buy uranium in Africa — he did.

  13. Not to defend the MSM too much, but I think the military at that time fed them too much rosy prose about their own performance that the MSM bought a little too uncritically. Thus, Tet succeeded simply because I think the reporters bought the line that an offensive by the North wasn’t even possible. When it happened, they felt they’d be suckered, and irrationally went too far the other way.

  14. neo:

    You wrote: “…it marked the beginning of a special and destructive type of MSM hubris,…”.

    It also marks the beginning of the end for trust in MSM. Note how the military facts have gradually come out over the years, contradicting all Cronkite’s assumptions. But never have been acknowledged, especially by the newer members of the MSM.

    And, ironically, it marked the beginning of the end of CBS evening news…

    “What goes around, comes around.”.

  15. Although prior to this he’s always considered his role to be the reporting of facts and events, he now develops the idea that he must use his bully pulpit

    I don’t think that is very true, Neo. Cronkite to me is a very weak man, easily demoralized, easily controlled through propaganda, and easily manipulated. His editor was the one who was pretty strict about editorializing, not cronkite. It seemed as if Cronkite just followed along to get along, up until he thought he knew the truth, up until he thought he had support. Support enough to drive past the editor and the owners and popular sentiment, because he was popular sentiment. When the guy separating the news and the editorials started caving and told Cronkite that maybe he could do some opinion making, Cronkite went for broke like the kid let out of the house without any restrictions. Cronkite was under the influence of his boss, under the influence of his fear of losing his job, under the influence of his dislike for the military, and under the influence of enemy propaganda. He was not so much steel, as he was plastic, bending with the wind of the times. Letting his desires carry him whichever way he deemed fit to sail.

    In fact, in clinical terms, one might say Cronkite is speaking of his own weariness and depression in the face of the ongoing conflict.

    Weakness breds weakness.

    There is a point at which it seems to me if an individual reporter has gained a reputation of being honest, fair as can be, and helps the American people in trying to make a decision on a major issue, I think we ought to take that opportunity.

    it is an opportunity to justify his weakness, Neo. An opportunity to spread his misery around, to make others more miserable, to gladden his own heart, Neo. It is an opportunity de facto, to make things as he sees it, where most people may only gripe and have little consequence about what they are griping about, so for Cronkite it was different. He had the POWER, and it was much better to use and abuse such power, than to be helpless in his weakness at Vietnam.

    Or are both he and his interviewers largely unaware of the discrediting facts that have been uncovered and widely aired in the intervening decades?

    They don’t believe it ever mattered ever. The ends justify the means for them. The means was Cronkite, the ends was what happened and what they sought to happen. An honorable defeat, for them anyways.

    …the nationwide Vietcong offensive turned out to be an “unmitigated disaster” for the communist side.

    It is easy to understand, Neo. The Vietcong was the guerrila component of the North Vietnamese army. The North Vietnamese army always got kicked by the US Army. It was the guerrilas that made jungle warfare a pain, with their strapping boobytraps on bodies and children or whatever tunnels they hide in. A guerrila component cannot and should not engage in conventional warfare. because to do so, they

  16. have to “gather” together. If you gather together, the artillery spotters can find you and kill you. Guerrilas are not trained or experienced in conventional warfare, therefore when they hit the Marines, they got destroyed, annihilated even. When they come out of their hiding spots and fight, they will be annihilated by the Marines. It is why they hid in the first place. The outcome was already decided when they mobilized for a strike against US strongholds, Neo. There was no need for “history”. The principles of warfare are unbreakable, although not unbendable as you can see with the victory from defeat mojo. The same happened in Iraq in 2004, Neo. Terrorists tried to jack up the US military on the open field, and they didn’t have enough left to bury their dead at the end of the battle. They tried to fight a pitched battle in Fallujah, as well. You know how that ended up. The very fact that nobody can defeat the US military on the Open Field has been learned and recognized, even by mad hatters like Saddam. So they make a weakness out of your strength. If they can’t beat you, then they’ll just convince you that your victory was a defeat or simply didn’t matter because you were “indiscriminate” in killing civilians (Fallujah 1).

    without realizing it was doing so, and without meaning to

    That’s not a justified defense for negligent homicide, Neo, and you know it. Ignorance of the consequences of one’s action does not render one immune from the responsibility, moral or otherwise. Especially when that ignorance is forced and pursued with fanatic devotion, out of all context or reason.

    Ron brings up an interesting scenario. Which I believe to be the same scenario as what happened when the media giddily reported on Jessica Lynch and the fall of Baghdad. They set themselves up for the fall, they set America up for the fall, and made the fall higher by raising morale up really really high. So that when attacks did occur, people could fall from a greater height to sustain more critical injuries. This is more or less, what the media probably did to themselves in Vietnam and blamed the military for. Now the military had their problems with propaganda and PR, that has been recognized, however the military had their job and the press had theirs. The military did their jobs well, but the press pocked their jobs up. End of story, as they say. Same for Iraq.

  17. “…if an individual reporter has gained a reputation for being honest, fair as can be, and helps the American people in trying to make a decision on a major issue…”

    Translation: If you have that kind of influence, use it, if it’s something I agree with. If people think you are objective, you no longer have to be.

    It sounds like Cronkite just fell in love with his own voice, here. Lies of Saruman.

    That Cronkite was expressing his own weariness is a shrewd observation, neo. I have noted before that the American people last about 3 years, and are then sick of war, regardless of how well we are doing. As the news media became aware of the ramping up in Vietnam before the general public, it is plausible that they also became weary earlier.

    A point from your first essay remains key here. WWII media were used to receiving the news, warts and all, because they could be counted on to try and put the best possible face on the facts, and not demoralize the American people. The military learned to do their own spin before giving it to the media, not because the military wanted to deceive, but because the media had burned them before. The media wanted it both ways, and blamed the military spokespeople.

  18. I wonder if the WW 2 media were as patriotic and as good as we now seem to think. Has anyone ever done a study on this?

    We recall reporters like Bill Mauldin, who did the Willy and Joe cartoons, Ernie Pyle, and a few others whose names escape me. But maybe the Allies had troubles with various reporters who gave away secrets. The Normandy invasion was a fantastic enterprise. Maybe some reporters tried to give away the secret and were dealt with somehow.

    Just speculating here…….

  19. Regarding my post above, I definitely think today’s prissy environment is harming us. Some traitors need to be identified and executed.

    I’ve just been reading snippets here and there about the Sandy Burger case. What was THAT all about, and why don’t we know more about it? It’s not up to the media to deal with it. It’s up to the Justice Department. Ditto the NYTimes revelation of military secrets.

    Maybe the time isn’t right, but I believe that heads must roll (figuratively and literally) if we are ever to have a media that is not an agent for enemy propaganda.

    We can’t depend upon the media to reform itself, that’s for sure. But they must be made accountable for outright pro-enemy efforts. I’m not talking about “freedom of speech” issues. I’m talking about aid to the enemy in clearcut ways.

  20. Hey, great thread! No trolls, so far. Probably because they can’t fit their Jew hating screeds into this one so easily!

    I remember Walter Cronkite. Perhaps his esteem at the time related more to the deep voice, as opposed to any brains.

    Also, is it just me, or does David Gregroy of NBC remind others of the Muppet Show newscaster?

  22. Regarding my post above, I definitely think today’s prissy environment is harming us. Some traitors need to be identified and executed.

    The American people have a lot more patience than I ever did. Because I was fed up with imprisonment a long time ago. Neo also has more patience than I do. Because she kept up the balance up until a few weeks ago, that is. Sure, some people were thinking about hardline efforts, but they still had enough faith in Bush or Bush’s generals to save the situation without being hardcore. Course, I wasn’t willing to wait, I wanted the iron fist rule early on.

