Flag Day–long may it wave

The New Neo Posted on by

I wrote the following on Memorial Day, but I thought I’d post it again today, since it seems even more appropriate for Flag Day.

Flag Day is one of those lost holidays. It was easy to ignore even when I was a kid and paid more attention to holidays. After all, it didn’t count because we didn’t get off from school, did we? What’s a holiday if you can’t get off from school? Flag Day’s history indicates pretty clearly that the holiday was always intended to be pitched to school children, but they would have gotten much further with kids’ appreciation if they’d made it a school holiday.

Flag Day seemed pretty basic–fly the flag. We did that at school anyway in those days (I suppose they still do), as well as saluting it every morning–all without giving it much (or any?) thought. So, here is my essay on giving the flag some thought:

I was driving down the highway yesterday, and I noticed that the car ahead of me had a small American flag decal on its trunk. It got me to thinking about how I’ve never displayed a flag on my car or my home, except for a small one on my porch on the very first Fourth of July after 9/11. I’ve never been one to wear T-shirts with slogans, or campaign buttons, or any of those sorts of public declarations of self and/or belief. I’m just a very private person (the apple in front of the face, for example).

But I clearly remember that huge proliferation of flags post 9/11. Flags on cars, on homes, pinned to lapels–everywhere one looked, so many more than ever before. There were, of course, those who carped about it (see this for a typical example). Too nationalistic. Too jingoistic. But I rather liked it–even though at the time I was still an unreconstructed liberal. It gave me a feeling of comfort and continuity. We might be down, but we weren’t out yet.

For many days after 9/11 I found myself going to the ocean and sitting on the rocks, watching the ubiquitous commercial fishing boats and ferries go by. Everyone remembers that blue blue sky of 9/11, but I don’t know how many recall that it stayed that way for some time afterwards. The weather was spectacular, almost eerie in its beauty, and very serene, although I felt anything but. At the ocean, I would ordinarily see airplanes on a regular basis–but those days, the almost supernaturally blue skies were very, very quiet.

I thought about many things as I sat there. I believed another large attack was imminent, maybe many attacks. I had no idea what could ever prevent this from happening. I thought about George Bush being President, and at the time the thought did not fill me with confidence, but rather with dread. Snatches of poems and songs would wander in and out of my head, in that repetitive way they often do. One was the “Star-Spangled Banner”–all those flags brought it to mind, I suppose.

I’d known the words to that song for close to fifty years, and even had to learn about Francis Scott Key and the circumstances under which he wrote them. But I never really thought much about those words. It was just a song that was difficult to sing, and not as pretty as America the Beautiful or God Bless America (the latter, in those very un-PC days of my youth, we used to sing as we marched out of assembly).

The whole first stanza of the national anthem is a protracted version of a question: does the American flag still wave over the fort? Has the US been successful in the battle? As a child, the answer seemed to me to have been a foregone conclusion–of course it waved, of course the US prevailed in the battle; how could it be otherwise? America rah-rah. America always was the winner. Even our withdrawal from Vietnam, so many years later, seemed to me to be an act of choice. Our very existence as a nation had never for a moment felt threatened.

The only threat I’d ever faced to this country was the nightmarish threat of nuclear war. But that seemed more a threat to the entire planet, to humankind itself, rather than to this country specifically. And so I never really heard or felt the vulnerability and fear expressed in Key’s question, which he asked during the War of 1812, so shortly after the birth of the country itself: does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

But now I heard his doubt, and I felt it, too. I saw quite suddenly that there was no “given” in the existence of this country–its continuance, and its preciousness, began to seem to me to be as important and as precarious as they must have seemed to Key during that night in 1814.

And then other memorized writings came to me as well–the Gettysburg Address, whose words those crabby old teachers of mine had made us memorize in their entirety: and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Here it was again, the sense of the nation as an experiment in democracy and freedom, and inherently special but vulnerable to destruction, an idea I had never until that moment grasped. But now I did, on a visceral level.

