Reuters Crispian Balmer Sun Jan 8, 2006 9:40 AM ET172
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict performed the first baptisms of his pontificate on Sunday, using the occasion to launch an impassioned denunciation of irresponsible sex and a “culture of death” that he said pervaded the modern world.
Pope Benedict, abandoning his prepared sermon, compared the wild excesses of the ancient Roman empire to 21st century society and urged people to rediscover their faith.
“In our times we need to say ‘no’ to the largely dominant culture of death,” Benedict said during his improvised homily in the frescoed Sistine Chapel where he was elected Pope last April.
“(There is) an anti-culture demonstrated by the flight to drugs, by the flight from reality, by illusions, by false happiness … displayed in sexuality which has become pure pleasure devoid of responsibility,” he added.
Our culture sends out so many terrible, destructive messages to young people I think it’s of the utmost urgency that the Church speaks out for life. Our teenagers are literally innundated night and day with disturbing images from violent video games, lurid movies, anti-social hip-hop songs and gratuitous sexual content in advertising and media. Without the counter-weight of a message of life and morality, how many will be impacted negatively by this content in one way or the other.
On Saturday, the middle-class suburb that I live in was shocked by it’s first gang-related murder ever. A 15-teen year old boy wearing the wrong colored jacket was beaten to death by 4 other teenage boys in broad daylight on a main street a half-mile away from my church. What socialization process is it that results in monsters who commit crimes like this?
Careful Dean. You are sounding more and more conservative! You might like Destructive Generation for some insight on when the decay took hold.
Dean, sorry to say a good part of the socialization process that “creates monsters” is the idea that children (yes teenagers are still children) are, can be and have a right to be autonomous in their decisions. The public schools are built on the assumption that children should socialize children and adults, especially parents have no right to direct the lives of their children, just pay for them. This is a liberal creation. It is Lord of the Flies writ large (Satan is the Lord of the Flies BTW) What we are seeing is Satanic influence encouraged by a idiosyncratic notion of personal autonomy, especially sexual autonomy, at any age.
The idea of a “youth culture” is monstrous–distorting values, maturation, and creating an artificial gap between young adults and more mature adults who are their natural mentors.
Absent fathers, men afraid to be men due to the feminization going on — which is the real impetus behind the “female priesthood” just one more way to attack men and put them in their place.
The other side of that coin is the failure of adult parents to act like adults and assume the responsibility of parenthood.
How are all of these problems with our culture “something new” (and due to a “liberal influence”)? Consider prostitution in colonial periods (an era supposedly dominated by Christian thought and ethics):
“Nineteenth-century prostitution was structured around three subcultures. First, about 5 to 10 percent of young females in large cities engaged in prostitution at some point, earning twice as much in an evening as factory or service employment would bring in a week. Most were single, in their teens or early twenties, native-born, and recently arrived in the city. The majority worked only for short periods, eventually securing more socially acceptable employment or marrying.
Second, a prominent “sporting male” subculture encouraged men to hire prostitutes. As factory work replaced the craft system, and the unregulated boardinghouse replaced the hierarchical artisan household, young males enjoyed greater freedom, and rigid sexual controls quickly vanished. Male leisure institutions after 1820 provided a social niche separate from the family and more “feminized” entertainments. Prizefighting, heavy drinking, and sexual aggression were admired. This rough masculinity and the increasing commercialization of leisure produced a distinct male world with its own promiscuous sexual norms. The worst elements in this fraternity were the pimps, who first appeared in New York after 1835.
The third subculture, part of an underground economy, was that of the brothels, which numbered in the hundreds in Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. By the time of the Civil War, New York had over five hundred, many advertising in newspapers and guidebooks. There were proportionate numbers in Austin, Louisville, Omaha, Richmond, San Antonio, and Spokane. Periodic arrests and raids everywhere were so common that they constituted a form of taxing and licensing. This de facto regulation of prostitution extended to other leisure institutions. Antebellum theater proprietors routinely permitted prostitutes to solicit in the “third tier” of their establishments. Concert halls, saloons, cigar stores, restaurants, and cabarets supported prostitution to attract patrons.”