    I think Cronkite burned out at about the 1 to 2 year mark. The political elites usually burn out within a year, from what I’ve seen. Only firm leadership and the iron hand of rule (Roosevelt) can sustain the war effort.

  23. “Did he have a right to leap over the traditional boundaries of news reporting and to intone, in a voice almost all Americans had grown to implicitly trust and revere, that the situation was hopelessly stalemated?”

    It’s interesting that the film “Good Night, and Good Luck” is exactly about the moral dilemma of reportorial objectivity.

    It seems to me that it’s a tough call. Reporters are supposed to be objective, of course, but they are human beings, and they are bound to make moral judgments. If they make such judgments, then at least they should bracket those judgments off from the rest of their work. The same, BTW, should apply to academics.

    Since I re-read Cronkite’s comments (thanks for posting), it seems to me that such bracketing was done. Furthermore, the idea that Vietnam was a stalemate was already being published in things like the NYT well before this, in 1967, based on leaked assessments of general officers of the Army.

    My own personal memories of Tet — they get a little confused with the seizure of the Pueblo that took place around the same time — is that no one, and I mean no one, thought the Vietcong/NVA had that much fight left in them. We had been getting body counts for two years, assuring us that we were winning, and then all of a sudden, this. That the offensive was an objective failure for the North was, and is, irrelevant. The fact that it occurred meant to us observers that we would be in Vietnam for years to come, and it was as a result that people started to turn against the war even more strongly.

    I should also say that Cronkite’s editorial — I remember watching it — brought a collective sigh of relief to those of us watching. It wasn’t that Cronkite persuaded anybody: he was just saying what everyone already knew. And I remember being grateful that at least SOMEBODY in the media, etc. had the balls to call it the way a large number of Americans were seeing it. Cronkite’s comments did not change people’s minds. But they did give him added credibility at the time.

  24. Btw, I’m eating a lightly salted and spiced brain of a pig. It is pretty tasty.

    For an example of one of the many “hardcore” techniques I favor, try reading this comment at blackfive. Yummy, it’s good eating.

    People need a cast iron stomach in war. Bush kept trying to calm people down when he should poured on the hate and rage, and annihilated his enemies, both domestic and foreign. He would be a lot more popular, for sure.

    Link

    I heard that if you tie 4 terrorists together, use treplanation on one of the 4 in order to scoop out the brains and put a grenade inside the treplaned skull, then finally pulling the pin on the grenade and throwing all 4 into the sea, that it would also be a good cure. Strapping terrorists with C4 in order to alleviate rage, a nice solution, but I like mine more.

    What I said in short.

    If you video tape it and do the simple and painless operation while the 4 are tied together, I think you might get some good reactions and propaganda. Besides, I don’t think the guy being operated on would notice, up until his brains started getting scooped out. Not a lot of nerves on the brain really. I’m looking at the pig’s brain on this little plate of mine, and it looks really white. Sort of like fish, without the bones. I hate bones. Bones scare me.

    I started thinking this stuff up when I saw Nick Berg’s execution video. Everyone kept talking about “how watching it made me sick”. Well, I know it didn’t make me sick, so I thought, what would make the terrorists sick? What if we dipped the golden spoon into a layer of pig’s fat and scheisse before scooping it out, would that make them sick? Step along the path of psychological warfare. Which is simple. Find your enemy’s weaknesses, and exploit them. Everyone has fears. Everyone is scared of something. Find it, exploit it.

    The terrorists believe they have civilians cowed because they have big knives and can stick it in people and kill them. Well, well. I guess maybe they don’t realize that there are crueler and more brutal techniques out there, and the people who not only think them up but are willing to carry them out, personally.

  25. “That the offensive was an objective failure for the North was, and is, irrelevant. The fact that it occurred meant to us observers that we would be in Vietnam for years to come, and it was as a result that people started to turn against the war even more strongly.”

    Thanks, Steve, for absolutely proving Neo’s point in the post above.

    “Irrelevant”? Your next statement PROVES that the misreporting of Tet was TOTALLY relevant.

  26. “focus their attention on evil AP stringers.”

    …and Reuters fauxtographers, and NYTimes plagiarists, and CBS fakers, and AP liars, etc. etc. etc.

    There is a difference between reporting facts (Iraq IS chaotic) and lying (6 Sunnis set on fire—no proof of which exists). And perhaps the reason that the Washington Times and the NY Post have not printed anything different is because THEY don’t have reporters in the field either, whereas Michael Yon, Michael Totten and Bill Roggio are actually, you know, IN COUNTRY and WITH THE TROOPS.

  27. The Public likes its measurable victories. The big push in Europe in WW2 lasted 7 months and after the Bulge, the German effort was all defensive back peddling. Operation Torch kicked off in late 42′ and once in Italy, our effort became more an effort of attrition and holding the lines since the German high command knew Europe was to be invaded and the Russians were advancing from the East. Serb resistance forces kept 7 good good German divisions tied down for the duration of the war and all the logistical accompaniment tied to 7 infantry divisions. No real progress was ever seen in the Balkans until the very end. In the Pacific, the Public could ‘see’ islands being taken one at a time. Those campaigns were brief for the most part and very bloody then it was onto the next island.

    The only advantage the guerilla has over conventional forces is being able to deny the Public clear cut victories, ground gained, objectives taken. The media likes to imagine the US military can’t deal with guerilla/terrorist fighters, never mind a couple hundred years dealing with Indians and Conderarate geurillas and Fillipino fanatics, and Boxers, etc. etc. The media likes to spread Che myths I call them – the invicible, ideal, daunting, committed peasant warrior able to combat the evil US and win at times. Another myth spread by the media was that the NVA were natural born jungle fighters. From the streets of Hanoi and other towns and urban centers to boot camp to the jungle and presto! natural born jungle fighters. Yeah right. Same applies to peasant farmers coming out of well established farming communities of rice paddies and dikes, venturing into the jungles to only gather some fire wood from time to time. The diaries and letters taken off dead NVA tell a different story – the terror of encountering tigers and poisonous snakes and centipedes in the jungle, getting lost, dehyrdration and diarrhea, fatigue, sleep deprivation, heat and humidity, bad water, ulcerated sores, jungle rot of the feet, malaria, food shortages, bad equipment and of course Americans and the death they brought. Natural born jungle fighters my ass.

    The Marines were not invicible. In the summer of 67′, B co. of the 1st bn 9th Marine regiment was decimated almost to the man. I knew one of the few survivors who returned in 69′ and was in my outfit. Many things factor in – terrain, cover, postioning of men, coordination,timing, fatigued point men, luck, close killing fields of fire, etc.

    Now that the Democrats are in control and a number of them realize we simply can’t cut and run from Iraq, the media is backing off its incessant doomsday reporting. Perhaps too the Public is starting to realize that all of Northern Iraq and Southern Iraq are not experiecing the terrorism of Baghdad.

  28. “. . .warbloggers want journalists to get killed. That’s how deep their hatred of the press runs.”

    Works for me, Anon. I’ve always said one of the Administration’s biggest failures was in treating the WH press corps as fellow Americans. I’d have pulled all their passes a long time ago and given Helen Thomas and David Gregory ten minutes to make it out of the gates before the Secret Service opened fire.

    But seriously – it’s interesting that you use the Jamil Hussein case as an example to beat the “warbloggers” over the head. It’s very simple – either the AP is lying, or they’re not. Given the ruthless fisking that has been done at Michelle Malkin and Junk Yard Blog, there’s something deeply suspicious in what the AP has reported concerning the burning mosques that somehow have morphed into a great deal less.