Another school memory of long ago was the story “The Man Without a Country.” It used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book–as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers–that I ever was assigned to read in school. As such it was exciting, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad–and unfair, too–that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that probably would never be assigned nowadays to students.

Patriotism has gotten a very bad name during the last few decades. I think part of this feeling began (at least in this country), like so many things, with the Vietnam era. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were seen to have wrought during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, but it seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.

Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…”

A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country, who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which unbridled and amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response, one that helped lead to the formation of the EU. The nationalism of the US is seen by those who agree with him as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.

But the pendulum is swinging back. The US is not Nazi Germany, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. And, in fact, that is one of the reasons they try so hard to make that particular analogy–because Nazi Germany is one of the very best examples of the dangers of unbridled and amoral nationalism.

But, on this Memorial Day, I want to say there’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores morality, but one that embraces it and strives for it, keeping in mind that–human nature being what it is–no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but it is a good country nevertheless, striving to be better.

So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

(Thanks, Mudville Gazette, for the opportunity to link to your open post on the subject. And Michelle Malkin has links to more Flag Day posts.)

Niger and fistulas and hope

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t ordinarily read the Wall Street Journal. It’s one of the periodicals that isn’t available for free online, and I’ve never felt such a deep need to read it that it seemed worth the price to me.

But I’m reconsidering, mainly because of an article by Roger Thurow that appeared in yesterday’s WSJ. I came across it only through a fluke–on rare occasions, in an attempt to entice me into buying it, a free copy of the WSJ simply appears on my doorstep, and that’s what happened yesterday.

Perhaps they know exactly what they’re doing, because this particular article was enough to make me think I should be reading the paper regularly. The title, “Married at 11, a teen in Niger returns to school,” gives little hint of the depth within.

I assume that most readers here are not subscribers, so I am going to summarize the article for you. It deals with another sad fact of sexual and reproductive life for Moslem women in the area of the southern Sahara–the first, of course, being what is sometimes euphemistically referred to as female circumcision, but is more correctly known as female genital mutilation. The second is the prevalence of early marriage, pregnancy, and fistulas, common in an area stretching from Eritrea to Mali.

Yes, these topics are sickening and sad, but so are the realities of these women’s lives. But the story is not without hope, as you will see.

What’s a fistula, and why are they so common in these countries? This article highlights Niger, where girls are typically married even before the arrival of puberty, although they don’t ordinarily live with their husbands until after reaching puberty (the girls, that is–not the husbands, who are typically older). At that time sexual relations commence, often leading to very early pregnancies. In addition, the girls drop out of school on marriage, which means they leave primary school, never to return.

Many teens’ bodies haven’t yet matured enough to deliver vaginally, but in all of Niger, only 10 medical centers are capable of performing Caesarean sections. A fistula is caused by unrelieved, protracted labor. The pressure of the baby pushing for days causes a hole to tear in the wall between the bladder and vagina. This results in uncontrollable leaking of urine.

These restrained words convey an almost unimaginable but unforunately commonplace horror–girls barely emerged from childhood themselves, enduring painful and lengthy labors, and ending up with a defect that causes them to become outcasts.

More than one million young women with the condition are scattered throughout the so-called fistula belt…Because of their severe incontinence and smell, many have been ostracized by their families and villages and live by themselves or with fellow fistula sufferers.

Horrible, tragic.

But, strangely enough, this ends up being a story of incredible courage and heroism on the part many people–and, especially, of familial love.

The author follows the story of a young girl in Niger named Anafghat Ayoub. Hers is the usual tale of extremely early marriage, dropping out of school in the third grade, and very early pregnancy. Her husband had left for work in Libya, her mother was dead, and her father was a poor goat herder with several daughters younger than she. Here is what happened when Anafghat was ready to deliver:

After three days in labor, Mr. Mahomed [Anafghat’s father] knew he needed help. He scraped together money from friends and relatives to hire a car to take them to the nearest town with medicine and maternity nurses. For about 60 miles they bounced over rutted dirt roads [imagine this journey, after three days of exhausting and unproductive labor!]. Once there, the nurses said they weren’t equipped to handle her delivery. Mr. Mahomed hired another car, for $40–a fortune for a goat herder. It took them to Niamey, the nation’s capital, more than 100 miles away down a paved road pocked with potholes.

