Part 4C progress report

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, here we go again. Excuses, excuses–I’m full of them! I thought I’d be publishing Part 4C of the “Mind is a difficult thing to change” series this week, but it’s not nearly ready, although I’ve been working on it.

I am pretty sure it will be ready by the end of next week. That’s not a promise, that’s a prediction–and, like second marriage, it may represent the triumph of hope over experience. But I have found I can’t rush it. It’s clear that these things always seem to require far more labor than I ever expect.

It is embarrassing to have to display so very publically the fact that my life seems to be ruled by Hofstadter’s Law. For those of you unfamiliar with the extremely useful and brilliant Hofstadter’s Law, here it is:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

Simple. Elegant. True.

ADDENDUM: Of course, like anything, Hofstadter’s Law is not absolute. One glaring exception is eating–especially dessert, which always seems to take less time than you expect (or want) it to. No doubt you readers can think of other exceptions. But, in general, I stand by Hofstadter’s Law.

Vietnam revisited–again

The New Neo Posted on by

Vietnam’s been on my mind recently, for obvious reasons. I’ve been thinking and writing so much about it lately that I’ve only just gotten around to reading this article by Stephen J. Morris, which appeared in the Op-Ed page of the May 1st NY Times.

I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided to reproduce the entire piece here. I figure that, since the Times is a registration-only venue, many people to whom it might be of interest will have missed it. The article is an excellent example of the type of thing I can’t recall reading at the time the events in it took place–certainly not in the NY Times, one of the newspapers from which I got most of my news for much of my life.

I wanted to present this article because it is a relatively concise summary of the sort of information I’ve been reading lately, information which represents another look at the history of the Vietnam War as it was told in the newspapers of the time. I am very glad–and, to tell the truth, surprised–that the Times saw fit to publish it in honor of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. As Morris himself writes, “out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970’s and why.” I second the motion.

I find the facts in this article and others like it quite compelling. You may or may not agree. Here is the complete text:

The War We Could Have Won
By STEPHEN J. MORRIS

Washington

THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war’s end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute.

The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is that the defeat was a result of American policy makers’ cold-war-driven misunderstanding of North Vietnam’s leaders as dangerous Communists. In truth, they argue, we were fighting a nationalist movement with great popular support. In this view, “our side,” South Vietnam, was a creation of foreigners and led by a corrupt urban elite with no popular roots. Hence it could never prevail, not even with a half-million American troops, making the war “unwinnable.”

This simple explanation is repudiated by powerful historical evidence, both old and new. Its proponents mistakenly base their conclusions on the situation in Vietnam during the 1950’s and early 1960’s and ignore the changing course of the war (notably, the increasing success of President Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy) and the evolution of South Vietnamese society (in particular the introduction of agrarian reforms).

For all the claims of popular support for the Vietcong insurgency, far more South Vietnamese peasants fought on the side of Saigon than on the side of Hanoi. The Vietcong were basically defeated by the beginning of 1972, which is why the North Vietnamese launched a huge conventional offensive at the end of March that year. During the Easter Offensive of 1972 – at the time the biggest campaign of the war – the South Vietnamese Army was able to hold onto every one of the 44 provincial capitals except Quang Tri, which it regained a few months later. The South Vietnamese relied on American air support during that offensive.

If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the results were devastating for the south. As the triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight “a poor man’s war.”

Even Hanoi’s main patron, the Soviet Union, was convinced that a North Vietnamese military victory was highly unlikely. Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself with a continuation of American logistical support. The former Soviet chargé d’affaires in Hanoi during the 1970’s told me in Moscow in late 1993 that if one looked at the balance of forces, one could not predict that the South would be defeated. Until 1975, Moscow was not only impressed by American military power and political will, it also clearly had no desire to go to war with the United States over Vietnam. But after 1975, Soviet fear of the United States dissipated.

During the war the Soviets despised their North Vietnamese “friends” (the term of confidential bureaucratic reference, rather than “comrades”). Indeed, Henry A. Kissinger’s accounts of his dealings, as Nixon’s national security adviser, with President Thieu are models of respect when compared with the bitter Soviet accounts of their difficulties with their counterparts.

In secret internal reports, Hanoi-based Soviet diplomats regularly complained about the deceitfulness of the North Vietnamese, who concealed strategic planning from their more powerful patron. In a 1972 report to Moscow, the Soviet ambassador even complained that although Marshal Pavel Batitsky, commander of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, had visited Hanoi earlier that year and completed a major military aid agreement, North Vietnamese leaders did not inform him of the imminent launch date of their Easter Offensive.

What is also clear from Soviet archival sources is that those who believed that North Vietnam had more than national unification on its mind were right: Its leaders were imbued with a sense of their ideological mission – not only to unify Vietnam under Communist Party rule, but also to support the victory of Communists in other nations. They saw themselves as the outpost of world revolution in Southeast Asia and desired to help Communists in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and elsewhere.