(http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_071700_prostitution.htm)
If anything, our culture’s improved. We certainly need not believe that we’ve declined drastically in standards from some “golden age of yore”.
May I suggest … “The Rebirth of Orthodoxy” by Thomas Oden. The author is a Protestant (UMC) clergyman and professor of religion. The reviews on Amazon give you a pretty good idea of what’s in the book. On reading it, it was quite a bit more than I expected.
RE: No. 3: In their article, “Destructive Generation”, Horowitz and Collier begin with a reasonable premise, but attempt to push it to unreasonably extreme conclusion.
It is very evident, as the authors point out, that trends that emerged in the sixties had a corrosive and unwholesome effect on American society. These trends included the drug culture, sexual permissiveness and promiscuity, the increase in divorce and single-parent families, to name a few. They left a legacy of ruined lives and broken homes, drug-related crime, abortions and HIV. My father for example talks about the friends he lost during WWII, my generation laments the friends we lost to drunk driving accidents and drug overdoses. I actually met the comedian John Belushi, of whom I was a great fan, on an elevator once in Chicago. A few months after I met him he died of a heroin overdose.
Former Vice-President Dan Quayle was ridiculed by the mainstream media when he voiced his concern regarding fictional TV character Murphy Brown’s decision to become a single-mother; later however, most people acknowleged that Quayle’s concern was legitimate and well founded. Even in a children’s movie like Steven Speilberg’s E.T, not trying to make any political statement, we can see the stress and sadness of a family trying to cope with the absence of a divorced father.
Horowitz and Collier step off of firm ground and into the thin air of ideologically-motivated speculation, however, when they attempt to conflate the negative social trends of the sixties with opposition to the Viet Nam and Iraq wars. Many good and decent people opposed both of those conflicts for valid and legitimate reasons.
Some people in the sixties became drug addicts and burned American flags; some people opposed the Viet Nam War and voted George McGovern. The authors want to paint both with the same brush, as if opposing the Viet nam war was a youthful indescretion people should be ashamed of. Horowitz himself is a former left-wing radical and it is sad to see him trying to project his self-loathing on to other people with whom he may have shared a superficial resemblance a long time ago
Note 7. Horowitz, and other former leftists, now argue that their anti-war efforts during Viet Nam made them culpable in the slaughter by North Viet Nam communists that occurred after American withdrawal — ie: boat people and such.
See a 1977 report from the Guardian.
The Glorious Last Battle of Viet Nam, Hail Uncle Ho
As the United States left Viet Nam, it promised the South Vietnamese that it would return and help if the country was attacked. South Viet Nam was attacked and with the blessing and urging of John F. Kerry, the United States broke its promise and failed to intervene.
Here is how Viet Nam fall to the Communists.
Column after column of Soviet and Chinese tanks descended on the small country. North Viet Nam, ever the tool of World Communism, was still supported by the militaries of China and Russia. This North Vietnamese Army rolled down to the South and met with the resistance of the South Vietnamese Army. This Army of the South was was substantially outnumbered, but they stood and fought. At the end of the battle, the South Vietnamese Army suffered more than 40% casualty rate. Maybe Glen can help me here but what that casualty rate meant was that the South Vietnamese Army FOUGHT with SUICIDAL fervor to stop the Communists. This was a bravery and willingness to sacrifice which cannot be found in mercenaries, or thugs or political opportunists, it only arises from patriots. May they rest in peace and may their memories be honored
Uncle Ho took over and instituted the glorious People’s Republic of Viet Nam. Millions were consigned to concentration camps and died horrible deaths. Millions accepted a very high risk of death for the chance to escape Viet Nam on small boats. Anyone remember the BOAT PEOPLE? The boat people are nearly forgotten today, Joan Baez, to here credit, took flack from the domestic Left for daring to express sympathy for these people. Musn’t expose Communist cruelty, Joan. History is replete with the stories of millions trying to escape Leftist governments, this was just one more.
