Damn, that sings...
See Stabbed in the back for a marvellously incisive review of the efforts to tar Kerry, Winter Soldier, and whitewash Vietnam... brief quote:
Been in the Vietnam zone the last little while, working through stuff on Winter Soldier and human rights violations in general, as time permits... general impression: the writer above pretty much nails it. Winter Soldier had a flaw or two, a lie or two, and some slightly overheated rhetoric. But it was a pretty damn overheated situation, folks, with a lot of blood on the floor. And the overall picture painted is borne out by multiple sources. Human rights violations and war crimes on the part of US military personnel do appear to have been fairly common, and were frequently encouraged by official policy, whether or not that was the stated intent of those policies. It's difficult with the passage of years to verify the individual accounts (more than a hundred) given, but again, they do fit a context independently confirmed. The post above quotes the US army's own human rights people (see study here, referencing My Lai but giving also an overall context, and context as cause) with good reason... see the comments on Westmoreland's 'meatgrinder' especially.
I know this might seem ancient history to some (it ain't, it's more like 35 years ago, and that's far from ancient), but more and more, I come to think: this does matter. If this bunch thinks they can chase away a man who once stood up and declared his opposition to such atrocities, by shouting him down, declaring him a traitor, the outcome is: nothing was learned here. Millions dead (including some sixty thousand Americans) in an inhuman conflict, and this bunch is still trying to sweep their own and their nation's part in it under the carpet...
I fear for our civilization if they succeed.
The revisionists on the right want to paint Kerry as a radical activist who opposed the war and sullied the military to forward his ambitions. They want to discourage the investigations into the abuses and scandals of their adventure in Iraq, as illustrated by the shameful comments from Sen. Inhofe described here. They also have the hidden agenda of slurring the entire left in their invocation of a new “stabbed in the back” mythology. Already, as they see both their hopes for retaining the White House and their hallucination of Middle East gunboat democracy fade, they are starting to re-interpret events to run from their own mistakes and fantasies, as evidenced by the shameful distortions of Safire and Podhoretz... The motivations for this “stabbed in the back” fallacy are the same as they were in Germany: to escape the consequences of their own mistakes and miscalculations, and to mislead the public by manipulating their fears and prejudices. The right wing militarists used their "stabbed in the back" libel to take control of German politics and drag it into the horror and shame of WWII. Allowing our present day revisionists to create a new "stabbed in the back" slander, whether it refers to Vietnam, Iraq, or Abu Ghraib, would be the real disgrace.Damn. That sings.
Been in the Vietnam zone the last little while, working through stuff on Winter Soldier and human rights violations in general, as time permits... general impression: the writer above pretty much nails it. Winter Soldier had a flaw or two, a lie or two, and some slightly overheated rhetoric. But it was a pretty damn overheated situation, folks, with a lot of blood on the floor. And the overall picture painted is borne out by multiple sources. Human rights violations and war crimes on the part of US military personnel do appear to have been fairly common, and were frequently encouraged by official policy, whether or not that was the stated intent of those policies. It's difficult with the passage of years to verify the individual accounts (more than a hundred) given, but again, they do fit a context independently confirmed. The post above quotes the US army's own human rights people (see study here, referencing My Lai but giving also an overall context, and context as cause) with good reason... see the comments on Westmoreland's 'meatgrinder' especially.
I know this might seem ancient history to some (it ain't, it's more like 35 years ago, and that's far from ancient), but more and more, I come to think: this does matter. If this bunch thinks they can chase away a man who once stood up and declared his opposition to such atrocities, by shouting him down, declaring him a traitor, the outcome is: nothing was learned here. Millions dead (including some sixty thousand Americans) in an inhuman conflict, and this bunch is still trying to sweep their own and their nation's part in it under the carpet...
I fear for our civilization if they succeed.
posted by AJM at 10:31 p.m. (Permanent Link)