So the same father who had married her off at such a tender age (for the brideprice of a precious camel–a camel that ended up either lost or stolen, by the way) is the father who now was willing to go through fire to save her.

At the hospital, doctors performed a forceps delivery of her stillborn child. Anafghat lived, but she now had a fistula “the size of a baseball,” and an infection, which the doctors staved off. But they could do nothing about the fistula.

Anafghat stayed at the hospital for four months, awaiting the arrival of a team of American doctors, who have been to Niger six times already to help women like Anafghat. When they finally arrived there, she endured a three-hour repair surgery, performed by a volunteer surgeon from Johns Hopkins. She has since recovered nicely.

During her recuperation, Anafghat noticed a woman from Niger who was a medical student making the rounds with the American doctors. Anafghat, the goatherder’s daughter from the rural village, was extremely taken with her, saying: I want to live in Niamey, be a doctor and be an important woman. And she extracted a promise from her chastened father that she would be allowed to return to school, unheard of for a woman (or, rather, girl) in her situation.

And so she has returned to school, and she’s doing very, very well. According to the school’s director: The others call her “the college student” because she is so smart and older…

Anafghat is back living in the small round hut with her family. She and her father say she has no plans to return to her husband and she will stay with her family until she advances to the higher school. And she wants to make sure her younger sisters follow her. Mr. Mahomed sat on one of the beds stirring a bowl of rice, surrounded by all of his daughters.

He says he will keep his promises to Anafghat. “Even if one of my daughters asks to get married while they are still in school,” he says, “I will refuse.”

I have to say that this story–which is much longer and more detailed than I’ve excerpted here–moved me to tears; first of rage, and then of inspiration. People like this will be the ones to build the foundation of a better future for the women of the area, if allowed. There is great hope that this movement will grow. Hear what Sabou Ibrahim, director of the National Hospital, has to say:

A fistula woman who is repaired and goes back to her village brings many changes…All the women get together and they talk about the risk of having a child so young.”

Before, I suppose these “fistula women” stayed away, shunned by all. Now they can go back and spread the word, and have a good chance of preventing this from happening to others.

The more people see it is in their own interest to decline to follow a traditional cultural dictate which has led in the past to so many blasted lives, the more people will feel comfortable doing so. Then the practice (and the fistulas) will disappear from these societies–and not a moment too soon.

ADDENDUM: I wanted to include a link to the agency sponsoring the American doctors, the International Organization for Women and Development, Inc., founded by Barbara and Ira Margolies of Rockville Center, NY, and also to give them a donation. But I couldn’t find a webite for the group. This was the closest I could come, a feature on one of the doctors. If anyone can get any better information on this organization than I was able to find, please post it in the comments section. Thanks.

ADDENDUM TO ADDENDUM: Reader Marianne has found the website, which is here. And this is the donations page. Thanks so much, Marianne!

You’re next in line, Saudi Arabia: votes for women

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was in second grade, my class gave an assembly presentation in which each of us read a little speech about some figure in US history, pretending to be that character. I was Susan B. Anthony.

Although I no longer remember the speech I made, I never forgot that she had helped women earn the right to vote. It seems hard to believe, but at the time I made my little debut, women had only been voting for about thirty-five years.

How long had women’s struggle to gain the vote taken in this country? Approximately seventy difficult and dogged years. In fact, most of the early leaders of the movement, including Anthony herself, died before seeing the Promised Land of the 19th Amendment.

I don’t know how long women in Kuwait have been petitioning to vote; my guess is that it’s been less than seventy years. My guess is also that certain recent Middle Eastern events, in which the policies of one George W. Bush have played no small role, were part of the reason the Kuwaitis decided one month ago that the time had come to let women in that country vote.