Opposition to the Viet Nam war was driven by the desire of spoiled middle class kids to the draft. I knew them well, they were my immediate friends. They were the spoiled kids of Evanston, Illinois and Greenwich, Connecticut and the like. They were aided and abetted by the press which failed to expose the SDS and similar Leftists groups for what they were:communist organizations working to subver the militlary effort of the United States.
TODAY, there is no freedom of thought, press or religion in Viet Nam. TODAY, Buddhists and Christians sit in chains for their refusal to compromise their principles and submit their teachings and writings to STATE CONTROL. This is what the Left ALWAYS have delivered to us: tyranny, suppression of political and religious freedom.
Have you hear of any candlelight vigils for the prisoners of conscience of Viet Nam? Thought not.
Fr. Hans writes: “Horowitz, and other former leftists, now argue that their anti-war efforts during Viet Nam made them culpable in the slaughter by North Viet Nam communists that occurred after American withdrawal â?? ie: boat people and such.”
But that’s a very strange view of moral culpability, for many reasons:
1) even had U.S. involvement in the war continued, it is likely that the outcome wouldn’t have been any different. In his autobiography, Robert McNamara said that administration officials knew UP FRONT that without a South Vietnamese government that had wide support of the people, that U.S. military efforts would eventually come to nothing.
2) the policy to withdraw U.S. troops (Vietnamization) was made by the Nixon administration — the actual set of moral actors in this context — in 1969. The war continued on for six more years. But many of the biggest protest marches occurred after the policy of Vietnamization was in place.
3) the U.S. involvement in Vietnam cut across two decades and 5 different administrations, both Republican and Democratic. So it seems strange to me to look at a period of around 1966, when protests began, until 1969, when the policy of Vietnamization was in place, and then claim that “liberal” protesters were responsible for the outcome of the war.
4) it is not clear to me what moral principle is even being invoked here.
To me, this is just another example of how “liberalism” has attained a kind of metaphysical status in the right-wing, in which evil and liberalism are virtually different names for the same thing. If what happened to the boat people is evil, then liberalism, somewhere, somehow, must be the cause.
I’m really not interested in discussing the revisionism. There is enough written about it already.
This much is indisputable: America abandoned the Vietnamese because of civic unrest at home, not because of military defeat (the TET offensive was a huge defeat for the Viet Cong). As a result millions of South Vietnamese were killed.
The characterization of opponents of the Viet Nam war as unpatriotic hooligans is outrageous. Many high-level officials in every US administration, from Eisenhower to Nixon, saw the conflict as unwinnable because the Vietnamese were willing to pay any sacrifice in lives to win what they viewed as a war on independence from colonialism.
In 1961, France’s Charles de Gaulle told President John F. Kennedy that in Vietnam the U.S. would sink “step by step into a bottomless quagmire,” however much it spent “in men and money.” Earlier, President Eisenhower has sent advisors to South Viet Nam but never considered a major US military commitment because his own generals told him the challenges would be too formidable. It is well known that shortly before his assassination President Kennedy came to believe that the Viet nam war was unwinnable. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara resigned in 1967 because he believed the Viet nam war was unwinnable. His successor, Clark Clifford also advised President Johnson that the Viet nam war was unwinnable.
“Three years ago, I watched as Robert S. McNamara stood before a crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York to discuss his new book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. In front of men who had killed for their country in Vietnam, the former Secretary of Defense admitted with icy calm that he had made a mistake. The protesters had been right all along. The war was unwinnable from the start. The domino theory was ridiculous. Nationalism had been confused with communism. There had never been a serious threat to U.S. security.
But McNamara did not apologize. Washington policymakers just didn’t have all the facts, he said. There were people around Kennedy and Johnson who knew about Russia and Europe. No one knew anything about Asia.
A silence fell over the room. Middle-aged men in uniform, faced with the shattering truth of their actions in Vietnam, slowly shook their heads. After some moments, a lone woman rose from her chair and, in a voice choking with disbelief, asked: ”Why didn’t you listen to the people in the streets, or the French who had decades of experience in Indochina, or the dozens of Asian specialists on campuses?”