    I forget where I saw it – perhaps Instapundit – but the point has been raised that such obvious lying as Rathergate and the petulant “prove we’re lying, assjack” attitude of the AP might delight the left base, but it’s ultimately unhealthy for all of us. Too many people on the right side now automatically discount bad news out of Iraq if the MSM is reporting it, because we can point to too many examples of their mendacity (the press-wide Abu Gharab orgasm as well as the “Boston Globe’s” insistence that a pornographic “Veils and Tails” website was proof of American soldiers raping Iraqi women come instantly to mind). If we’re convinced that the press is lying, then when truly bad news occurs, it will catch us all blindsided.

    But it’s so much easier to sneer about Mark Steyn (who has actually been in the line of fire) and the 101st Fighting Keyboardists that to wonder whether the cry of “lies and bias” might have any truth.

  29. A side note, as Anon posted while I was typing –

    I’m hardly likely to watch your link. If you think the ravings of Noam Chomsky constitute “learning something based in reality,” I’d also suggest you ask David Irving for thoughts on the Holocaust.

  30. Another shocker – MSN is reporting that Iraq’s economy is “booming”. Duhh! No kidding! I wondered why the media wasn’t showing all the traffic jams in Baghdad. You can’t have traffic jams without people working and shopping, not when Bush is killing tens of thousands a day. Can’t we at least have economic chaos? I’ve wondered why we haven’t seen pictures of thousands of dead orphans with their ribs protruding from starvation while fat US troops eat well.

  33. The key phrase relating to the Cronkite opinionating on Vietnam is that “higher truth” bit. It’s arrogant, of course — because who defines the “higher truth” among the “conflicted people”, when you have others who honestly disagree with you? But it’s also dim-witted, and it’s important to see why — because once you set the precedent that reporters can deal in what they see as “higher truths” rather than mere facts (“cataloguing of casualties”, etc.), then you open the media’s door to anyone with an agenda to push. Which, to the more dim-witted leftists, might seem just fine so long as the agenda being pushed is theirs. But that depends on who, at any given time, has access to the media, and that can change. Would be interesting to see how much the lefties like “advocacy journalism” were the media dominated by the religious right’s notions of a “higher truth”, e.g.

    Opinionating by “pundits” is just what they do, and not only has a long history but has an important role to play; but opinionating from those who are trading on their reputation as “reporters” is a betrayal of journalism, pure and simple, and is exactly what has so degraded the media of our own time — to the extent that they really can no longer tell “fake” from “true”.

    By the way, to hear Cronkite interviewed now is more than a little bizarre — it’s not just that he’s still proud of his personal editorial in 1968; it’s that he seems to have been afflicted with some sort of viral brain damage, imagining Karl Rove arranging Bin Laden interviews, fixing elections, etc. Right up there with Ramsey Clark and Jimmy Carter. The boomers themselves were bad enough — but they seemed to have tilted a significant percentage of their elders into the permanent la-la land of big-time, paranoid Conspiracy Theory.

  35. AnonymouseMarine . . .

    “The media likes to spread Che myths I call them – the invicible, ideal, daunting, committed peasant warrior able to combat the evil US and win at times.”

    So very true. And then, what does it all come to? Che Guevara T-shirts. Mao watches. Chief Illiniwek lawsuits. Silly stuff for college students, ACLU misfits, and slacker-types.

    We need to make the propagandists afraid of US. Don’t we have any cute Marines (former farm boys since we don’t have peasants) who would look good on T-shirts?

  36. Actually, now that I think about it, that was John Wayne’s appeal. Where’s our 21st-century John Wayne-type?

  37. You know the more I read of your posts Neo the more I see that you’ve created this notion(although it isn’t unique in anyway, it appears to be a common theme amongst far-right commentators)that you were a liberal before you became a hawk – AFTER 9.11.

    I read your post about health care and how deeply flawed the Canadian health care system is – and that socialized medicine doesn’t work etc(contrary to the facts that you so espouse – have a close look at WHO and others and what they say about the U.S healthcare system)

    My question is did you arrive at this ideological construction AFTER 9.11?

    And if you didn’t than it’s clear that you are a complete fraud – even American liberals very much favour socialized medicine in the U.S(as indeed does the majority of the U.S population).

    What a shameless hussy…+

    [Hi stevie–nice try at another new identity. ]

    Edited By Siteowner

  39. AnonymousMarine . . .

    “Can’t we at least have economic chaos? I’ve wondered why we haven’t seen pictures of thousands of dead orphans with their ribs protruding from starvation while fat US troops eat well.”

    As I recall, one reason that the U.S. military, in 2003, “wasn’t prepared for all the looting and insurgency” was that it WAS actually prepared for a great humanitarian crisis that never occurred.

    Meanwhile, during these past 3 years, Iraq has been steadily improving its economy. Little of this has been reported.

    Of course, we already know that most “journalists” don’t know much about economics anyway, so they wouldn’t see traffic jams as a sign of economic health.

  40. Hi Neo,

    I’m afraid I can’t figure out why any of this Cronkite stuff really mattered at the time. I kind of see how its playing itself out again now. But it doesn’t seem to have changed much then.

    To recap:

    In 1972, most US troops were out of Vietnam, and the South Vietnamese had pretty much defeated the Viet Cong.

    From then until 1975, the US government supported the South in building their military and building a government which could defend its borders.

    Then Nixon was ousted and Democrats took over everything. They shut off aid to the South, and refused to help defend the country when the North invaded.

    So how was Cronkite’s speach from 7 years earlier relevant? Had he not made the speach, would Johnson have run again, and therefore the Democrats never would have shut off aid? Even if Johnson/Democrats had lost to Nixon, would they still have supported the war if Cronkite had not given the speach? For that matter, if Johnson had won, would that have better or worse for the Vietnamese over the next 7 years?

    I guess that’s possible, though you really didn’t make that your point. It seems like kind of a stretch to say so.

    It seems to me that Cronkite thought he had a bigger impact than he really did. It also seems to me that the Democrats would have turned on the whole enterprise even though it was won, and US troops were no longer involved, even if Cronkite had not given the speach. Which means that Conkrite really wasn’t pivotal in the process.

    Please note: I’m not claiming that there is anything likable about Conkrite.

    James

  41. “60% unemployment, systemic infrastructure failure, hyperinflation, an oil economy being a net importer of oil and the flight of the middle and merchant class “economic improvement”, then yes, everything is going along swimmingly.”

    “Not to mention the tens of billions of dollars earmarked for reconstruction that have just disappeared from both Iraqi and US treasuries.”

    “Care to back up your statement with some facts? Any facts will do.”

    Well, justa?

    As for the booming Iraqi economy:

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16241340/site/newsweek/

  42. We need to make the propagandists afraid of US. Don’t we have any cute Marines (former farm boys since we don’t have peasants) who would look good on T-shirts?
    Promethea | 12.21.06 – 4:06 pm | #

    Didn’t see RangerUP? hehe

  44. “you’re outta cash. It’s all gone.”

    Funny. I’m doing just fine, thanks.

    Look, everybody knows you have a favorite website. From now on, just post a linky to it and leave the BS out of your comments. You’ll be doing us a favor and saving yourself a lot of typing.

  45. “Blame the MSM for not winning hearts and minds!!!”

    No, this just shows that the Army does what it’s supposed to do when people screw up. Sherman said “War is hell”…and this is just one of those hellish things. Are you just as upset when a Pali blows up a pizza parlor?

    Probably not…THAT’s “justified”. I’m surprised that you take such joy in violence and death, peace lover that you are….

  46. “How many Palestinian pizza parlours are blown up, bombed, demolished or attacked for the crime of being not Jewish?”

    gee, I don’t know. How many?

  47. Dateline Gaza 12/21/06 (AP) — Israeli tanks today bulldozed a Palestinian strip mall, destroying four pizza parlors, killing 10 million children, and injuring 5 million more. Additionally, more than 500,000 women were injured, according to Lancet magazine. The figures were corroborated by Police Lieutenant Jamil Hussein, reporting from his office in Yarmouk, as well as an aid worker, seen in the accompanying photo wearing his green helmet.

