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Following this article by Donald Trump (ill advised) criticizing the military record of Richard Blumenthal and this exchange of letters of readers, several other answers. I do not plan an open forum on the memories of all the countries of Vietnam, but I think they offer a wide range of perspectives. More ahead
From a recent veteran:
It is fascinating for me, a millennial veteran, whose service was similar to Al Gore's, to see the baby boomers' reactions to the decisions made during the Vietnam era.
In short, I can draw a straight line between September 11th and my decision to serve. But I also made my decision in response to the "Support Our Troops" marches in March 2003 regarding a theater of which I was morally ambiguous (but I did not oppose it at the time). time). I can also draw a straight line of my service to my cynicism with military and neo-American politics.
The contributions of your readers show how much the time of the fully volunteer army has changed. The Vietnam War is still a very controversial topic, while I do not know how many people will talk seriously about Iraq – it's so esoteric for most Americans. On the other hand, after practicing the sport in a base abroad, the experience of the baseball player blows me a little. It is good to know that the army has changed for the better in some ways.
There were two other points of your first reader that I find interesting. The first is:
"By the mid-sixties, it was clear that Vietnam was a crime, a mistake and an accidental disaster. was this morally ambiguous position?
Yes, I still think the Vietnam War was and is a morally ambiguous moment in American history. Better thinkers than I have written to defend America's involvement, so I will not go back on their arguments. However, I also have the greatest respect for those who opposed the war. MLK and Muhammad Ali showed a courage that did not exist at the time of Iraq with an all-volunteer army.
But that brings me back to the other fascinating thing: the citation of your inability to influence national politics. What's crazy is that you had an impact on national politics! The Vietnam War is over. That's how democracy should work – an anti-war movement shook a big political party and pulled us out of a fight that we did not lose because our commitment did not match what our country should represent.
Once again, this has not happened in today's wars. They are endless, no one has enough skin to hold large-scale protests, and the DOD has largely isolated the civilian way of exposure to wars rather than openly debating the question of how use American power. They talk about an Afghan Viceroy at the White House!?
You wrote about how the war in Iraq was much less defensible than Vietnam, but our preparation for the war was an unstoppable one-year process. There was no incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, just a highly covered invasion and 14 years of mission around the world because people are afraid of terrorism.
I do not want to be nostalgic about Vietnam's civil-military relations, nor do I intend to present Vietnam as a positive counterpoint to our present situation. More Americans died at that time, members of the return service had a much less positive experience than me, and your baseball contributor has highlighted the garbage that has accumulated in a large army of conscripts. But I think we can and must learn a lot from Vietnam and the last 16 years as we struggle to best apply American power in the present and the future, and how to control American power with American democracy.
***
On the origins of the term "Chickenhawk". An ecclesiastic writes:
I have long been an admirer of Michael Kinsley. I believe, however, that Mr. Kinsley did not use the term "chickenhawk". I believe that Andy Jacobs, who was for many years a member of the Indiana Congress while I was at DePauw University and later young Indianapolis, first coined the term.
I remember hearing Mr. Jacobs use this term at a public meeting in his district (he was my representative) in 1983, in reference to the Nicaraguan Congress and other mishaps of the Reagan era.
***
Moral ambiguities of service in Vietnam. A reader who has served in Vietnam writes:
Like many of my generation, I did my university studies in the 1960s (1963-1967), receiving annual reports of projects and not paying much attention to their receipt. As a young student in 1963, I'm not sure I heard about Vietnam, recalling that the cover of Time had stories about Laos. Of course, in the spring of 1967, we all knew Vietnam.
As a graduate student in 1967-1968, carryovers continued and then came to a sudden halt after the Tet offensive in 1968 and the capture of North Korea in North Korea. Pueblo. …
I finally got a notice in the spring of 1969 while still in graduate school and I went to basic training in June 1969 and I finally landed in Vietnam in August 1970. When I witnessed, as most of these formations for the infantry were non-white soldiers. At the time, it was clear to me that the project had mostly attracted people who were unable to search for an emergency exit, which meant above all people from white minority and low income families.
Interestingly, during the basic training at Fort Bragg in the summer of 1969, there were more than a few graduate students and law students who had completed two years of law school before being drafted. [or perhaps enlisting in advance of the draft].
What I write to you in writing these comments is that I have long resolved in my mind the conflict over how some of my members were avoiding service in Vietnam or had not done otherwise. We have observed that this issue has resurfaced from time to time over the years – often dealing with presidential politics with candidates who would have been eligible under the draft in the 1960s.
