(no subject)

[dragonlady7]

my frogs are chubby. mom's a better frog-mother than i am. she feeds them more, anyway.
They're vicious killers, of anything less than two inches long.
Reading another book on Vietnam.
Depressing, I know, but Dad got me a whole stack, and I can't refuse to read them. Well, I can. But then I have to stop complaining that I haven't anything to do.
See... subtle torture.
Or just proof that I am as stubborn about retaining my right to complain as anybody.
Or, I'm really that bored.
Or, I'm really that interested in the topic.
Well, I do like to be informed, and Vietnam is a prominent gap in my knowledge (I almost said promiscuous. Now where the hell did that come from? I'm going senile). Out of vanity, I will choose the last option as being my motivation. Yes, I'm reading these books because I want to know.
I don't want to know enough to attempt the next selection, I don't think-- Volumes I and II of Infantry Tactics in Vietnam, which seems to be all charts and graphs and tables and statistics, with dry analysis. Um. Sorry? Perhaps I'll try and keep my brain working a little longer. Thanks though.
Now I'm working on a book about John Paul Vann, an Army officer who spent a lot of time in Vietnam-- first as an "advisor" in the early-mid sixties, then he quit in protest at how the war was being mishandled, then he came back in a civilian way. He was one of the few to still believe, at the end, that the war could be won. He was killed in action.
The book, by Neil Sheehan, is called A Bright Shining Lie, and was published in 1988 by Vintage Books (a division of Random House Inc.: All publishing companies are owned by other publishing companies. I think there's really only one in the world, that owns all the others, but I haven't found out which one is ascendant. When I do, I will be the only person who knows besides the company president. Maybe then he'll give me a job.) Dad, when handing me the stack of books to occupy myself with, billed this one as "the obligatory one about how evil America is", but I'm not finding that to be the case. So far, it's about 1962, and Vann has realized that the South Vietnamese don't particularly want to win any "war"; they want to terrorize the peasants into submission, and understand what's going on less than the average American does. Which makes the American government's protracted support of them even more meaningless. And all of our actions like this-- if a regime is in danger of being overthrown by a popular rebellion, and us propping it up means given them weapons to shoot their own people, and then we don't like the government so we try to get a new one for it, but there isn't anyone good, so we try to get someone who'll listen to us instead, and end up with a weakling that nobody likes, so we're stuck propping him up against an increasing proportion of the population... and we're supposed to "win"? How could any possible outcome of that situation even be remotely euphemized as "winning"? There's nothing to win!!!
So... I ask you... in what way is Iraq guaranteed not to be a situation like that?

As my dad always argues, the problem is that nobody studies history. We all say "we don't want it to be another Vietnam", and everyone nods their heads; Vietnam was a terrible thing. But what does that mean? To the politicians, "another Vietnam" means "a thing that makes us look really, really bad". To the military, "another Vietnam" means "a thing where we let politicians keep us from actually fighting a war, and then get blamed when we can't win it". To the public, "another Vietnam" means "when our sons get shot and we have no fucking clue why, and only know where because we bought a new atlas and looked it up". So they all take only the most transparent and ephemeral lessons from the whole thing-- for the politicians, they can avoid it by having better PR. For the military, they can avoid it by having a stated objective and other particular organizational quirks. For the public, they can avoid it by... well, their sons get shot no matter what, it's just a question of how good the PR is on the whole thing.
Does it ever occur to anyone that we should try not to jump in headfirst without figuring out how deep the water is and, indeed, whether it's a puddle, a stream, a river, a lake, or an ocean? Whether there are rocks or mud, whether there's a current, whether we need snorkel or scuba equipment, whether there's anything in the water worth finding...
...
I'd just be a lot more supportive of the current government's posturing over Iraq if they demonstrated that they'd learned anything from all our previous (and taxpayer-funded, mind you) mistakes. I mean... yes, Saddam Hussein is a bad man who has done terrible things to his people and could do terrible things to us. But. What will they do without him? Is there any populist movement with a leader that could take over? Is there any possible solution to the chaos that will inevitably spring up once he's removed, that will be better than he is?
Are we even considering these things?

Bush senior was incalculably wiser than Bush junior is. I said I'd leave the country if W. was elected. Why didn't I? Everyone at the art library where I was working wore black on the day that Bush was inaugurated. I thought it was funny.
But, who could have done better?
Perhaps governing this country is, in fact, impossible, and no matter how honest a man was, he'd look like a slobbering imbecile once made President as well. Who knows.
I think I'll become a hermit. If only I could figure out how to be self-sufficient, I wouldn't need any money or anything, and I could just secede from the world.
Hmmmmm.....

Comments

[crakor.livejournal.com]

"Saddam Hussein is a bad man who has done terrible things to his people and could do terrible things to us. But. What will they do without him?"

Ya that was the main issue in the early 90s, We wanted him out, we just don't want Iran to walk into the country once it's gone. Previously Iraq was a nice buffer zone between Iran and those countries we really want to protect (Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc..)