    The destruction came as the bulldozers, part of the Zionists’ “Water Denial Brigade,” were on their way to also destroy numerous recently-dug water wells in the area. The photos accompanying this article were graciously provided by Pulitzer-prize winning Reuters photographer, Issam Kobeisi.

  48. “make fun of genocide.”

    Oh, please. Genocide is what’s happening in Darfur. If the IDF were interested in genocide, the Palis would be long gone by now.

    I was actually making fun of your reliance on the MSM for your “facts”—you know, Lancet, the NYT, Reuters, AP—by the way, facts which you never provided.

  49. justaguy:

    Hey Ali…I WAS a whizz in formal logic: the kind called Boolean Algebra. “A” in the course, ahem…

    Now…what was I suppose to refute? Make it snappy pal(i)…I’m leaving to celebrate a Christian holiday tomorrow.

    BTW, your main forte is what is known in logic as the unsustainable middle…you can look it up.

  50. If it didn’t involve trashing poor Neo’s blog, I’d pull your chain all night, Justa. It’s just so much fun to hear you rant…but, I’ve done enough damage to our hostess’ comment section, and it’s really not fair to her good graces to continue this c**p.

    So long and thanks for all the fish.

  51. Eight Marines were charged Thursday in the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last year …

    Blame the MSM for not winning hearts and minds!!!

    I’m not understanding exactly how the US military trying and punishing murderers proves the commentor’s somewhat inscrutable point(Why can’t they ever just come out and SAY things – why must it always be awkward, inept implication?). All this bit of info proves is that the US has the moral currency to buy justice. If I were an Iraqi onlooker I would be noticing that murder by Americans is dealt with by the US with justice. Quite a contrast from Saddam’s murder by the state, eh what? I would think my Iraqi heart and mind would be a trifle warmer after thoughtful consideration of the implications of this trial of US soldiers for the murder of civilians.
     

  52. You know, you might want to consider the possibility that, in responding to justa, you’re talking to a robot, a generator. It’s got a limited number of terms, phrases, and rules programmed into it — e.g., “genocide”, “brown people”, “Likudnik”, “you’re a racist”, “Israelis are nazis”, “Palestinians are oppressed”, “where’s your evidence?”, “you’re an idiot”, etc., etc. — which it then just mixes, matches, re-cycles, and reposts every few minutes. But they’re just strings of characters, people. There’s nothing else there.

  53. Oh it’s a real person, I’m sure, Sally. It’s just the thinking (or lack thereof) that’s robotic.

  54. I think justaguy keeps switching topics whenever things look uncomfortable. By the time I get here, anyway, there are 8 different topics which need to be refuted at length. If you make a start on one, he moves to another. He just can’t stay on topic.

    I was going to go on with that Iraqi economy thing, but he switched to the fact that the US is out of cash. On the way to this he has to throw in vile insults as well.

    Then it occurred to me – there’s never anything but full-bore partisanship from justaguy. There is nothing going right in the Iraqi economy, nothing going right in Iraq at all. Or in America either, under Bush. There are no rays of hope, no possible upsides to anything. Things are so amazingly bad, it’s a wonder we’re alive.

    Contrast this with the persuasive approach of neo and at least some of the commenters: there are plusses and minuses; chances missed, unexpected benefits; Cronkite’s actions have some defense, but not enough; the military deserves some credit, but some blame. There were benefits, risks, costs, and unintended consequences.

    The real world is more like that. There may be a few contexts in which it is possible to have very productive discussions with people who engage in this sort of Manichean fantasy, and there may be situations where justaguy gives measured, cautious comments. But that situation is not here. Let him think he’s out-argued all of us, who cannot stand before his mighty logic. Give him the last word, if he wants it. Save your discussion for those who can discuss.

  56. “Face it, your country is the Nazi Germany of modern times. You invaded and occupied a defenceless and beaten wreck of a country and you killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in the process.”

    D-E-F-E-N-S-E-L-E-S-S. We invaded and occupied a DEFENSELESS beaten wreck of a country.

    sheesh!

  58. I believe I was too hasty in my previous comment to label the Marines in question as “murderers.” They may have been following the ROE on clearing out buildings from which they were taking small arms fire. I’ll wait to see what comes out at the trial before forming any kind of judgement.
     

  59. grackle,

    Unfortunately, Haditha will also be a political trial. The results will always be tainted.

    If and only if the charges are accurate, the killers and any protectors deserve the harshness of the UCMJ. They shamed themselves, their families, their uniform, and their country, by unnecessarily shedding innocent blood.

  60. stumbley: Oh it’s a real person, I’m sure, Sally. It’s just the thinking (or lack thereof) that’s robotic.

    Right. But the point is that dialog of any sort is equally hopeless.

    AVI: Then it occurred to me – there’s never anything but full-bore partisanship from justaguy.

    Yes — that’s why he’s called a “troll”, and why neo usually just deletes his posts. Not because she’s trying to censor anyone, but because that kind of “commenting” is really just an effort to throw sand into the process, to disrupt and shut down down any sort of normal interchange. And unfortunately, whenever you try to engage them you usually just end up helping them in that effort. Tempting, though, I know — they’re such easy targets.

  61. Sally,

    Ja, wir sind alle Nazin, nicht wahr?

    You know, if I get called a Nazi one more time by some indecent, incivil, inane, insipid troll I’m going to have to break out my 15 year old Bruichladdich. Come to think of it, I’ll call myself a Nazi for that. Godwin’s Law rocks.

    Sally, the robot comment was as pointed as AVI’s comment, but in your inimitable style.

    Harry, I purposely misspelled uncivil. But then I would understand what you mean.

    Finally, to all Palestinian ladies-of-the-night, I apologize for the insult.

  62. Sally:
    “Yes — that’s why he’s called a “troll”, and why neo usually just deletes his posts. Not because she’s trying to censor anyone, but because that kind of “commenting” is really just an effort to throw sand into the process, to disrupt and shut down any sort of normal interchange.”

    Well, if we’re all brown people killin racial Islomophobe Nazi’s, why bother talking to us? Is the opportunity to spew vile attacks the big pay off? Are we supposed to cry or something? I dont get it. Isnt there a more constructive way to bridge the ideological gap? I thought liberals and “progressives” are supposed to be good at the diplomacy and nuance thing. What happened to that?

  63. “why bother talking to us?”

    He hates, therefore he must spew.
    He schadenfreudes, therefore he must keep coming back.

    Bruichladdich is an isley scotch with the taste of the sea, of salt and iodine. I would be very happy right now if someone could call me a Nazi, so I might pour one more shot.

  64. harry: Isnt there a more constructive way to bridge the ideological gap?

    Yes, clearly there is. Therefore, we can assume that trolls are not trying to bridge any gap, ideological or otherwise. In fact, they’re trying to prevent or block any such bridging by, as I say, throwing sand in the gears of any debate — through such recognizable tactics as changing subjects, moving goal posts, repeating themselves, dominating the floor, always demanding more “evidence”, etc.

    I thought liberals and “progressives” are supposed to be good at the diplomacy and nuance thing. What happened to that?

    I can only hope you’re being ironic, harry.

  66. Sally,
    Again, you come to my rescue. It is poured.

    You know, the sad thing in all this is that if a respectful tone could be kept by all, and I do mean all, there are things to learn from opposing viewpoints. I have tweaked many an opinion by listening to others.

    But when some come in it is so obvious that they have only one purpose, to be as indecent as they can be. It goes against everything I was taught about not only how to argue, but how to treat people, any person of any faith or color. (That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize.)