Soviet archives show that after the war ended in 1975, with American power in retreat, Hanoi used part of its captured American arsenal to support Communist revolutions around the world. In 1980 some of these weapons were shipped via Cuba to El Salvador. This dimension of Vietnamese behavior derived from a deep commitment to the messianic internationalism of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Vietnam today is not the North Vietnam of 1955, 1965 or 1975. Like post-Mao China it has retreated from totalitarianism to authoritarianism. It has reformed its economy and its foreign policy to become more integrated into the world. But those changes were not inevitable and would not necessarily have occurred had Mikhail Gorbachev not ascended to power in Moscow, and had the Soviet Union and its empire not collapsed. Nor would these changes necessarily have occurred had China not provided a new cultural model for Vietnam to follow, as it has for centuries.

Precisely because Vietnam has changed for the better, we need to recognize what a profoundly ideological and aggressive totalitarian regime we faced three, four and five decades ago. And out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970’s and why.

In 1974-75, the United States snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Hundreds of thousands of our Vietnamese allies were incarcerated, and more than a million driven into exile. The awesome image of the United States was diminished, and its enemies were thereby emboldened, drawing the United States into new conflicts by proxy in Afghanistan, Africa and Latin America. And the bitterness of so many American war veterans, who saw their sacrifices so casually demeaned and unnecessarily squandered, haunts American society and political life to this day.

Stephen J. Morris, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, is writing a book on the Vietnam War in the Nixon years.

Looking like a thug

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes when an ordinary, garden-variety murderer is caught (or even a more-than-garden variety serial killer, such as Ted Bundy), I am struck by how normal he looks. Normal, as in “you would pass him on the street and not suspect a thing,” or even attractive, as in the aforementioned Bundy. It proves the truth that Shakespeare wrote so long ago: one can smile and smile and be a villain.

I flatter myself sometimes that if I actually looked into the eyes of such a person, I would see a deadness there that is said to be a giveaway. But that may only be wishful thinking on my part; it’s sobering to think that perhaps these people are simply undetectable by such means.

But those terrorists do seem to be something else, don’t they? Oh, not all of them, surely (in fact, I always think that Bin Laden himself looks rather genial and calm)–but many of them do seem to look exactly like what we would imagine such evil (yes, it is the appropriate word) should look. Mohammad Atta, of course, was one. And Al Libbi, the recent capture in Pakistan, is most definitely another. Take a look.

Fighting “liberal prejudice”

The New Neo Posted on by

One would think the term “liberal prejudice” would be an oxymoron–but then, one would be wrong. Liberals are hardly immune to prejudice, as this article, appearing, surprisingly, in The Guardian (courtesy LGF) concedes–that is, if the prejudice happens to be dislike of Bush and his merry band of neocons.

I applaud the author of the article, Max Hastings, as I applaud anyone who dares to consider giving credit where credit is due even if it might be due to someone he/she has been reviling lately. It takes courage to do this, especially if Hastings’ fellow broad-minded liberals end up extending their “liberal prejudice” to Hastings himself.(* see below) It’s been known to happen.

I can’t say that Hastings doesn’t flinch. He does; there are some hemmings and hawings and throat-clearings and caveats. But despite this (or perhaps because of it) he allows himself to get around to saying what needs to be said–which is that liberals should consider the possibility that Bush may have been right (in his hedgehoggy way) about certain “big things” in the Arab world and the Middle East:

….scepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans’ grand strategy is getting somewhere….

It seems wrong for either neocon true believers or liberal sceptics to rush to judgment. We of the latter persuasion must keep reciting the mantra: “We want Iraq to come right, even if this vindicates George Bush….

We must respect American power, and also acknowledge that the world sometimes has much need of it. As Sir Michael Howard, wisest of British strategic thinkers, often remarks: “If America does not do things, nobody else will.”

* A caveat of my own is due here: after writing this, I decided to do a little research on the topic of the author. After all, although I am quite familiar with the ultra-liberal–even leftist, at times–slant of The Guardian, I really had no particular knowledge of the politics of Max Hastings. From the article itself, I assumed he was typically liberal (he certainly identifies himself as such), and had been against the Iraqi war from the start.

