Good morning, Vietnam–
Actually, I detested that movie. But as we have just about reached critical mass with 25-years-after-the-fall-of-Saigon coverage, I welcome your invitation to weigh in. I was a deeply antiwar high-school kid, a McGovern volunteer in a small Republican town. (Alas, not much of a rebel, as my parents were pro-McGovern and antiwar, too.) I remember making calls on McGovern’s behalf to people who would respond, cheerily, that I was “a goddamn Communist.” And this from folks we had rated as “undecided.” I actually had a draft card, one of those weird anomalies from a period when the draft had been abolished, but someone–maybe Jerry Ford, I don’t remember–decided the Selective Service had to be kept intact in order to maintain “readiness.” I later burned it at a college party, in a pot-and-cheap-wine-induced haze.
Anyway, here are my three media snapshots this morning.
1. Newsweek this week offers us the memories of geriatric war criminal Henry Kissinger, which, if I were in a more hyperbolic mood, I might say is analogous to publishing an essay by Pol Pot on the lessons of Cambodia. OK, so Kissinger’s not really a genocidal megalomaniac, but Newsweek’s decision to let a man who helped perpetuate a grotesquely immoral war, and who masterminded the illegal, secret incursion into Cambodia, still borders on the obscene. Kissinger laments the demise of “American exceptionalism”–that is, the notion that the United States is morally superior and must impose its democratic vision on the world. Well, Professor, it’s hard to think of many people who contributed more to that demise than you.
2. William McGurn, the Wall Street Journal’s chief editorial writer, demonstrates this morning that it is possible to know everything and learn nothing. McGurn tells the story of two famous photographs–that of a Viet Cong suspect being executed with one to the head, and that of a young girl, napalmed during a South Vietnamese air raid, running naked and screaming in pain. McGurn notes, correctly, that these photos played a huge role in turning American public opinion against the war–and then tells us the truth: that the suspect had just murdered a policeman, and that the girl, wanting freedom, defected to Canada as an adult years later. In fact, the photos conveyed a far deeper truth than McGurn wants to admit–that Vietnam was a horror, that the U.S. was making it worse, and that innocent people were suffering because of our involvement.
3. Former prisoner of war John McCain is back in Vietnam, a visit the New York Times covers in some detail this morning. Slate’s Timothy Noah asks why McCain’s trip is getting so much press, given that this is hardly his first trip back to the Hanoi Hilton. It’s a good question, but equally interesting, it seems to me, is the question of what McCain is running for, and why the media–to repeat an absurdity uttered by the normally astute Joe Klein on MSNBC the other night–continue to believe that McCain is “the most popular politician in the country.” Well, McCain can be president of New Hampshire and Michigan, I guess, but at the end of the day the still-infatuated media have to look at the numbers. And the numbers show that McCain wasn’t very popular at all.
Back to the lessons of Vietnam re Colombia, an issue you raised yesterday. 1) We should stay the hell out, of course. 2) Even a draft-dodging antiwar president has failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. Pretty discouraging, don’t you think?
Peace,
Dan