Kuwait has now announced this further news, a mere month later:

The Kuwaiti government has appointed its first female Cabinet minister, a month after lawmakers in this oil-rich nation granted women the right to vote and run for office, state-owned television reported Sunday.

Political science teacher Massouma al-Mubarak, a women’s rights activist and columnist, was given the planning and administrative development portfolios, Prime Minister Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah was quoted as saying. The two portfolios previously were held by Sheik Ahmed Abdullah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, who also is the communications minister.

“I’m happy,” al-Mubarak, 54, told The Associated Press. “This honor is not bestowed on my person but on every woman who fought to prove that Kuwaiti women are capable.”

The achievement of the vote for women in Kuwait, and the appointment of this first woman to a Cabinet-level position, aren’t simply questions of women’s rights long overdue, although they most certainly are that. They represent an extension of the scope of democracy in an area of the world that could sorely use some improvement in the position of women, developments that might one day prove to have a generalized ripple effect on the cultural ethos there (and yes, though it’s not PC of me, I think it could stand some improvement).

Further facts of possible interest: Ms. al-Mubarak seems to have replaced two men, if I understand the article correctly. And Saudis, please take note:

Women can now vote in all Middle Eastern nations where elections are held except Saudi Arabia.

Gestating change

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been almost exactly a month since my most recent post in the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series. Some of you may be wondering–well, where’s the next one?

It seems these things are so intense to write–particularly the whole Vietnam series–that I need to take a breather afterwards.

But I’m happy to report that I’m about to start on Part V (actually the ninth article in the series). I anticipate being able to post something within the next week or two. My plan is to cover the years between the fall of Vietnam and 9/11 in one large gulp. Then, on to 9/11 and after.

We’ll see.

The Cats in the Fax

The New Neo Posted on by

I seem to be on a roll with animal stories. And no, I’m not a fanatical PETA-type person.

But even the Cat in the Hat had nothing on these Cats in the Fax when it comes to making serious mischief.

And how, pray tell, is an owner to control where a cat pees? I thought cats did more or less what they wanted to, when they wanted to, where they wanted to.

Dean: winning with morals

The New Neo Posted on by

Howard Dean is hopping mad:

Dean seemed yesterday to embrace his reputation for volatility, saying he is being buoyed by activists and donors. At one point, a Chicago alderman, Joseph Moore, had trouble being recognized; he joked that next time he would ”jump up and down.”

”That’s my job!” Dean said, and the room shook with applause.

Dean is definitely a fighter, no doubt about that. I don’t think he’s good for the Democratic Party if, as he said, the goal is to win some of us lost sheep back into the fold–although I was not a “Reagan Democrat,” the constituency he seems most intent on trying to woo.

I can’t for the life of me figure out how his stance, which does not foster reassurance vis a vis Islamofascist terrorism, could entice a Reagan Democrat, or even a post-9/11 neocon like me, back to the Democratic Party. And the article’s headline, “Democrats can win with morals, Dean says,” seems to emphasize morals as a strategic move, rather than coming from personal integrity, a perception, which, correct or not, isn’t likely to help Dean or the Democrats a whole lot.

Not a shaggy-horse story, either

The New Neo Posted on by

In the non-shaggy dog story I discussed a few days back, there was a link to a site I found bizarre but charming. Unless you followed my post to its conclusion, though, and clicked on all the links, you may have missed it. This would break my heart, because I think -well, I just think it’s worth looking at. Nothing about politics, by the way, and quite indescribable.

So please, let’s all take a moment on this Sunday in June for a leisurely look around. Don’t neglect the photos.

As I wrote earlier–no, it’s not a spoof, and it’s not the Onion, either; it seems to be absolutely for real. Who knew there even were mini-horses, the size of dogs, that people could hold in their laps (if the lap happens to be a strong one)? And who would ever think that these horses could be trained, like dogs, to guide the blind?