But when I started checking him out, it turns out that the situation got “curiouser and curiouser,” as another Brit might say. It turns out Hastings is a far more complex figure than that. Here is Hastings himself, writing on the topic of his own views:

I am more instinctively supportive of institutions, less iconoclastic, than most of the people who write for the Guardian, never mind read it. I am a small “c” conservative…

So, Hastings seems to be more middle of the road in his political stance, having once been editor of the Telegraph, and also, apparently, having been an early supporter of the war. As best I can tell, he is the British equivalent of Andrew Sullivan–neither stylistically nor sexually, that is, but in terms of a hyper-reactivity and changeability on the war when the going got rough. British journalism and journalists is a topic that is way way way outside any area of expertise I might be said to have, of course. But I still decided to publish this post, as an object lesson in the principle “things are usually not quite exactly as they seem at first glance,” and because I am impressed by Hastings’s (or anyone’s, for that matter) ability to say “Perhaps I was wrong.”

Like Norm Geras, I’m not a desperate housewife

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought perhaps I might get your attention with that title.

Now that Norm has come out of the closet as a “Desperate Housewives” fan (or at least, a viewer), I feel it’s only right to show solidarity (Solidarity Forever, Norm!) with him by confessing that I, too, sometimes watch (and enjoy) the show. Shh, don’t tell. I guess I’ve already ruined my reputation, anyway, by owning up to watching “American Idol.” But some would consider “Desperate Housewives” an even lower form of degradation (desperation?).

The reason I’m posting on the topic (other than the relief of being able to change the subject from the Vietnam War for a moment) is that Norm asks for theories on the most popular desperate housewife. Since I’m never one to shrink from conjuring up a theory, I offer the following: I, like Norm, originally liked Susan best, but as time goes on I have found myself far more interested in Bree. Unlike Norm, I haven’t totally turned on Susan or found her annoying (well, maybe just a tad), but she does get a bit wearing. I think it’s because she overplays the endearing vulnerable cuteness clutzy thing. Just as in life, this can get somewhat tiresome. But I still like Susan; she’s the sort of person who would make an excellent friend.

Bree is not, and that’s what makes her appealing as a character–her edge. In Bree’s case it’s rather more than an edge; she’s a bit knifelike. You never quite know what you are going to get with Bree, which is what makes her interesting. She’s not a total villainess, either–that would be boring, too. She’s given more than a spark of humanity and vulnerability, and so we find that, almost against our will, every now and then she makes us care about her. The best characters, both in literature and popular entertainment, have that dual quality, and Bree has it, in spades (not to mention her wonderful sense of color, and her somewhat fierce intelligence).

Those who are old enough to remember the original BBC Forsyte Saga series, the black-and-white one, might agree when I say that it was the relatively abominable Soames Forsyte, given tremendous complexity of feeling by the stupendous actor Eric Porter, who completely and utterly stole the show. Kenneth More as young Jolyon put me to sleep, I’m afraid, although I assume I was supposed to like him.

Oh, and one more thing–I seem to remember that the writers of “Desperate Housewives” have taken pains to inform us that the tightly controlled Bree is–gasp!–a Republican!! I guess they thought it was the perfect way to express the extremity of her rigidity.

War quotes

The New Neo Posted on by

I think my favorite quotation about war is one attributed to Trotsky: You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. It sums up the idea that you can run, but you can’t hide–sooner or later, you must confront the fact that war keeps coming round again, and that, eventually, it will affect every one of us, one way or another.

Pacifism is an emotionally attractive ideology, and condemnation of war is very easy. Temperamentally, I much prefer this stance. I have always had a deep wish that war could be abolished somehow–that it would go away, that the lion would lie down with the lamb in the Peaceable Kingdom. Anyone who does not see war as horrific is simply not confronting reality.

But I have come to see that sometimes war is a grim and terrible necessity and the lesser of two evils. It is a profound challenge to decide when this is the case, and when it is not.

Here are some quotes on the subject of war which I have selected as particularly interesting. Some are quite well-known; others were new to me. There are certain themes that keep repeating, although the speakers are from different eras. I find that interesting, too. Perhaps you will, also.

Right is more precious than peace. — Woodrow Wilson

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. — Edmund Burke

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. — Winston Churchill

You can have peace, or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once. — Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war. — George Washington

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. — Winston Churchill

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget ye were our countrymen. — Samuel Adams

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. — Daniel Webster

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid. — President Dwight Eisenhower

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others. — Alexander Hamilton

Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war!) — Flavius Vegetius Renatus (ca 390 AD)

Superior firepower is an invaluable tool when entering negotiations. — General George S. Patton

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence. — Woodrow Wilson

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. — Dwight David Eisenhower

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. — Herbert Hoover

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. — Margaret Thatcher

We know we can’t beat you on the battlefield, but we can beat you on the streets of New York Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. — North Vietnamese camp commander, Son Tay POW camp to Commander Paul Galanti, U.S. Navy, American POW.

Kerry–old habits die hard (but who’s counting?)

The New Neo Posted on by

In the course of writing my most recent Vietnam post, I found myself rereading the transcript of the 1971 Dick Cavett Show debate between John Kerry and John O’Neill. I couldn’t help noticing that Kerry does something quite familiar during it.