McNamara smiled down from the podium and said: ”But they weren’t in our circle'”
Business Week, “MARCHING AMERICA INTO A QUAGMIRE, THE COLOR OF TRUTH
McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms” By Kai Bird
http://www.businessweek.com/1998/48/b3606043.htm
Jim, Note 10
1)Support of the People
Jim, the actual fall of Viet Nam was caused by the massive invasion of a foreign backed Army. This foreign backed Army succeeded because the United States broke its promise to return and help that small country face Russia and China and North Viet Nam.
South Viet Nam DID NOT fall because the government was not supported by the people. There was no People’s Revolution after the United States left, there was an invasion by a massive army and the valiant, hopeless defense against that Army.
The world stood and watched with full knowledge that the United States had broken a solemn pledge, just as the domestic Communist Left had urged us to do. For decades our influence and our ability to protect our interests suffered from that failure. The United States, which previously had taken on TWO MURDEROUS, DICTATORSHIPS (Japan and Germany) and prosecuted a fight to total surrender, NOW, refused to honor a commitment to a small people. Those small people have been ground into the dust and their misery is on our heads. We pulled out because the cosseted and over-privileged “men” of my generation were too stoned on marijuana to give a hoot about what was happening in the world. Thank goodness, my generation, is passing away. I am ashamed of us.
2) Nixon’s withdrawal
Yes, Nixon withdrew from Viet Nam after years of protests caused the domestic support of the war to crumble.
Nixon was elected on a promise to withdraw. He could be given credit for honoring his campaign promise, however, he was morally culpable for his phony promises to South Viet Nam
3) Liberal Protesters
My gosh, Jim, did you live in the United States during that time. They weren’t “liberal” protesters they were Marxists, open Communists. Go back and read Tom Hayden’s Port Huron Declaration and you will see that he declared solidarity with the communist totalitarian governments of his day. The press gave him a pass and presented him as a political leader with new ideas, he was just another warmed over Communist.
4) The moral principle invoked.
It is truly sad that the moral principles invoked by the Viet Nam war are not clear to you. Let me try to explain. North Viet Nam was, and is, a Marxist totalitarian state. North Viet Nam, was the junior partner is a collaborative effort involving Communist super powers: Russia and China to spread Communism to all of South Viet Nam. South Viet Nam had emerged from a very destructive period of French colonialism and, in general, they lacked a good supply of patriotic leaders. Some of their leaders were quite corrupt and made money off drugs and prostitution. As corrupt as some of those leaders were, most South Vietnamese did not want Communist rule. Communist was instituted by phalanx after phalanx of tanks rolling down from North Vietn Nam.
No one in Viet Nam enjoys freedom of thought, the press is state controlled and censored. Buddhists and Christians of religious principles ROT in jail cells, prisonerse of conscience. They rot today. The failure of the world to care about these principled individuals or to honor the memory of the individual South Viet Namese soldiers who gave their lives in a desperate battle against the odds, is a moral tragedy.
I say it again. May God rest the souls of those brave soldiers and may history some day give them their due.
Their sacrifice could come only from conviction and love of country. They tried to save their people from the concentration camps to come.
Is the moral component now clear Jim?
Missourian writes: “As the United States left Viet Nam, it promised the South Vietnamese that it would return and help if the country was attacked. South Viet Nam was attacked and with the blessing and urging of John F. Kerry, the United States broke its promise and failed to intervene.”
You’ve given me a good laugh today, because this is the most twisted thing I have read in a long time.
The decision to withdraw from Vietnam in stages — Vietnamization — was made while John Kerry was still in Vietnam, and became the offical strategy of the U.S. government a couple of months after Kerry came home. The Winter Soldier investigations of which Kerry was a notable part, came two years after the decision was made to withdraw from Vietnam. All of Kerry’s protests came after the U.S. decided to withdraaw from Vietnam.
At the time the Saigon government fell Kerry was in law school and Gerald Ford was Commander in Chief.