First, someone had to have the concept, which is quite a leap–like the first person to eat a lobster. And, once the idea came, it doesn’t seem that it could actually be implemented, does it? But apparently these horses do what dogs can do, although the training process is arduous (see this for an explanation). It’s a testament to human–and animal–adaptability, creativity, and persistence. Although they are almost unbearably cute, mini-horse guides do have a definite “redeeming social importance” element–they are not just cute, after all; these are highly trained workhorses.

Before you leave the site, please don’t forget to note the pieces de resistance, the sneakers.

More weather complaints

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m all talk, no action–as in “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

Since everything is so easy to look up on Google, I just discovered that that quote isn’t by “anonymous,” as I’d thought, but was written by someone I’d never heard of before, Charles Dudley Warner, journalist, author, Mark Twain collaborator. His essays are described as “charming” and “polished,” unlike this one (well, you can’t hit them all out of the park).

My excuse? Just one short month ago I was complaining tediously about the cold. I actually didn’t turn off my furnace till about two weeks ago. And now, now–well, I guess there’s no pleasing me. It’s been hot and exceptionally humid, and even the thunderstorms we seem to have every day now aren’t helping a bit. A while back I thought I had moved to Seattle in winter; now it appears to be Houston in summer.

And today, of all things, I was involved in a yard sale, one of my least favorite things to do on earth. It’s over, I’m too pooped to blog, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.

It depends what the meaning of “sign” is

The New Neo Posted on by

I guess my apple is safe–at least for the moment. See this.

Kerry has a strange literalism about him. He said he would sign a Form 180; apparently he did sign a Form 180. But how many of his records were actually released, and whether anyone other than his friends at the Boston Globe will ever see them, is anybody’s guess. What a tiresome man.

Someone asked on another blog, why bother to talk about him any more? An excellent question. My answer is that he came within 60,000 Ohio votes of becoming President, he still seems to have designs on the Presidency and remains in the public spotlight, and he’s a fascinating case–and I mean that in the clinical sense of narcissistic personality disorder.

Dr. Sanity on terrorists and the press

The New Neo Posted on by

I think this article by Dr. Sanity is very–sane. She has done some original work here, analyzing the complex interplay between terrorists and the press and comparing it to the suicidal gestures of Borderline patients and the reactions of their enablers in the helping professions.

Terrorists need the press very, very badly; in fact, they could not function without it. Oh, they could kill people, but they couldn’t get the word out properly. Unfortunately, as Dr. Sanity rightly points out, the Munich Olympics massacre taught the Palestinians, and all potential terrorists, the important lesson that terrorism pays. It’s been paying ever since.

Dr. Sanity also offers some excellent suggestions that the press would do well to adopt to end this symbiotic (or perhaps parasitic) relationship. But I wouldn’t advise you to sit on a hot stove till they do.

The MSM and Lincoln

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m reading a book I find exceedingly fascinating. It’s called American Brutus, and it’s a fairly new biography of John Wilkes Booth, by Michael W. Kauffman. John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln are two figures about which most of us think we know a lot–all those US History courses we’re required to take do cover the events, after all. But, unless you are a history buff (which I never was, but am beginning to be), I doubt you’re familiar with the details this book describes.

Booth was a figure of huge complexity, one of the most famous actors of his day and part of an acting family as famous as the later Barrymores, as well as a person of great charm and intelligence (not to mention extraordinary handsomeness–see the photo on the cover). I used to think I knew what Booth’s motive was–he was a Southern sympathizer–but that’s an extreme oversimplification. The truth, as usual, is not only more complex, it’s more interesting–and more relevant to our times. But you’ll have to read the book to find that out (no, I don’t get a commission).