Life was sometimes unfair before Vietnam and continued so after. In recent years, I have had conversations with some of my contemporaries who missed the project, which was a general uneasiness to discuss the whole issue of Vietnam and the project. I do not talk about it in these conversations. I think we should consider restoring the military project, but doubt will occur.
***
"Scorn" is wrong. A note I quoted yesterday said that many returning soldiers "deserved contempt" for agreeing to serve in Vietnam. From one of the many readers who do not agree:
Your reader's judgment of those who have served is too harsh and unfair. "Make fun" of those who knew that the war was false but in any case ignored the extraordinary dilemma that these people, all very young, had to face.
In the first place, the conclusion that the war was "criminal" is at best a highly questionable judgment. False from a strategic and political point of view, of course; maybe even immoral. But criminal?
Secondly, the decision to serve one's country, even by participating in a war with which one does not agree, is a laudable impulse. I do not argue or admire those who refused to serve and who suffered significant sacrifices as a result of this choice. But at the same time, I find no fault with those who obeyed the law, respected the project and served during the war.
(Full Disclosure: I write this as a person enjoying a student respite during my academic years, at the end of which the project had been abandoned.)
***
'You send someone else to fight. What is chickenhawk's policy:
I start by saying that I was briefly in the army during Vietnam. I did not see any fighting in Nam, but I had some experience in a neighboring country involved in the conflict.
Like most young people, I had an extreme vision. I was a conservator of the domino theory. My experiences changed with the value of the war because I saw little chance of achieving our stated purpose. These opinions were reinforced later by the book From a fire in the lake [NotedeJF:parFrancesFitzGeraldbaséeenpartiesursesreportagesduVietnampour[JFnote:byFrancesFitzGeraldbasedinpartonherreportingfromVietnamfor[NotedeJF:parFrancesFitzGeraldbaséeenpartiesursesreportagesduVietnampour[JFnote:byFrancesFitzGeraldbasedinpartonherreportingfromVietnamforL & # 39; Atlantic. ]
For me, "chickenhawk" means that you want to send someone else to fight. That's the problem I have with our policy across jurisdictions, that we're going to send our children to a remote place to reach a nebulous goal. Our leaders can not even clearly define why they send young people to die.
A second problem, and I am charitable, is unintended consequences. We are in the Gulf region to ensure Europe's energy security. The result has been a destabilization of several decades that has created a European dependence on Russian energy.
***
"Child Sacrifice pure and simple". From another Vietnam veterinarian:
I think that's missing a point in the discussion. At the time of the Vietnam War, I was a teenager, too young to leave. Now, much older, I see these "older" people (at the time) who have been in a different light. They were children. I think that "warriors" can be destroyed because they were really children.
The absolute crime of war was that adults rotate 18-year-olds through something like this. After seeing life, his passions can culminate at 18 years old, but the decisions made only really begin at age 30.
One time, I saw a documentary that concluded that 18-year-olds are written because a 25-year-old (who is still physically fit) is too old to buy the kind of nonsense that They are supposed to swallow whole: as if nothing bad would ever happen to them, and killing and dying is somehow heroic and exciting, and that officials know what they're doing.
The war was a sacrifice of children, pure and simple. Nobody should ever think that it was something that happened thousands of years ago and in pagan lands. It was the adults of the time who had blood on their hands.
By the time I arrived at the university, there was the first Arab oil embargo. I remember a renowned academic saying that the country should be ready to wage war on oil. I remember very well that the scientist was old and gray and that he knew perfectly well that it would not go, but that me (or my generation) would be to die of cheap oil. My blood was a price he was willing to pay and I did not think much about him for that.
***
North of the border. A reader on the ramifications for Canada:
Your current [chickenhawk] the use was new to me when you wrote on it two years ago. But in the AA fraternity, a chickenhawk is a "convalescent" alcoholic, usually a man, who caters to teens who arrive, usually teenagers and young men. This usage had been in place for a long time before I first met it in the mid-1980s.
In the discussion of Vietnam, there is an aspect of history that is rarely, if ever, covered by the American media. I was at the university from 1963 to 1968 in Vancouver and I spent the following years as a journalist [across Canada]. The student left in all his factions against the war and Canada's participation in it (via the IOC supervising the DMZ), although something needs to be done about it.
But we were all cleverly involved in the project of welcoming, assisting, and supporting American dodgers and war objectors. We have found places to crash, places to meet, advice and immigration services, only at least in the universities over the next few years, with an overabundance of over-qualified Ivy League graduates. the queue for work. Ungrateful ungrateful.
Maybe that helps explain the overabundance of talented Canucks in the media, music and comedy in the United States: Revenge, you're hanging out at our table and we're going to do the same. I myself am such an ink worker; I married an American girl and I moved to the United States and I spent my career in publishing.
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