Most people probably know by now about Kerry’s January 2005 on-air pledge to sign a Form 180. As yet, it’s still unfulfilled, although Powerline reports some tongue-in-cheek progress. Well, here’s Kerry and O’Neill in 1971 talking about the Winter Soldier hearings that Kerry had organized, in which testimony was given about egregious American war crimes:

MR. O’NEILL: That’s very interesting that you would say that, John. I’ve got an article right now. It’s from the May 8, 1971, New York Times. It concerns some of the testimony. It concerns a Danny S. Notley (phonetic spelling), who apparently is a member of your organization. The Army pursued him all the way to Minnesota to try and get him to sign a deposition regarding the allegations of war crimes that he made, and he refused to, as have all 50 people that testified there and 150 that testified in Detroit, and so I suggest that if you’re honest, you ought to finally produce the depositions after all of us waiting for two months….

MR. KERRY: …But what we’re saying is ”“ and the reason that some of these men have not signed depositions is very, very simple, and it’s up to each individual. One reason is that specifically they are not looking to implicate other people. They haven’t cited names of individuals involved because they don’t want more Calleys. They don’t want men to enter double jeopardy, to have to come back to the United States of America and be penalized for those things that they did that were the result of the mistakes and the bad decisions of their leaders.

MR. CAVETT: Uh-huh.

MR. KERRY: And the purpose of them not signing them is literally to call for an examination of policy and not scapegoats and to examine it from the President of the United States to General Westmoreland and others. And when they do that, then they will sign and then they will talk.

Now, there are individuals who are perfectly willing to sign. Nobody’s ducking anything.

MR. O’NEILL: Well, who are they? Can you tell me that?

MR. KERRY: Well, I have a friend who came all the way from Florida today, and if it’s all right with you, he’s here now. I’d be very happy to bring him on and let him make a deposition.

MR. O’NEILL: Well, I think just you and I. I’ve had the same experience of four against one before.

MR. KERRY: You’ve asked for depositions, and I have the man ”“

MR. O’NEILL: Yeah, and I’d like to see him sign a deposition after the show.

MR. KERRY: I think you’ve made a very, very serious charge.

MR. O’NEILL: That’s absolutely correct, I have.

MR. KERRY: And there’s a veteran here who’s come all the way from Florida who, if you didn’t mind, would come on television now with names, facts, dates, places, maps, coordinates, and he’s be very willing to make it public.

[Pause]

MR. O’NEILL: I’ve just got two or three things to say. It’s amazing, and it certainly is wonderful that you’ve finally produced someone after two months.

Sound familiar?

I did some follow-up research, trying to find out whether this man, or any of the other Winter Soldiers, had ever signed depositions. In a recent article favorable to Kerry, I found a brief mention of the fact that depositions were not signed . All the information I could find so far from other sources on the subject seems to indicate that no one ever signed such a deposition.

See here for an article by Owens in National Review that argues against the veracity of the Winter Soldier testimony (although, by they way, it does not flinch from the fact that some atrocities were indeed committed by American servicemen in Vietnam), a summary paragraph of which I quote here:

when the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) attempted to interview those who allegedly had witnessed atrocities, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that they would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam veterans.

If anyone can produce evidence that the guy to whom Kerry was referring to in 1971 did sign a deposition–or that any of the Winter Soldiers ever did, I’d be much obliged. I’d actually be relieved to be wrong here. I’d much prefer being wrong to the painful fact that, although we may have been waiting for Kerry’s Form 180 for the 92 days that have elapsed since his promise, we’ve been waiting 33 years and 306 days for those depositions.

And yes, I am well aware that atrocities and war crimes were committed in Vietnam, some prosecuted and well-known, like My Lai, and others still being investigated, such as the alleged “Tiger Force” incident. The aforementioned Owens article features an excellent discussion of a number of these incidents. Like the great majority of people on both sides of the Vietnam issue, I deplore all atrocities that occurred there.

Nevertheless, Kerry’s Winter Soldiers and their as-yet-unproven allegations that atrocities were commonplace and accepted during the Vietnam War did a great deal of damage to the veterans who fought there. I’d like to see him held to all of his pledges, so the truth can finally come out about this.

New media and old

The New Neo Posted on by

Dr. Sanity has some interesting commentary on a post by Wretchard about the influence of the new media–blogs and other alternative news sources–on our perceptions of truth.

I recommend both articles, but I wanted to add a few comments of my own on a related subject. This mulitiplication of sources of information, without the old authority bestowed by the credentials and reputation that used to be vested (rightly or wrongly) in the MSM, is often viewed by its critics as leading to more confusion and more disinformation. How, it is asked, is a person to know what truth is, when there are so many competing and unsubstantiated sources?