    Ultimately, they make such fools of themselves (such as seemingly misunderstanding Harry’s D-E-F-E-N-S-E-L-E-S-S) by showing they are not reading to understand but only to belittle.

  67. Neo, thank you for your coverage of those formative events that some of us [points finger at self] are too young to remember personally.

    As I told my dad a week ago when we were discussing the weakness and appeasement-mindedness of our politicians (we were talking about Olmert, but it holds true for nearly all the world): the true rulers and policymakers of our day are the media; they are the ones who crown the kings and tell them how to rule and depose them if they don’t comply. Winning this war requires, first and foremostly, actions which are considered to be by the intelligentsia of today, and consequently portrayed so by the Mainstream Media, as “cultural imperialism” (things on the line of General Sir Charles Napier’s prohibition of suttee). The MSM has been losing us all our wars against Islam so far.

    Happy weekend from another changed mind (I was a Leftist Peacenik in the 1990’s).

  68. Those who we call “trolls” are only extreme cases of more widespread and dangerous phenomenon of robotization of mind. This is the ultimate goal of totalitarian propaganda: reduction of complex, painstaking and requiring real intelectual honesty process of thinking to simple reiteration of approved slogans. Here lies the cardinal sin of mass media – fabrication of false consensus, of simplistic worldview, replacing of unique for humans logical reasoning by pattern recognition (animal’s mind!) and applying these patterns indiscriminately. Without this type of propaganda the very existence of totalitarian regimes, like Nazi or Communism, is impossible. Now these techniques becoming very popular in Islamist propaganda and impudently exploited by leftists as well.

  69. I must add that these totalitarian tendencies seemed to be built-in the mass media mode of operation: catchy headlines, simplistic reasoning ready to digest by millions-wide audience, caricatures, inciting primitive emotion, and so on. Media is a message; and mass media conveys bumper-sticker-headlines-caricature type of thinking. Only when Internet and individualized TV would eventually banckrupt and replace mass media, this plague of 20th century could be eradicated.

  71. There are times that I lament our form of government, which most of us are here to defend. Now and then it’s so agreeable to contemplate rounding up the MSM and sticking them in gulags in Death Valley. Maybe they could dig a canal in the sand or something. A Day in the Life of Walter Kronkite….

    Failing that, I wonder if legal action along the lines of our anti-trust laws is possible. We may not be dealing with a literal information- monopoly, but there’s certainly idelogical collusion, which yields that result.

  72. “I think Cronkite burned out at about the 1 to 2 year mark.”

    Have you ever actually seen a Cronkite broadcast, or have you just read what bloggers wrote about their memories of having seen Cronkite broadcasts? Since you’re about 12 years old, I’m going to go with the latter.

    “I started thinking this stuff up when I saw Nick Berg’s execution video. Everyone kept talking about ‘how watching it made me sick’. Well, I know it didn’t make me sick.”

    Ah, a lack of empathy is a pretty good sign of sociopathy. Or is it psychopathy? I always forget. Neo, you’re trained in this stuff – which is it?

  73. I wonder: why not use again such effective tool as Commission on Investigation of anti-American activity? It had decisively destroyed Communist Party in US in 1950, purged State Department from Soviet spies and traitors. If the name is too odious, choose some another, but retain its function. Under Patriot Act, it seems, this is quite possible.

  74. Anon:
    “I can only hope you’re being ironic, harry.”

    What? Did I actually think the left believes what it preaches? Of course not!

  75. Ariel, you’re a Nazi!

    Pour yourself another, on me.

    Justa, as is obvious from his website, is a Palestinian supporter. Therefore, it is useless trying to talk to him, since for him all issues boil down to “Israel is evil, Palestinians are oppressed, you are all Nazis (pour yourself another, Ariel)who hate poor brown-skinned persons of color.”

    It’s a waste of time trying to debate such trolls. They have the icon of the Holy Palestinian People firmly enshrined in their minds (complete with candles and floating clouds of incense) and nothing we say is going to change this.

  76. This is conservative revisionist history and rationalization.

    According to the new history, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were defeated in Tet and we had the war won. Only the media, and Walter Cronkite snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Totally wrong. Before Tet the US government was saying that the war was winding down. Tet showed that the enemy was far from defeated. In fact it was clear that if the US had not had 500,000 men in Vietnam, the South would have been overrun. More than half of the Americans killed in Vietnam came after the Tet offensive was over.

    What Tet showed was that it took 500,000 American service men in Vietnam to keep the South Vietnamese government in power, because the South Vietnamese people did not really believe in their government. The fact that the South Vietnamese military and government collapsed like a house of cards as soon as the US left, shows just that. The US was just propping up a corrupt and incompetent government.

    Cronkite talked with lots of government and military officials off the record. Many of them told him of their doubts about the situation in Vietnam. The US government knew the South Vietnamese government was probably a hopeless cause. The US could keep the South Vietnamese government in power by keeping 500,000 men there forever, but that effectively made South Vietnam a US colony. The American people eventually realized that while the US could keep the South Vietnamese government in power forever, we could not make the South Vietnamese people support that government.

    You can rationalize all you want. Try to blame the Democrats in congress, try to blame the media. The facts are there are limits to what can be accomplished with military power, even overwhelming military power. If you fail to learn that lesson from Vietnam, perhaps you will learn it in Iraq.

  77. Most last ditch offensives are conducted by a desperate enemy that seeks to turn the tides of war and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. For those of you who have studied the Battle of the Bulge, you should know that that attack by the Germans was an attempt to push back the Allied offensive. If it succeded, then things might be different, although more prolonged. But if it failed, it would simply send up more blood as the enemy coughs it up.

    I support the Palestinians. I support Cronkite. The enemy within is always the one that does you in. This has been true thoughout the history of mankind. It is not the enemy without that kills you, it is the guy that opens the gates for the enemy, that does you in. I learned much propaganda techniques from Cronkite, because he was a smooth saboteur and operator. Many Vietnamese died and he lived. Just as many Americans die and Valerie Plame lives.

    I don’t blame the Democrats anymore than I blame terrorists for cutting people’s heads off. It is simply their nature, I cannot change it. But I can destroy them, and if I can learn something from them to do so, then that shall simply have to suffice, now wouldn’t it.

  78. The thing is people, some people on this thread think I’m kidding. Because they would never do the things I would advocate. They would never even think about it, in fact they don’t think about it at all. Which is why when they see terrorists executing women and children, they don’t say a God Damn thing. Maybe because they fear, maybe because they know it is real, so they try and blame others to get back their self-confidence, by beating on what they see as the weaker party.

    But they don’t know who they are dealing with. They are protected by the United States military and Constitution. Or simply European wherewithal. Aussie ocean bridges.

    It is a game to them. A game to be played to the hilt. Girls Gone Wild, it is all just about the fun, hey, what the heck, might as well, the world looks like it is going to hell might as well have a hellish party while we are at it, is their thinking. So maybe they can’t get to a party, and try to come here and get in a pseudo fight. A fight where they don’t have to fear being killed or maimed or have their throats crushed, a fight where they can insult and decry and claim justifications, and be allowed to do so.

    One troll reading another troll, simply invites more to the party. Now some of this isn’t in Neo’s purview, her popularity has consequences. Just as you get people at blackfive who insult soldiers and call people warmongers and baby killers under a post about a DEAD AMERICAN, with family members reading, well well, it is not like they care. So long as they can post and jack off, all to the good in their world view.

    They are cowards, they are dishonorable wretches of humanity, that I wouldn’t spit upon for it is an insult to spit.

  80. //The facts are there are limits to what can be accomplished with military power, even overwhelming military power. If you fail to learn that lesson from Vietnam, perhaps you will learn it in Iraq.//

    Nonsense. We haven’t applied ‘overwhelming military power’ in 60 years–and it worked.