But to you, none of this is relevant. Nixon, Kissinger, Ford, the U.S. Congress – the people actually making the decisions — none of that matters. No, those people are not even worth mentioning. John Kerry is living in a law school dorm room during the fall of Saigon, but it’s his fault that the U.S. failed to come to the aid of an unpopular government, not Gerald Ford’s.
Missourian: “Opposition to the Viet Nam war was driven by the desire of spoiled middle class kids to the draft. I knew them well, they were my immediate friends. They were the spoiled kids of Evanston, Illinois and Greenwich, Connecticut and the like.”
Actually, I think they didn’t want to be in a war that seemed to be going nowhere. They also probably didn’t like the idea of killing other people or being killed themselves. Is that like being spoiled?
Also, I notice that you conveniently omit any mention of the many Bush administration chickenhawks who could have served in Vietnam, but had “other priorities.” You also fail to mention the president, who –and perhaps this was a true miracle — jumped to the head of the line for the Texas ANG, hung out there during the war, and then couldn’t even be bothered to finish his service or take his flight physical.
I think what’s happened here is what Glen suggested a few weeks ago. The term “liberal” has become a theological term in right-wing politics that is equivalent to “heretic.” Thus, the real problem with Kerry is not what he did — serve with distinction in Vietnam — but what he said and thought.
On the other hand, Nixon — the author of Vietnamization — and Ford –president during the fall of Saigon — are not judged by what they did because they held “right” opinions on the war. The Bush chickenhawks are also virtuous because they have the right opinions.
Thus in right-wing political theology, people are indeed saved by faith, not by works.
Pledge was Made, A Historical Fact
BREAKING THE PLEDGE
Jim, the government of the United States withdrew the last diplomatic and military personnel in 1975. Both Kissinger and Nixon made strong assurance to the South Vietnamese government that the United States would asset them in the event of an invasion. This was a pledge, the pledge was broken. Nixon and Kissinger are the people MOST responsible for BREAKING THE PLEDGE.
ADVOCATING WITHDRAWAL
John F. Kerry served in Viet Nam for a paltry four months. Upon his return he IMMEDIATELY joined the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. (VVAW). VVAW was very active on the campus that I attended. They frequently produced publications and sponsored seminars and rallies. I observed many of their rallies and I directly heard their speakers. They propouned lies about American Troops and urged immediate and unconditional withdrawal. John F. Kerry actually met with the agents of a foreign government at a time that the United States was a war with that government. John F. Kerry is a political opportunistic who is a traitor to his country, and a traitor to democracy, human rights and political freedom. He sold his political soul to Uncle Ho to make a name for himself and gain political office.
RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGE OF EVIL
Jim Holman writes:Actually, I think they didn’t want to be in a war that seemed to be going nowhere. They also probably didn’t like the idea of killing other people or being killed themselves. Is that like being spoiled?
Yes, it is being spoiled. When Japan attacked America, the American military was in bad shape. There was no guarantee of success in that war. Japan expected us to negotiate a peace deal. Japan was surprised when the United States decided to persue the war to the point of complete and unconditional surrender. The generation of WWII had NO GUARANTEE that they were going to win. They didn’t offer such lame expressions as “didn’t like the idea of killing other people” or being “involved in a war that was going nowhere.”
Soldiers defending the freedom and security of a people from the assault of a tyrannical dictatorships are not “killing people.” They are stopping those who “kill people.” Stoping those who place millions in
concentration camps.
Jim, I think your response is the most inane, self-indulgent, self-revelation I have ever encountered.
Missourian writes: “Both Kissinger and Nixon made strong assurance to the South Vietnamese government that the United States would asset them in the event of an invasion. This was a pledge, the pledge was broken.”
They may have given personal assurances, but the only pledge with any legal force I can think of was the SEATO treaty. But even that was not an unconditional “promise” to aid South Vietnam no matter what.