It’s not a bad point to make. But my answer is that we can only gain by the fact that the new media tends to be upfront about its biases. That means a person can now read from many sources on different sides of the issue, and then weigh the accounts accordingly, taking into consideration the point of view of the person writing. This is far better than pretending to have no bias when in fact there is one, a flaw of much old media, in my opinion.

Still another advantage of the proliferation of new media is the increased ease the reader has in referring back to original sources. If, for example, one reads in a particular newspaper a report of a speech or news conference given by a politician or other public figure, in the olden days it was much harder to check the original (unless the newspaper happened to publish the full text, which was rare) to see if the report was accurate. All of us were far more dependent on the press as a filter of information, and far less aware of how that filter often actually worked to distort such information, sometimes profoundly.

Now, all that stands in our way is time. It takes time and effort to be a newschecker, much more time and effort than most people have or are willing to give. There is always more to read, more to know.

So, understanding that our information is always incomplete, and that total truth can never be known, I salute the new media’s ability to let us get closer and closer to the best possible approximation of the truth. It’s a big improvement over what we had before.

Life imitates art (“The Runaway Bride”)

The New Neo Posted on by

The disappearance of Jennifer Wilbanks, originally feared to be a kidnapping-murder or spousal-murder case, has been revealed to be something altogether different. Less frightening, no doubt–it’s neither a case of random nor spousal violence–but profoundly disturbing nevertheless. It seems that the lady ran away because she got cold feet before an elaborate and expensive wedding.

So, is she a Julia Roberts fan, and did she watch “The Runaway Bride” too many times? Is it a case of life imitating art, by a woman whose sense of responsibility and awareness of the consequences of her own behavior is sorely lacking?

Behavior like Jennifer’s tends to be a mystery to psychology. Prior to this event, it seems no one knew a thing was amiss. I could throw around words like “character disorder,” “stress-induced dissociative disorder, ” “narcissistic personality”–but they aren’t necessarily relevant. The truth lies hidden, and may always remain hidden. My guess is that what happened is a mystery even–or perhaps especially–to Jennifer Wilbanks herself.

I have to admit feeling a sense of outraged anger on behalf of her suffering family and fiance, and all the law enforcement people and others who searched for her. Bad enough that her family and friends probably thought her dead, and that the images swirling through their minds for the last few days were the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. But now they must wrestle with something far more complex: the fact that their beloved daughter, relative, friend, put them through this experience either knowingly–realizing the horror she must be inflicting–or unknowingly, proving she lacks even the most rudimentary elements of empathy. How does a family recover from that?

Garden’s up, surf’s up (yes, there is surfing in New England)

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently most of us here have been feeling as though it’s been raining for weeks, even though it actually has only been two days. But it was one of those relentless, driving, icy rains (is that an oxymoron?) that penetrates deep inside and chills to the bone in a way that snow doesn’t seem to do. This one was a particular affront, too, seeing that it’s almost May. For a while there, my burner was cranking it out almost as powerfully (and expensively!) as in the dead of winter.

And yet–yesterday, late in the afternoon, the sun came out and so did we. I went outside to see what’s going on in the garden. This is the wonderful time of garden hope, everything coming up in neat little packets, hardly any bugs or weeds to speak of (except for a clump of dandelions that emerged and bloomed virtually overnight, and which I subjected to vicious treatment). Everything is green and lush and promising. I sprayed the still-tightly-closed tulip buds with Deer Off (hot chili peppers and other sundry caustic items), hoping to save them from being eaten as soon as they bloom, as in certain other years. I noticed that all the little violet clumps seem to be sprouting white violets this year–some sort of throwback or mutation?

Only the broom (of the delicate lilac/rasberry-colored flowers) seems to have failed to survive the winter, in contrast to the terrible previous year, when we had no snow cover at all and a full third of my garden bit the dust. This year, lack of snow cover was most definitely not an issue; we had continual deep snow from weeks before Christmas until early April.

All the neighbors came out, too, people I’ve barely seen since last fall. Now the children are playing ball, the dogs racing around in delighted circles, and my new next-door-neighbors have finally emerged from their winter hiding to prove to me that they actually live here (I was beginning to have my doubts). Kids who were mere infants in the fall are now toddling around on fat little legs, getting in the way of the ballgame.

It’s time for a dump run, time to take my raked leaves and twigs and debris and put them in the large pile at the dump, to be made into compost that is then sold to make revenue (I live in a very environmentally correct town). On the way to the dump, I drive along a road which parallels the ocean. This is one of the perks of living here; the ocean is never very far away. There’s a point I always pass that features a rocky cove. Usually it’s fairly calm, but today it’s stirred up as much as I’ve ever seen it. Apprarently the storm that has finally passed through is still having its way with the ocean.

