It ill behoves an administration led by two who assiduously avoided the Vietnam War to lecture the nation now on the lessons of its consequences. President George W. Bush said last week that those who succumbed to calls to end the war would be responsible for the same tragedies that the end of Indochina wars unleashed.
"Will today’s generation of Americans resist the allure of retreat?" he asked. Or will we bug out and leave Iraq to Khmer Rouge-like horrors?
For those of us who spent some years in Indochina, living through that drawn-out catastrophe, there are indeed parallels with today. The President’s rousing claim that "a free Iraq" is within our reach is the same drivel as was the "light at the end of the tunnel" to a previous generation.
Robert McNamara, the Donald Rumsfeld of the Vietnam War, admitted, even tearfully, years afterward that we had little business sending soldiers to die in a country where we knew so little about its culture or history. Of course there were knowledgeable people who tried to tell McNamara, but, like Rumsfeld, he had his own illusions of American military capability, and didn’t want to hear anything that ran counter to his preconceived conceptions.
There are parallels in the arrogance and hubris of those whom David Halberstam called the "best and the brightest," the men President Lydon B. Johnson inherited from John Kennedy — smart to a fault and, like Paul Wolfowitz and his soulmates, totally wrong. There are parallels in the corrupt and ineffectual leaders that America tried to prop up in Saigon, then, and in Baghdad today. In the end they were always handicapped by being seen as lackeys to a foreign power.
Nationalism and patriotism, two powerful forces in Indochina as they are in Iraq today, always favoured the other side. The US presence, and the destruction that is the natural business of foreign armies, could always create more recruits for the other side than we could kill.
The calls in Congress, and by presidential hopefuls, to dump Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, because he is following his own interests instead of the interests of the United States, reminds me of the efforts to unseat President Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. At first, Washington had praised Diem to the skies, but when he didn’t do things our way he had to go. Our efforts succeeded. He was murdered in a coup, but neither the war nor the political situation improved for us.
There are parallels in the ability of US troops to clear, hold, and build in any given area for a while, but the moment the Americans are gone the other side moves back in. In most cases the other side was never absent — just lying low.
I was amazed after the Henry Kissinger-negotiated ceasefire in Vietnam, when I travelled in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, that areas we had considered to be safely on our side raised the Viet Cong flag. All the schools we had built, the hospitals, the roads we had used as benchmarks of our success meant nothing.
We can win every battle and yet lose the war. Does anyone really think that we have really won the hearts and minds of Falluja, just because things are comparatively quiet there now?
The President is right that many of us underestimated the consequences of our failure in Indochina, and the consequences of our failure in Iraq will be much worse for us geopolitically and strategically.
But the horror of Cambodia was the result of war, not our leaving it. When societies are torn asunder under the stress of war, dark forces — like diseases when the immune system fails — come to the fore. The Khmer Rouge would never have come to power if the war had not come to Cambodia, any more than Mao would have come to power in China were it not for the Japanese invasion, or Lenin in Russia had it not been for World War I.
But the most important parallel that Colin Powell, and others, learned from Vietnam is that the American public will not sustain a war that drags on for years with no discernible progress.
Historians may one day write that the Iraq War was lost right after Baghdad fell and we failed to stop the disintegration of the country. It’s too late to speak of winning now. We should be concentrating on mitigating the failure.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
MEN r Women
It is very possible that after the public revelation of this article I would be ambushed by a frightening group of women in their mid-thirties, possessing mediocre grooming habits, and lethargic husbands: a group that calls itself the Feminist Mafia. But, I dont care. Its more important to me that the truth is divulged; the truth that has been kept a secret for centuries by generations of trained fighters known as WO-Men (Warriors Obliterating Men); the truth which, when revealed, would change the course of life as we know it today; the truth that men's lives are so much worse than women's lives.