But look, as early as 1965 administration officials were looking for ways to cut and run. Here’s part of a memo from George Ball to McNamara et al:
“It should by now be apparent that we have to a large extent created our own predicament. In our determination to rally support, we have tended to give the South Vietnamese struggle an exaggerated and symbolic significance (Mea culpa, since I personally participated in this effort). . . .
“The problem for us now–if we determine not to broaden and deepen our commitments–is to re-educate the American people and our friends and allies that:
. . . c) We have more than met our commitments to the South Vietnamese people. We have poured men and equipment into the area, and run risks and taken casualties, and have been prepared to continue the struggle provided the South Vietnamese leaders met even the most rudimentary standards of political performance;
(d) The Viet Cong–while supported and guided from the North–is largely an indigenous movement. Although we have emphasized its cold war aspects, the conflict in South Vietnam is essentially a civil war within that country . . .”
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon4/doc258.htm
Here’s George Ball to LBJ:
“The consequences of an abrupt withdrawal of our assistance from South Viet-Nam should be judged not in juridical terms but in terms of its effect on the credibility of our commitments throughout the world.”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/vietnam/showdoc.php?docid=128
Remember, this is 1965! And people in the U.S. government — old cold warriors — are saying “it’s a civil war, we’ve overemphasized it, we’ve done enough, there are other priorities” and so on. These guys are making some of the very arguments made by the peace activists. They know it was a mistake and they want out, one way or another.
Missourian: “John F. Kerry served in Viet Nam for a paltry four months.”
It was more than he had to serve. He was there longer than people in the Bush administration who chose not to serve. Given that you can get killed in a second, four months is a pretty long time.
Missourian: “They propouned lies about American Troops and urged immediate and unconditional withdrawal.”
By this time the decision to withdraw had already been made, and the only question was how many more soldiers were going to be killed before the inevitable end. I never knew anyone who thought that “Vietnamization” was going to work. It was just a way to get the U.S. out of there, nothing more.
Missourian: “Soldiers defending the freedom and security of a people from the assault of a tyrannical dictatorships are not ‘killing people.’ They are stopping those who ‘kill people.’ Stoping those who place millions in concentration camps.”
You’re looking at history through neocon glasses. Nobody back then was into “fighting evil.” We were fighting Communism. The war in Vietnam was about the doctrine of containment, pure and simple. It was part of a foreign policy strategy. But more importantly, even the engineers of it knew it was a mistake from the start. McNamara said that we should have gotten out in 1963 when fewer than 100 Americans had been killed.
WW2 was a different kind of war. It was truly a war of defense, a response to being attacked, a war against two of the strongest military powers on earth. While it is true that we may have fought evil, fighting evil was not the purpose of going to war.
Missourian: “Jim, I think your response is the most inane, self-indulgent, self-revelation I have ever encountered.”
I guess you don’t get out very much.
Note 16, Jim, Communism isn’t something that bothers you alot
Richard Pipes was the Dean of American historians of Russia until his recent retirement. He wrote mainly about Russia but he was also a historian of the spread of Communism. It is good to read some of his books because it is good to immerse yourself in the reality of what Communism was and what Communism still is. Pipe has written that the American resistance to Communism in Southeast Asia probably saved much of the Pacific countries from going totally Communist: Malaysia, Indonesia even the Phillipines. Information retrieved after the fall of the Berlin Wall confirmed that the Communists had serious and viable plans for political domination, the encirclement of America and her demise. It was NOT an exaggeration, it was not hysteria. It was real.
Looking at Note 16 I see a phrase: “Nobody back then was into fighting “evil.” We were fighting Communism.”
No, James, I lived “back then” and many were into fighting evil. Communism is evil, in every form which it has ever taken, it has been evil. For someone who takes a strong interest in religion, it is odd that you use the scare quotes for the term “evil.” There is nothing silly or exaggerated about the use of that term.
How you do characterize the death of as many as 2 million people in Vietnamese death camps under the rule of Uncle Ho? I characterize that as evil. Evil with a capital E. You just don’t want to be bothered. Too many men of my generation just wanted to back into their drug induced haze, they didn’t want to be bothered either.