There are huge crashing waves near the rocks; that’s to be expected when the sea is churning like this. Way out, near a distant lighthouse and some islands, is a long white line that I can’t recall having seen before. It’s a huge area of breaking wave, most likely indicating where the ocean is more shallow, near some small islands. Then I see another line, and another.

I notice some small dark forms among the closer waves. They look like dolphins or sea lions. Harbor seals actually do live near here, and I’ve sighted them, but never in this area. But then I notice the surfboards; harbor seals do not carry surfboards, to the best of my knowledge. So these are surfers, about twenty-five of them, clad in wet suits and waiting for the next big one to ride in. It’s so cold out that I’m wearing my winter jacket; it can’t be above fifty, maybe even in the forties. I cannot even imagine how cold it feels out there, even with the wet suits.

I wouldn’t have thought there were that many surfers living within a hundred miles of me. And yet here they are; the call went out, and they answered it. How do they find out that the surf’s up?

Well, when in doubt, go online, I always say. When I got home, I had no sooner typed “new england surfers” into Google than I discovered this site, called “New England surfer,” and guaranteed to meet all the needs of said rara avis. Although, as it turns out, not so rara an avis, after all. Here is where they go for the forecasts that tell them when the surfing will be good. It also contains a surprisingly active discussion board, lists of best surfing areas, and all sorts of technical discussion of the finer points of surfboards and other equipment.

So, there are indeed New England surfers. Quite a few of them, it seems–a hardy and unique crowd. This spring surfing in weather that’s above freezing is apparently a rare treat, because most of these guys (and they are mostly men, by the way) find that the best New England surfing comes–you guessed it–in winter! That’s when the noreasters that tend to bring the big waves to these parts hit. This spring storm is unusual and wonderful, and that’s why the unaccustomed (and, to me, unprecedented) crowd.

For anyone who cares to explore this world, I offer the following: an article entitled “Crazy New England Surfers,” another one called “The Endless Winter” (the title a nice little riff on the popular surfing documentary “The Endless Summer”), and this, the piece de resistance, a video of a New Englander surfing in a snowstorm.

I’ll take gardening, myself.

A mind is a difficult thing to change: Vietnam interlude–after the fall

The New Neo Posted on by

(For earlier pieces in the series, see the right sidebar under “A mind is a difficult thing to change.”)

Introduction

No, this isn’t the long-promised Part 4C, the post in the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series in which I plan to discuss general changes in political/psychological beliefs wrought by the Vietnam War era, changes in the ways many people viewed our government, military, and the press. That post is still on the way, but it turns out that I need to break it down into parts. So this is the first part, which deals with a narrow and more focused question.

Once again, I don’t have statistics or research to back me up. I’m simply using my own remembered experiences, and the experiences of those around me, as a springboard for ideas about what might have been going on in people’s minds and hearts, particularly liberals growing up in those tumultuous times (and, since those days were the heyday of liberalism, a large percentage of those growing up in those times were liberals). I’m trying to be as honest as I can, and some of what I have to say isn’t pretty or noble. The following is not offered as an excuse; rather, it is an attempt at explanation.

The question

This particular post was sparked by a comment by Dean Esmay, found on this thread. His comment is as follows:

What continues to confound me is how many people who were staunchly against the Vietnam War still have not confronted the brutal reality of what our leaving that conflict wrought. The death camps, the millions of refugees who barely made it out alive, the horrors perpetrated on the people by Ho Chi Minh [sic; see this] once he was victorious…

I’d like to try to tackle the difficult question implicit in Dean Esmay’s comment, which, as I see it, is, “Where were you in the mid- to late-70s, oh bleeding-heart Vietnam War protesters? Didn’t the terrible aftermath of the Vietnam War convince you that you had been wrong to work so hard for US withdrawal? And, if so, why not?”

I think this is an excellent, although difficult, question (perhaps all excellent questions are difficult?) I don’t pretend to have a definitive answer–the situation is extremely complex–but this post is my attempt at a response.

Difficulty of facing unintended consequences

The first reason many who were antiwar during the Vietnam era have not really faced up to the negative consequences of their actions for the people of South Vietnam is that it is ordinarily incredibly difficult–for human beings of any stripe, whether liberal or conservative–to admit to an error of that magnitude. It is human nature that most people will do almost anything to avoid doing so. How many people can tolerate the terrible irony of having (in most cases, with the best of intentions) inadvertently, and with great naivete, caused the very thing they were desperately trying to prevent–the further suffering of the Vietnamese people? To acknowledge the situation of the South Vietnamese people who were left behind to the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese Communists would be to acknowledge an almost unbearable situation–one in which, like Romeo, whose best friend Mercutio was killed as a result of Romeo’s efforts to stop the fighting (Mercutio: I was hurt under your arm. Romeo: I thought all for the best.), the very thing they had tried to prevent would have occurred as a result of their activism.