Lincoln was a figure who was widely reviled in his time for causing the war, and for policies instituted during it. I’d known that. But the book brings these facts alive by quoting contemporary sources in a way that makes the criticism seem–well, familiar (although the civic turmoil seems to have been even more extreme than at present):

The Civil War was unlike anything known in modern times, and the nation came closer to collapse than most people realize today. Emancipation of slaves, confiscation of property, and the draft often led to deadly clashes between the public and civil authorities. The political storm threatened not only the federal government, but state governments as well…In the middle stood Abraham Lincoln, blamed for the war and fired upon from all sides. It was not just the fringe element who hated the president; judges, senators, editors, and otherwise respectable citizens left no doubt of their contempt for him as well. One senator compared Lincoln to the tyrants of history, saying “They are all buried beneath the wave of oblivion compared to what this man of yesterday, this Abraham Lincoln, that neither you nor I ever heard of four years ago, has chosen to exercise…” To that senator and countless citizens, Abraham Lincoln was the American Caesar, out to establish a new empire from the ashes of a republic.

Thus, the name of the book: American Brutus, which is how Booth saw himself. Some newspapers of the time even called for Lincoln’s assassination, explicitly invoking the Brutus comparison.

The papers of Europe also got into the act of over-the-top criticism of Lincoln. Here’s the London Times, reprinted in an Indianapolis paper of the time:

Mr. Lincoln and his party have been dominant as no set of men ever were before in a land peopled by the English race. They have governed twenty millions of their countrymen with a revolutionary freedom from the trammels of law.

After the assassination, however, some newspapers that had formerly been fiercely anti-Lincoln backtracked and suddenly decided he was a hero after all. Some papers which had been most critical of Lincoln were set on by angry mobs. This was part of a pattern of post-assassination violence in which some who were heard to speak out in favor Booth’s act were lynched. Although there’s no record of the number of such deaths, the author believes it was in the hundreds.

Here is how Europe and Canada reacted:

Throughout most of the civilized world, foreign leaders expressed horror at the assassination and sympathy for the nation’s loss. But in Montreal, reactions were mixed. Canadian officials offered condolences, and a great many citizens draped their buildings in mourning. But others celebrated openly, and their revelry caused the U.S. consul to remark that “treason has transformed them to brutes, and seems to have eradicated from their breasts all sense of moral right.” He would have been deeply offended by an editorial in the London Examiner that said, “It must be remembered that atrocious as was Booth’s deed, his ‘sic semper tyrannis’ was literally justified by the facts. The man he killed had murdered the Constitution of the United States, had contradicted and set at naught the principles under which the States came together, had practically denied the competence of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, and overthrown all for which Washington fought and Patrick Henry spoke.”

Plus ca change…

Lightning

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember “Operation Lightning” in Iraq? Heard much about it lately?

Well, it’s still going on, but I haven’t been able to find any coverage of these events in the MSM. I guess they’re not important.

Iraq the Model provides the link, and it reminds me how much that blog meant to me in the early days after the Iraq war. I grew to trust the Fadhil brothers (although at the time I only knew their first names) far more than anyone I was reading in the American or European press.

This is what Mohammed at Iraq the Model had to say recently about the course of Operation Lightning:

Operation lightning is showing good results in Baghdad and its suburbs one week after it was launched and I guess that this good effect comes from the high coordination among the different departments of Iraqi security forces as well as the multinational forces.
The last 24 hours or so resulted in arresting some 300 terrorists and suspects in addition to confiscating amounts of weapons and munitions according to local papers and TV….

And later, this interesting remark of his: Generally speaking, Baghdad looks quieter these days .

As far as our press goes, though, Operation Lightening is aptly named–a sudden flash, and then gone. Or, to be literary about it, as Shakespeare’s Juliet said,

…the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’

If this Iraqization campaign goes well, it could be one of the keys to the success of the entire enterprise in Iraq. Shouldn’t we be hearing more about it either way–success or failure?

Many mock Iraqization, comparing it to the Vietnamization policy of decades ago. But was Vietnamization actually a failure? See this for a thought-provoking reassessment of what Vietnamization was, how it changed over time, and what ultimately may have caused it to fail. I can almost guarantee the information contained therein isn’t anything you read about in the MSM of the time.