Title: Mcgowanjm Wire 2012 Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Feb 26, 2012 Author:Various Post Date:2012-02-26 09:15:13 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:1370221 Comments:2390
("Word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units," wrote Marine historian Col. Robert Heinl, Jr., in 1971. "In one such division... fraggings during 1971 have been authoritatively estimated to be running about one a week.")
Still, credit must be given. Increasingly poorly remembered, Vietnam is now one for the ages. After so many years, Afghanistan has finally emerged as a quagmire beholden to no other war. What an achievement! Our moment, Afghanistan included, has proven so extreme, so disastrous, that it’s finally put the unquiet ghost of Vietnam in its grave.
And here’s the miracle: it has all happened without anyone in Washington grasping the essence of that now-ancient defeat, or understanding a thing.
The "lessons of Vietnam," fruitlessly discussed for five decades, taught Washington so little that it remains trapped in a hopeless war on the Eurasian mainland, continues to pursue a military-first policy globally that might even surprise American leaders of the Vietnam era, has turned the planet into a "free fire zone," and considers military power its major asset, a first not a last resort, and the Pentagon the appropriate place to burn its national treasure.
After Vietnam, the U.S. at least took a few years to lick its wounds.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com.