Of course, the suffering of the Vietnamese people was not the only concern of those of us who had turned against the war. There was self-interest involved, also. In part 4B I described the weariness and cynicism people had come to feel, over time, about the conduct of what seemed to be an endless war. One of the main goals of the movement against the war was to ensure that no more Americans would have to fight and die in what was perceived (again, rightly or wrongly, but honestly) as a hopeless cause. Who, in the famous words of John Kerry, would want to be the last man to die for a mistake? The answer is: no one, if he indeed was convinced it was a mistake. The protesters were also successful in a related goal, that of ending the draft, which was repealed in 1973, the same year as the US withdrawal from Vietnam.

“It was inevitable”

As I said, it is astoundingly difficult to face up to the unintended negative consequences of actions that were thought to be “for the best.” Fortunately for those who supported the pullout, they didn’t have to face those consequences. There were many ways out of that dilemma. The best way out (and this was one that I took, and that I honestly believed at the time to be true) was that, if someone was firmly convinced (as I was at the time) that South Vietnam would have fallen to the Communists no matter what we had done, then all consequences– however horrific–are seen as inevitable, and therefore unavoidable. They are not seen as a result of the American abandonment of the South Vietnamese, they are seen as a consequence of the failed war itself, and then there is no need to take responsibility for them or feel guilty about them. Rather, one can comfort him/herself with the small solace that, as bad as the results were, things would have been even worse had we continued in a misguided and doomed effort. Even more people would have died, only to reach the same endpoint.

Notice I am not saying the antiwar advocates were correct in their assessment of the inevitability of a Communist takeover of the South. I am merely saying that, at the time, most of us sincerely believed it; and the press, as well as the majority of public figures, were overwhelmingly projecting this opinion in their analyses of the situation. So, given this set of facts, it is understandable that, although most antiwar activists regretted the horrors that followed the American withdrawal, they didn’t see any reason to relate them to their own antiwar efforts.

So, were we correct in thinking the outcome to have been inevitable? I certainly thought so then; I no longer think so today. My change of opinion is based on reading I’ve done on the subject in recent years, post-9/11, and especially around the time of the buildup to the Iraq war. We can argue over this issue ad infinitum (and ad nauseum), but the truth is that no one knows the answer for sure. The important point is that, for those who do still believe it today, it removes a burden of remorse that they would otherwise carry, the burden they would be taking on if they were to accept that they had been mistaken.

Other approaches

There were other approaches to dealing with the problem. One was to simply ignore it. That wasn’t as hard as one might think. After the American involvement was over, my recollection is that the news of Vietnam started to drop off the front pages and the evening news. Now that our own lives and the lives of our loved ones weren’t on the line via the draft, the whole story of the suffering Vietnam people could be allowed to recede into the background and join all the other sad tales of suffering around the globe, becoming part of that vast wail of humanity that we must somehow block out in order to have some joy in our own lives. The effort that a person would have had to have made at the time to learn more about what was happening in Vietnam after the withdrawal, once it no longer was front page in-your-face news, was one that not many people were likely to make. Remember, again, how long the war had been, and how much news we had assimilated over the years; how many hopes dashed, how many fears felt and horrors viewed. People were only too happy to have Vietnam recede into the background after all those terrible years of concern.

Is this callous? Yes. Is it admirable? No. But it’s also a normal and self-preservative fact of human nature. And, because of the concomitant “it was inevitable” idea, it’s easy to see why there seemed to be no point in dwelling any longer on what could not be helped.

Another way some people (a much smaller number) dealt with it all was to see the stories of what was going on in Vietnam after we withdrew as an exaggeration or a lie. These people felt that the situation wasn’t really all that bad; that the Vietnamese people, as John Kerry had famously stated, didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. To those who believed this, they felt it was just a tiny proportion of the South Vietnamese people who were suffering; and that most people didn’t care what form of government they had, they were just happy to see peace at least.

Then there was that minority on the very far left who believed Ho and the Communists to be heroes. Sure, they said, there was a little suffering going on in South Vietnam when the Communists took over, but it was just on the part of the people who had been our capitalist imperialist lackeys. And it was all OK, anyway, because, in the end, the society that was being built would be a better one. After all, when making an omelet, you have to break some eggs, right? The numbers who felt this way were small–but they existed, and they still exist. To them, there was, and is, nothing to rationalize or explain. To them, the fall of Saigon was not a fall at all; it was an ascension.

So, we have a wide variety of reactions, explanations, and rationalizations, some more acceptable than others. As I said previously, I personally have come to believe that there was at least a fair chance that Vietnamization might have worked, had we not pulled the financial rug out from under the ARVN. I also believe that, by the time the decision to cut funding was made, most of us were so demoralized, so weary of a lengthy process of killing that seemed interminable and endless, so confused about what the Vietnamese people themselves wanted, and so uncertain of what the outcome would be, that we simply were tired. We wanted out, and we were going to get out, and so we did. I personally feel a deep and terrible sense of regret about what happened, and about my own inability to see what was happening more clearly.

