From: niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: The draft and Vietnam
Date: 15 Sep 92 17:18:48 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <1992Sep15.061235.3706@anasazi.com> john@anasazi.com writes:
>In article <casseres-140992104641@missmolly.apple.com> casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) writes:
>]In article <1992Sep11.170722.14124@anasazi.com>, john@anasazi.com (John R.
Moore) wrote:

>]> I think it important to point out that [Col. David H. Hackworth] was in VN and
>]> saw how stupidly the war was being prosecuted, but he was not in a position to
>]> determine whether the war was being fought for good ends.

>]Why?  Was he unable to look around him at the behavior of the Saigon
>]government?  If he was not in a position to determine whether the war was
>]being fought for good ends, who was?

>People who realized that the Vietnam War was about containment, not
>about "democracy in Viet Nam."

Maybe he realized that (1) the war was utterly unwinnable, no matter
what our rationale, or that (2) containment in Vietnam was stupid.

>]> In his book (which I have
>]> read), his main argument against the war is that "we weren't really
>]> fighting for the democracy in VN, because it wasn't a democracy." With
>]> this level of unsophisticated analysis, it is hard to take his views
>]> on what was going on in the US (as opposed to VN where he was present) 
>]> very seriously.

>]It certainly did not require any sophistication to observe that there was
>]no democracy in Vietnam.

>No, the lack of sophistication is evidenced by anyone who believes
>that the issue of democracy in Vietnam at the time was germaine.
>In spite of what the politicians of both parties said, VN was
>not about preserving democracy in the South... it was about stopping
>the spread of communism. Vietnam was simply a battleground between the
>US and the Soviet Union.

Maybe he realized that this was a stupid and unreasonable and unworthy goal.

>]> Hack got pissed off at how the war was being fought, 
>]> and translated that illogically into a view that the war should not be
>]> fought.

>]That's an easy assertion to make, but there's no evidence for it.  On the
>]face of what he says himself, he decided the war should not be fought
>]because the regime that it was defending was no damn good.  Where is the
>]illogic?

>Read his book.

>]> That is like being unhappy with how a mechanic is fixing your
>]> car, and concluding from that that the car should not be fixed.

>]No, it isn't.

>Yes, it is.

No, that's like looking at the car, realizing it's unsalvageable, and
concluding that you shouldn't waste thousands of dollars and lots of
time trying to fix it, no matter what your motives are.

>]> This is not to start an argument as to whether the war was correct,
>]> but rather to show that Hackworth's logic is suspect and his knowledge
>]> of what what it was like to be facing the choice in the US is poor.

>]You haven't shown that in any way, and if you claim the Vietnam War was
>]"correct," you're certainly starting an argument.

>As I said, I don't want to argue the "correctness" - we have been
>around and around on that on the net already. I am simply pointing out
>that Hackworth's analysis is shortsighted... you could say that
>he was looking at it from a tactical viewpoint, but missing the
>strategic viewpoint. Whether it made sense from a strategic
>standpoint is indeed something we could argue about, but I would
>rather not. 

>If you insist on getting hung up on the behavior of the regime in
>SVN, we could then start tossing around the behavior of the regime in
>NVN, and later PRVN, but why bother when the behavior of neither
>regime was important in the decision of whether or not to prosecute
>the VN war?

Well, it IS important to the decision, in the long run.  Just as the
behavior of Iran under the Shah was relevant to whether we should support
it...

-- 
David M. Nieporent   | Orioles 1992 World Series Champions
niepornt@phoenix.    | Mike Mussina 1992 AL Cy Young Winner
   princeton.edu     | Brady Anderson 1992 AL MVP
Vote Clinton/Gore '92.   Four more months!
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc