Movin' on now...no, really.

[muckefuck]

Why did I struggle to formulate a reply to Mr Seat-Warmer when James Lileks had already done it?

I am struck once again by the incomparable hold VIETNAM has over some people. They don’t seem to realize how the use of this inapt example demonstrates their inability to grasp the nature of new and different conflicts. When I was in college, El Salvador was Vietnam. When I was in Washington, Kuwait was Vietnam. Afghanistan was briefly Vietnam when we hadn’t won the war after a week. It’s Warholian: in the future, all conflicts will be Vietnam for 15 minutes.

Vietnam was an anomaly. Vietnam was perhaps the least typical war we’ve ever fought, but somehow it’s become the Gold Standard for wars – because, one suspects, it became inextricably bound up with Nixon, that black hole of human perfidy, and it coincided with the golden glory years of so many old boomers who now clog the arteries of the media and academe. A gross overgeneralization, I know. But it’s a fatal conceit. If you’re always fighting the last war you’ll lose the next one. Even worse: Vietnam was several wars ago.

Every time I discuss the current conflict with a boomer, I know they're going to bring up Vietnam. It's utterly predictable and inevitable. It was so refreshing to hear the naysayers in Afghanistan bring up the British invasion for a change. At last! A germane comparison instead of the same old hammer being brought out again to pound yet another pointy thing that looks strikingly like a nail if you happened to be in college in the late 60's or early 70's.

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

My current fear with the Vietnam analogy, though, (apart from the sheer self-fulfilling defeatism of it) is that there is one very destructive message I think people might be preparing to lift from it. Boomers have very nearly collectively sanctified themselves for causing the American pull-out from Vietnam; if you bring up how that may have been the best likely outcome under the circumstances for the U.S., but was pretty horrible for the South Vietnamese (not to mention Cambodia), the answer is "Well, the U.S. should never have been there in the first place, so that isn't our fault." If you consider how much success in Iraq may ultimately be a matter of will and commitment, then it's clear that a similar willingness to reject corporate and ongoing responsibility for the outcome of U.S. military intervention is one possible disastrous consequence of a change of administration. Kerry vacillates between "we broke it, we have to fix it" and "what a mess they have gotten us into", depending on the day of the week, apparently. Beating down the Vietnam analogy until it is dead and lying in the gutter strikes me as a very good idea right now.

(I'm not ignoring your comment in the earlier thread, btw; I find I want to go off on a number of tangents in talking about it, but the home computer is needed for actual paying work right now, so I can't write much of anything substantive until the weekend).