Here is an article I came across the other day, on the fall of South Vietnam. Please read the whole thing, although it’s long. I’m not a historian, and I’m sure there are people who will question the story detailed in this article. But, if it is true (and I have found as yet no reason to doubt it), it is beyond chilling. I want to draw your attention in particular to the phrase “little-known battle;” by the time the events described here were occurring (1975), few in the US were paying much attention, because we no longer had much of a military presence in Vietnam. The events described were a violation of the Paris Peace Accords by the North Vietnamese, who were emboldened by the fact that they knew the US had lost the will to do fight, or to assist the South Vietnamese in fighting.

The little-known battle for Phuoc Long was one of the most decisive battles of the war, for it marked the U.S. abandonment of its erstwhile ally to its fate. Le Duan’s “resolution” had been all too correct. In the face of this flagrant violation of the Paris Accords–and it was deliberately designed to be flagrant so as to clearly test U.S. resolve–President Gerald Ford pusillanimously limited his response to diplomatic notes. North Vietnam had received the green light for the conquest of South Vietnam.

From the same article, here is an exchange between the author, whose task it was to negotiate the terms of the American withdrawal with the North Vietnamese, and a North Vietnamese colonel. Read it and weep.

“You know you never beat us on the battlefield,” I said to Colonel Tu, my NVA counterpart.
“That may be so,” he said, “but it is also irrelevant.”

Lessons learned from Vietnam: all that is necessary to win a war against the US is to turn domestic public opinion against it, even if you are militarily outclassed, even if you are defeated in every battle. It’s a lesson that was not lost on our current opponents. In a sense, our recent task in Iraq has been to reverse that perception, to finally learn the lesson of what happened so long ago and far away.

Vietnam and Iraq are very different countries, and these are very different wars, but there is one thing that is a constant–the paramount importance of the battle for public opinion in the United States. Oddly enough, even some of the players have been the same: John Kerry, for instance.

So, in closing, here is John Kerry, speaking on the topic of what will happen in South Vietnam after we withdraw. It is taken from the transcript of his debate with the very young and skinny John O’Neill, which took place on the June 30, 1971 Dick Cavett show. I offer it as a good example of the mindset that lulled some of us into believing all would be well.

MR. CAVETT: No one has said that there’ll be a bloodbath if we pull out, which is a cliche we used to hear a lot. Does either of you still think there would be a—

MR. O’NEILL: I think if we pull out prematurely before a viable South Vietnamese government is established, that the record of the North Vietnamese in the past and the record of the Viet Cong in the area I served in at Operation [unintelligible] clearly indicates that’s precisely what would happen in that country.

MR. CAVETT: That’s a guess, of course.

MR. KERRY: I—

MR. O’NEILL: I’d say that their record at Thua, at Daq Son [phonetic spelling], at a lot of other places, pretty clearly indicate that’s precisely what would happen. Obviously, in Thua, we’ve discovered, how many, 5,700 graves so far, at Daq Son four or five hundred.

MR. KERRY: The true fact of the matter is, Dick, that there’s absolutely no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath. There’s no guarantee that there wouldn’t. One has to, obviously, conjecture on this. However, I think the arguments clearly indicate that there probably wouldn’t be. First of all, if you read back historically, in 1950 the French made statements – there was a speech made by, I think it was General LeClerc, that if they pulled out, France pulled out, then there would be a bloodbath. That wasn’t a bloodbath. The same for Algeria. There hasn’t been. I think that it’s really kind of a baiting argument. There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw.

Many people listened to this debate and heard what they wanted to hear, which is that it would be better if we pulled out, better for everyone. To the best of my recollection, I was one of those people. I didn’t like Kerry, even then–something about his air of slightly bored, unctuous superiority rubbed me the wrong way–but O’Neill seemed foolishly and naively optimistic. At the time, it seemed that the world-weary, war-weary Kerry was the winner of the debate. Now it’s he (and, by implication,we) who sounds like the naive fool.

[ADDENDUM: For the next post in the series, Part 4C, go here.]

Oh give me a tennis court, where the buffalo roam

The New Neo Posted on by

One’s an anomaly, two may be a trend. First there were those elephants in the Seoul restaurant, now we have a herd of buffalo on a suburban Baltimore tennis court.

Apparently, like girls (and the rest of us), large mammals just want to have fun. Take in a restaurant every now and then, play a friendly game of tennis–it seems a small thing to ask. Note, too, that the tennis court is in an “upscale” neighborhood–these guys know the good life when they see it.