    The lesson is: “Don’t fight with half measures trying to appeal to the filthy leftists nipping at your heels.”

  81. “I don’t blame the Democrats anymore than I blame terrorists for cutting people’s heads off. It is simply their nature, I cannot change it. But I can destroy them, and if I can learn something from them to do so, then that shall simply have to suffice, now wouldn’t it.”

    How do you plan on destroying them, by casting magic missile?

  83. AVI: Bruichladdich is a Murray McDavid single-malt, McDavid having been an expert distiller for one of the older distilleries, if I remember correctly. I am working my way around Scotland by liver. I have always been a Highlander, but soon I’ll walk the Speys and then the Lowlands and on. Isley and Cepacol? Hush, man, someone may hear you and think you daft.

    Sergey: McCarthy and his methods made sure that nothing like an “Un-American Activities” would ever be acceptable. And to be honest, such a committee begs for corruption, manipulation, exaggeration, and ruination. It’s just not a good idea. Prosecuting actual traitors during wartime would be fine by me, however. And, no, Sheehan doesn’t qualify.

    TalkinKamel: I’ll save them for tonight, thank you. I became a “racist Nazi” when I dared to criticize Sharia. Justaguy called it just a legal system equivalent to others, I pointed out that was true only nominally. Explosion ensued, and Justaguy did call it his/our legal system. I think that was an unintended revelation. I detest religious legal systems, no matter which religion.

    Anon | 12.22.06 – 11:00 am |: Ymar is in his early 20s. The video of Nick Berg’s death didn’t make me sick either, revulsed, yes, angry, yes, revengeful, yes, sad that his mother would see this, yes. But not sick to my stomach, except metaphorically.
    Remember the Italian who refused to give in to these 7th Century barbarians? He knew he was dead long before the knife, and died with dignity.

    MikeCA: You left out that the Vietnamese have said the same thing. They thought they had lost the war, given the serious damage they had suffered. TET could have been a turning point for either side. Your assessment is only half the story. The “conservative revisionist history and rationalization” is the other half.

    Gray: You are correct, we haven’t used overwhelming military power since the end of WWII. It amazes me that anyone thinks we have. One thing though, we haven’t the stomach for a long, protracted war. Vietnam proved that. WWII was on the verge of proving it also. One reason, among many, that Truman dropped the bombs on Japan was the belief that we would not stomach an invasion which would prolong the war.

  84. People who criticize the bomb focus on how many it killed. And it’s true that the loss of life was catastrophic and horrific, and that it featured civilians (as did much of WWII, unfortunately, including a great deal of the non-nuclear bombing). But to evaluate the dropping of the bomb, the alternate scenarios must be looked at and evaluated as well.

    Ariel: I’m not so sure about your contention about why Truman dropped the bomb. I’ve never read anything that indicates he felt Americans couldn’t “stomach” an invasion which would prolong the war. My impression was that, once the atomic bomb had been developed, there was no longer any need to ask them to stomach such an invasion and the enormous cost it would have in American (as well as Japanese) lives. Dropping the bomb was seen as a “win-win-win” situation. The first “win” was that it would win the war. The second “win” was that it would save a huge number of American lives in the military. And the third “win” is that, ultimately, it would probably result in a net savings of Japanese lives as well, because of how long such an invasion was likely to last, and how hard it would be resisted by the Japanese. The bomb was a graphic illustration of our power and the futility of resistance, and the Japanese got the message and surrendered.

    See this and this for previous in-depth discussions I’ve offered on the subject of Hiroshima.

  85. Neo,
    If you look at the wars we have fought, they all have been of short duration, 3 to 4 years. There is always a question of how long we can sustain the will to fight. We are seeing that now.

    Regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

    The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were not of one mind on this, had been planning the November 1, 1945, invasion of Japan, to begin by invading and occupying 1/3 of the island Kyushu, since well before the fall of Berlin (which would have received the bomb had we lost the Battle of the Bulge). They believed it was possible to use Kyushu as an airbase to bomb the Japanese into submission. They also believed, wrongly, that they had driven the Japanese air force below a level that would give them clear control of the skies. They had no doubts the Japanese would fight ferociously, as they had on each and every island, man, woman, and child.

    The number of men assembled for this invasion would have numbered initially around one million Americans and Brits, roughly 3 to 1 respectively. Ships, planes, armament, and troops were being staged and trained, the largest armada in history. Dead and wounded estimates ran as high as 750,000 Allies with 1 million to 5 million Japanese dead, not wounded, dead, depending on resistance.

    You have to note that there was still a degree of uncertainty about the bombs, as to whether they would work. So Operation Olympus (Olympia?)was being staged. Concurrent plans.

    With V-E day there was concern that America was winding down emotionally and loosing the will to continue ala Olympus now that Europe was finished. I had read, unfortunately I forget where, that all of this was considered by Truman in dropping the bombs. The concept of dropping a single bomb and destroying an entire city was not taken lightly. As I hedged, the American change of will was only part of the equation.

    The “win-win-win” you speak of is Operation Olympus. As it turns out, the invasion would have been much worse for both sides. The Japanese were aware of the plans and preparing. The Allies would not have had the needed air superiority. It would have been an unimaginable bloodbath (as if it weren’t already).

    I’ve done all this from memory. I started reading on this during the 70s when the revisionists started their work of claiming “racism” (enough of that on both sides) or “we were doing it to show the Soviets” or the “Japanese were ready to surrender” (overall not likely from released Enigma files) or “we could have blockaded” (something Americans would not have gone for). The dropping of those two bombs were an act of mercy compared to what would have been.

    I’ve read your posts and agree. I just added one more issue that had to be considered.

    Best of holiday wishes. And Merry Christmas to all.

  86. I’m a bit late on this thread. I just want to thank you, Neo, for doing this series. I think it was very well done and pretty balanced.

    As a Vietnam vet I’ve spent a lot of time trying to piece together in my mind exactly what went wrong in Vietnam.

    I think the press began moving away from being pro-American in war reporting and trying to be objective – taking more of an internationalist view, as the war drug on.

    The old chestnut that it was a civil war between peaceful agrarian reformers (Communists) and the greedy war lords of the South seemed to have a lot of internationalist cachet. And of course we knew who our sympathies should be with. (Hint, hint…..the agrarian reformers.)

    Another favorite was that we had no compelling interest in preventing a takeover of South Vietnam and we were really there because of oil. (Sound familiar?)

    They definitely were able to turn public opinion against the war and I believe it gave them a growing sense that they could control public opinion if they just spun the stories right.

    Then they brought down the Nixon administration. Talk about a power trip? That was when they really began to feel the power of the pen.

    But to get back to Vietnam. Yes, the media sold us down the river, but there were other problems.

    The JCS wanted to go after North Vietnam full bore, but Johnson, for some unexplainable reason, believed that he could gradually increase the pressure on Ho Chi Minh until Ho would agree to a division of the country ala Korea. Johnson, IMO, was judging Ho and the North Vietnamese by the standards of our society. He believed if we turned off their electric lights, dropped their bridges, cratered their roads, and kept them up at night they would tire of it and negotiate. He was wrong.

    We should have mined Haiphong Harbor, blockaded the country, breached the irrigation dams on the Red River, cut the rail lines to China, and bombed Party Headquarters in downtown Hanoi right from the get go. That would have represented real pressure. We didn’t do it and it might not have worked, but when you go to war, IMO, you don’t do it in a genteel fashion ala President Johnson’s campaign against North Vietnam.

    When it became apparent that we weren’t going to really pressure the North, many in the career military became cynical about the war. Some viewed it as a way to get their “ticket” punched for higher rank. Others looked on it as a testing ground for weapons and tactics. Staff officers were massaging reports as they passed up the chain of command. What might have been a realistic report at the originating level often ended up being changed as it progressed up the chain removing all manner of problems or difficulties. That was one reason there were glowing reports from the Pentagon when the realities were often grim.