I rather partial to the writings of Robert Conquest to remind me of the horrors of Communism. Then there’s also Malcolm Muggeridge’s news reports from the Ukraine in the 1930s.
Count the millions upon millions of innocent people slaughtered under Communism and you will conclude that its an ideology from hell. The Left’s blindness to the evil of Communism stems from its inability to see real evil anywhere. The Left doesn’t really believe evil exists which is why Leftists are seduced by the lies of powerful evildoers.
Note 18. Malcolm Muggeridge
Muggeridge is a hero of journalism. He reported on Lenin’s starvation of Ukraine and lost his job as a result. He ranks with Orwell by recognizing the brutality of Soviet totalitarianism early on, and speaking the truth about it to whomever would listen.
Here is a classic essay by Muggeridge: The Great Liberal Death Wish.
MIssourian writes: “No, James, I lived ‘back then’ and many were into fighting evil.”
I lived back then too, and we weren’t fighting evil per se, we were fighting communism. By that I mean that the United States developed foreign policy strategies for the containment of communism. The conflict in Vietnam was part of that strategy. But note the word “strategy.” Containment occurred on many different fronts; Vietnam was just one place where that was happening.
No one in any of the five administrations took an absolutist position with respect to Vietnam. No one was suggesting that the U.S. was simply going to stay there forever and spend endless billions of dollars and lives of soldiers in order to keep the Vietnamese free. The freedom of the Vietnamese people was not the goal. The containment of communism was the goal. And you can see early on that government officials were questioning whether this was the place where we really wanted to make a stand.
A lot of that doubt flowed from the South Vietnamese government itself. Many in South Vietnam viewed their own government as an oppressive puppet. When the Buddhist monk burned himself to death in 1963 he was protesting the policies of the South Vietnamese government. Things were so bad that the Diem government was overthrown with the blessings of the U.S. As I mentioned, Robert McNamara said that everyone in the administration knew that without a popular government in S. Vietnam all of our efforts there would come to nothing.
Missourian: “For someone who takes a strong interest in religion, it is odd that you use the scare quotes for the term ‘evil.’ There is nothing silly or exaggerated about the use of that term.”
I put the word in quotes because it does not in any way portray what our goals were during the cold war. In the process of containing communism we got into bed with all sorts of evil dudes in the Middle East, Central America, South American, etc. When Nixon pursued improved relations with China it wasn’t because the Chinese government stopped being evil. These were all things we did as part of a long-term foreign policy strategy that had NOTHING to do with fighting evil per se.
Missourian: “How you do characterize the death of as many as 2 million people in Vietnamese death camps under the rule of Uncle Ho? I characterize that as evil. Evil with a capital E.”
Things like that are always evil. But this is the way the world is, and it will probably always be like that. There is no country in the world that has the resources to “fight evil” every time it pops up. Furthermore, I think the U.S. has to be very careful in what it calls upon it’s soldiers to do. It’s one thing to fight for your country in order to defend the country or to accomplish an important strategic goal. It’s another thing to have your life put at risk in order to save some other dudes in another country. I’m not saying that there aren’t circumstances where we should do that, but I’m saying that we need to be VERY careful when doing that.
Missourian: “You just don’t want to be bothered. Too many men of my generation just wanted to back into their drug induced haze, they didn’t want to be bothered either.”
By the time I got my draft notice and showed up for my preinduction physicial (November 1972) we were pretty much out of Vietnam. I was part of a fundamentalist group with strong pacifist leanings, was classified a conscientious objector, and did two years of alternative service. Two other friends were not so fortunate, and they were both sentenced to federal prison for refusing induction. I had other friends who served in Vietnam, some in “safe” areas and some on the front lines. To the last man they all thought it was a cluster f*** and a waste of blood and money. Even the famous Col. David Hackworth came out publicly against the war.
It’s not that people didn’t want to be bothered, but that in the final analysis there was little or no chance of success, and American officials knew that from the start. The lesson is that in such a situation military might is only one factor, and not always the decisive factor, and that if other things are not in place, the military effort will not prevail.