    Most of the draftee dogfaces that were there looked on it as hell on earth. Morale was low, drugs were available and used; it was a place to avoid if possi

  87. It is a bit interesting to say that America showed less will by dropping the atom bomb as opposed to showing more will by prolonging the war another 1-3 years with Operation Olympus, the invasion of Japan.

    Totally wrong, but interesting. Because it really is about military competence, not just willpower. Those who are competent in warfare, tend to end war decisively in a short amount of time, it just so happens that it rounds out at about 4 to 10 years.

    It takes little will, a lot of blind courage, and a whole heck load of incompetence to have a very long war where people keep dieing just cause I guess the leaders were scared of people criticizing them for lacking will by ending the war sooner. Ending the war sooner is not about a lack of willpower.

    Willpower is about doing what is necessary to achieve victory in the shortest amount of time with the least cost in resources and man power. Thus it is intimately connected with military expediency, which is more or less the same thing. People didn’t have a change in “will” in WWII. Certainly not a decrease of it. Japan would not have surrendered had the US shown any weakness, at least not until they tried and failed to get some favorable terms for themselves.

    One thing though, we haven’t the stomach for a long, protracted war. Vietnam proved that. WWII was on the verge of proving it also.

    That assertion is wrong. WWII was not the proof of what you are trying to claim. Nothing is ever constant in war, not morale, not will, not resources, not luck, and not the landscape. It is why after all there is a fog of war and why war is both a science as well as an art.

    It’s a basic logic circle. WWII proved that incredible willpower, ruthlessness, and military expediency wins Total Wars, thus limiting casualties and the time at war. Now you’re trying to use that, to say that it is the proof that America started losing will in WWII. If that was true, the war would have went on longer, because nobody that cringes in the face of necessity, can solve problems.

    The thesis seems to be that America fatigues out at 4 or some there about years in war. Now, people completely intermingle Total War and post 50s Limited War together and say they are all the same wars, the same rules apply to them. They don’t.

    There’s too much massaging of the historical war data to fit this theory that America fatigues out at 4+ years. It is counterproductive, and isn’t even accurate.

    The factors that determine whether a nation becomes fatigued as in Vietnam, or loses the determination and willpower to do what is necessary, is not based upon some one size fits all timeline. It is based upon enemy propaganda, allied propaganda, national character, combat prowess, leadership, battles won or lost, as well as the perceptions of the battles won and lost. One size never fits all in war, even though the Army has tried forever in logistics to do so.

    The point really is, throwing 750,000 people into the s

  88. slaughter fields is not a demonstration of supreme willpower, it is a demonstration that you just don’t give a damn about resources used or lives expended. Not when you have a better option at your disposal. Choosing to knowingly and purposefully to waste American lives and Japanese lives, is not an example of willpower, it is an example of evil and military incompetence.

    Military expedience puts no limits on how many lives are required to destroy or end a threat. But it does place this limitation upon you. When you are given two choices, only one of them is the best, and the principles of military expedience propel a person towards making that decision reality.

    Unless you are trying to claim that the nuclear bomb wasn’t more effective than an invasion, which history would be against you, then you cannot really say that Truman made the wrong decision. Since Truman made the right decision, he obviously didn’t do so because he was weak or lacking willpower. People who lack willpower make the Wrong decisions or make no decisions at all, paralysis.

    See, if all you base willpower on is this nebulous and useless “timeline” standard of judgement, then WWII would look like to you that the leaders were scared that America might bail so they tried to end the war sooner. This confuses Total War with Limited Wars, and nuclear bombs with Iraq. Not only that, it ignores the internal historical consistencies that military expedience seeks to unify.

    So long as the American people believe that nothing is being witheld or limited or not used in war, they will support war until victory. It is when the leaders try to limit war, or try to prolong war because they are too weak to finish it, that people become disatisfied and start disbelieving in the cause. At the end, it is victory that raises willpower and morale, and sometimes defeat as well, if it is not crushing.

    Remember the Revolutionary War, if Washington hadn’t been able to make that surpise attack on the German mercs in the snow, he might have seen his volunteer army disappear at winter’s end. So long as you pour the victories in, and so long as you demonstrate that you don’t think this is a game and that you are seeking to end the war by whatever means are necessary so that people won’t have to fight now or this century, then people will support you.

    The morale and the amount of willpower in any person or nation is highly mercurial. It is not based upon time, or whatever. Time is only a symptom, it is not the cause.


    But to get back to Vietnam. Yes, the media sold us down the river, but there were other problems.

    I believe Jimmy is correct in his analysis of the military and propaganda problems of Vietnam. It all contributed to war fatigue. Everybody gets war fatigue. Even the most elite crack combat troops in the world get combat fatigue, where they just stop caring, or they just stop wanting to fight anymore.

  89. I said that this concern of will was only part of the equation, a factor not THE factor. Because there was no single factor. Nor did I imply that Truman lacked will, obviously not. But yes it was a concern after May, 1945, as to whether the American people could continue the war via Olympus. And Olympus was five plus months away.

    Okinawa scared the hell out of the American military because it proved that the Japanese would fight even more ferociously as we approached the Home Islands. This made Olympus even more of a concern. With the war in Europe over, would the American people maintain the will to fight what would be the most gut wrenching loss of American life, likely near equal to that of the entire war, the invasion of Japan?

    Whether the bombs would work or not was still in question up until the drop on Hiroshima. A single test only proved the validity of the design, not that subsequent bombs would work. This was another very real concern, which is why Olympus was still going on even when Hiroshima was destroyed. The soldiers were still training that day for the invasion. Do understand that the American military believed Olympus was still a secret too. They could have stood down.

    The will of the American populace was neither shown to be weak nor strong by the dropping of the bombs. They knew nothing about the Manhattan Project, save rumors, nor the decision, nor Indianapolis, nor the Enola Gay. Only the leaders knew. And they knew we had only two, couldn’t make more soon enough, and that they could be intercepted and destroyed before being delivered. If the gamble failed, only invasion was left.

    I realize many believe the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. “Mr. President, that isn’t entirely correct,” initial overtures by the Japanese to make peace had too many unacceptable conditions, such as leaving the militarists with some power, but one condition was actually given them at the end: Hirohito was left as Emperor. The original American plan was to dethrone him, later in the war it was decided to try him with the others, as he was not just a figurehead as later portrayed. That portrayal in “history” was to mollify the American public.

    To reiterate, I did not say Truman decided to end the war sooner because the American people were war-weary, they were, but that it was part of a multiplicity of factors (read my original comment closely) in the decision, given the alternative. Truman dropped that bomb, not sure it would work, because we had it, it was in keeping with how the war had been fought, by destroying whole cities, and yes, it would end the war sooner.

    Everything done in war is done to end war as soon as possible.

    Finally, war is not some Nietzschean treatise, or some work of Clausevitz, or Sun-Tzu, or Musashi or Suvorov. It is not feint or salient, strike and counter-strike. It is not glorious. It proves nothing. It is a nasty, dirty, ugly, soul-destroying business of survival where men die, women die, an

  90. and children die. I hope one day children will only see war in museums and films. But that day is not yet.

    Good night and best wishes to all. Und meine Dirne fé¼r die Palé¤stinenser, gut schlafen.

  91. This is a really important post. Do you think any ot these facts will be brought out when Cronkite dies, and the press remembers him with reverence?

  92. You are making assumptions of the press’ lack of military experience based using today’s America. Yes today’s America, in every walk of life and government, military experience is increasingly rare. But back during Vietnam, the senior press managers where all WW2 Vets. Many where Korean War vets. Later in the Vietnam war, which dragged on so many years, significant numbers of Vietnam Vets and those that knew Vietnam Vets made up the press corp. So they knew the military, they where of the military. They did not have an agenda or ignorance of the military.

    Today you can argue the gap. But like back then there are reporters embedded, talking to all sides. Even in a war, there is more than just the military POV. And there are the retired military generals critics speaking out, like Zinni, Powell and Clark. Their military credentials are unimpugnable. IMO they get too little air play in MSM in favor of politicians and pundents. Probably because they aren’t as interesting to listen to.

  93. But back during Vietnam, the senior press managers where all WW2 Vets.

    WW2 vets of what? Vets of journalism, not vets of war. They even knew they didn’t know, and said as much in Ernie’s columns.

    Cronkite said he didn’t know, and acted like he did. Psychological problems there.

    But like back then there are reporters embedded, talking to all sides.

    The NYTimes was talking to the Germans to get the scoop on D-Day? Really.

  94. Dealing with the point of of press ignorance of the military. It was absolutely true for Cronkite. And Cronkite dominated the field in Vietnam, even today. So does it really matter how much military experience the press had or did not have? Leadership wins the day, predominantly. A regiment of crack troops with horrible officers, would be horrible. That has always been true. And it is true now. The folks who care enough to actually report the news and to understand the news and to get the news, embedded with the American military, are rarely the ones that dominate the media apparatus or what gets reported. Many editors will not accept certain stories from reporters imbedded with the military, just because. Because they prefer the stories they hear from the Baghdad stringers, for some reason.

    So it doesn’t really matter, in an analysis of military ignorance or knowledge of a group, to consider all the members of that group concerning their individual expertise. It only matters what amount is allowed to dominate in the leadership fields. Because you see, it doesn’t matter how much talent is in the pool, if you choose only the worst applicants for leadership slots, then your organization will be poor and bad.

  95. I said that this concern of will was only part of the equation, a factor not THE factor. Because there was no single factor. Nor did I imply that Truman lacked will, obviously not. But yes it was a concern after May, 1945, as to whether the American people could continue the war via Olympus. And Olympus was five plus months away.

    Since that doesn’t matter to me, whether it was “the” factor because I don’t believe it was a factor AT All, why are you spending time on irrelevancies and red herrings? Coincidentally, I don’t believe it is a factor at all because I don’t believe it actually existed. Something I don’t think you addressed, you simply assumed it was true. I am not going to assume it is true.

    With the war in Europe over, would the American people maintain the will to fight what would be the most gut wrenching loss of American life, likely near equal to that of the entire war, the invasion of Japan?

    you keep talking about this as if a consideration of something that might happen is justification to believe that it did happen. Since it didn’t happen and probably wouldn’t have happened, obviously they were worried about ancillary issues. Why is it just because people worry about issues in war, means those issues actually existed, is something you don’t spend any time explaining, Ariel.

    Whether the bombs would work or not was still in question up until the drop on Hiroshima.

    Once again. I read what you wrote, and it is same now as it was before then. Meaning, you start to claim something is true, and then go to great lengths talking about things that matter not in the least to justifying your claims and assertions. What the heck does “whether bombs would work or not” have to do with Truman or other leaders worrying about America not completing an invasion of Japan? Or that there was a change in American will?

    There’s nothing overtly wrong with the facts as you have presented them, most if not all of them are true as I see it. But the interpretations you draw are completely either unrelated or unexplained, or both.

    They could have stood down.

    A lot of things could have happened. It is no reason to believe that it did or would have. Which is the point. Trying to use history and what happened, to justify why you believe something else would have happened, is not the right way to go. At least not in the way you go about it.

    If the gamble failed, only invasion was left.

    Actually, one of the reasons why Hirohito surrendered was because the first bomb was from uranium as tested by Japanese scientists. Which they told Hirohito, was rare to make and hard to do. The second bomb was Plutonium, which the scientists said could be mass produced. And it was true. It could be mass produced in time. There was no need for operational Olympus, when enough time is there to collect/breed enough plutonium for the bombs.

    Hirohito was left as Emperor.

    That is not a true asser

  96. tion although it is a true fact. It is not true that Hirohito was left as Emperor and that this means Japan didn’t surrender unconditionally. No condition was given to Japan for their surrender.

    Nobody told the Japanese, “oh, we’ll go with MacArthur’s plan and say that your Emperor can live and rule, if you surrender now”. Read MacArthur’s own words through google search, Hirohito at the time he surrendered, did so unconditionally and with the belief that he would be executed as a war criminal. MacArthur, after the surrender, twisted arms and protected Hirohito because MacArthur knew the Japanese mindset.

    Given a choice between believing in the primary documented words of MacArthur or your interpretation of history, I must say that you are in the weaker position.

    So there’s my claim and my evidence and reasoning to back it up. Nothing irrelevant. No red herrings, no loop de loops.

    I realize many believe the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. “Mr. President, that isn’t entirely correct,” initial overtures by the Japanese to make peace had too many unacceptable conditions, such as leaving the militarists with some power, but one condition was actually given them at the end: Hirohito was left as Emperor.

    This is so unclear, Ariel. You don’t even state what you believe flat out, you say “I realize many believe”. I don’t care what ‘many believe’. You are supposed to be talking about your own beliefs, but you add these irrelevant details and sentences that don’t matter, and muddy up clarity.

    As I hedged, the American change of will was only part of the equation.

    I believe that America didn’t have a change of will. And there was nothing you said, that was a good justification for why you believed that America did have a change of will. Which was why I was talking about the 4 year plan in the first place. Because there, and only there, was a reason for why you might have, just possibly might have, believed that there was a change in American will. (WWII war length)

    I did not say Truman decided to end the war sooner because the American people were war-weary, they were, but that it was part of a multiplicity of factors
    Truman considered a multiplicity of factors and decided to end the war for another reason. I see. Is that what you meant, and if it isn’t, why don’t you just be more clear.

    It only matters what you believe, why you believe it, and how strong are those reasons of belief.

    Why don’t you cut through the smoke and lay out what you believe and why all this stuff you are bringing up is important to your beliefs.

  97. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. I don’t have your pacifist tendencies, Ariel. But I know where you are coming from. As the Jehovah’s witnesses say, Eternal Peace on Earth, not just during Christmas.

    I am of a different mind concerning how to achieve peace, of course.

  98. Part of this comes from being raised by both great-grandparents (in their 20’s during WWI) and grand-parents (in their 20s in WWII). I shuttled between both during my childhood. I have heard first hand accounts of life during the wars from them and all their friends. The war was wearing down the American people. You can dismiss it, fine.

    There was a specific reference to war-weariness in the Military Channel’s documentary on Operation Olympus.

    I am not a pacifist, but I do not glorify war in any way. I simply look at war as a necessary evil, but still an evil.

    By the way, I’m not out to write a military history for your consumption.

    And one of the problems with “original” sources are: personalities, MacArthur’s for example, and information not revealed for 40 years, such as Enigma and the secret correspondence between governments.

  99. Ymar’s a bit of a tar baby, Ariel, which is why few others bother to argue with him (he thinks it’s because of his superior debating skills, I know). Fwiw, I agree largely with this, which I thought was well-put (I’ve added the emphasis for Ymar’s benefit):

    Finally, war is not some Nietzschean treatise, or some work of Clausevitz, or Sun-Tzu, or Musashi or Suvorov. It is not feint or salient, strike and counter-strike. It is not glorious. It proves nothing. It is a nasty, dirty, ugly, soul-destroying business of survival where men die, women die, and children die. I hope one day children will only see war in museums and films. But that day is not yet.

    (I’ll just add that, unfortunately, war does at least prove something often enough. But that doesn’t mean we can’t eventually find a better way of proving it.)

  100. Pingback:Die Rückkehr der „Realpolitik” « Aron Sperber’s Weblog

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