Boyhood is not just about being stupid and breaking stuff. It also involves the very traumatic experience of trying to negotiate with the baggage of gender guilt thats thrust upon you by the women around you. The thrusting of the gender guilt, at such an early age, is, of course, the primary psychological weapon in the artillery of the Warriors Obliterating Men. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters-they all seem to mutter the same guilt-inducing line when faced with any problem: Oh, why should you bother? Youre a male. Were the ones who have to endure it. Its not so much the words as its the tone of their voice that fills you, the little boy, with a gnawing feeling of culpability. There starts the journey of the demoralized man whos forcibly made a part of a generalization that he doesnt care much about.
However, the contrast between the truth and the generalization is as stark as the difference between a car and a car salesman. Men do not have better lives than women just because women say we do. One example that all women cite is the mans gift to pee standing up. Let me tell you something, its not all that its hyped up to be. In fact, it could be downright harrowing on certain occasions. Men do not enjoy the privacy of a separate stall when they go to a public restroom like women do. All we get are half a dozen contraptions mounted on the wall that to someone with a reasonably active imagination would look like the beaks of really large pelicans. But the really disturbing part lies in how close the half a dozen pelican beaks are to each other. And the only thing that separates you and the peer next to you is a thin rectangular partition thats nowhere near as tall as it should be. Can you imagine the trauma of having to pray for a guy who's shorter than you pee next to you every time you visit the restroom to relieve yourself? We'd much rather spend a few extra seconds pulling down our pants than having to be on surveillance mode every time nature calls. But, of course, women will never understand because they re the ones who have to endure it.
Another bane of being a woman, they say, is having to deal with that time of the month which makes her cranky, emotional, and depressed. Well, let me inform you women that we men undergo similar phases as well, but on a level way more intense than you could fathom. A woman couldnt possibly comprehend how cranky, vulnerable, and suicidal a man can get for a stretch of time as long as even a year whenever the Indian Cricket Team goes and makes a mess of a match that they should have won blindfolded. Forget the monthly mess, ladies, this one bugs us every minute of every hour of every day we live. Therefore, women have their womens problems and we guys have the Indian Cricket Team. You tell me which is worse.
What Ive revealed so far is merely the tip of the iceberg. Although, I feel its safe to assume that men all over the world are wising up to the real truth. Never again should we drop our heads in shame and walk away tongue-tied when a woman tells us that we have it good. We should stand up and bravely put ourselves down. Dont let any woman tell you that youre happier than them; stand your ground and prove to them that youre more depressed than Vincent Van Goghs optician. And if they corner you and pull out their trump card- the labor pain card- smile back confidently at them, take your cap off and show them the huge bald spot thats staring back with a vengeance.
Boyhood is not just about being stupid and breaking stuff. It also involves the very traumatic experience of trying to negotiate with the baggage of gender guilt thats thrust upon you by the women around you. The thrusting of the gender guilt, at such an early age, is, of course, the primary psychological weapon in the artillery of the Warriors Obliterating Men. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters-they all seem to mutter the same guilt-inducing line when faced with any problem: Oh, why should you bother? Youre a male. Were the ones who have to endure it. Its not so much the words as its the tone of their voice that fills you, the little boy, with a gnawing feeling of culpability. There starts the journey of the demoralized man whos forcibly made a part of a generalization that he doesnt care much about.
However, the contrast between the truth and the generalization is as stark as the difference between a car and a car salesman. Men do not have better lives than women just because women say we do. One example that all women cite is the mans gift to pee standing up. Let me tell you something, its not all that its hyped up to be. In fact, it could be downright harrowing on certain occasions. Men do not enjoy the privacy of a separate stall when they go to a public restroom like women do. All we get are half a dozen contraptions mounted on the wall that to someone with a reasonably active imagination would look like the beaks of really large pelicans. But the really disturbing part lies in how close the half a dozen pelican beaks are to each other. And the only thing that separates you and the peer next to you is a thin rectangular partition thats nowhere near as tall as it should be. Can you imagine the trauma of having to pray for a guy who's shorter than you pee next to you every time you visit the restroom to relieve yourself? We'd much rather spend a few extra seconds pulling down our pants than having to be on surveillance mode every time nature calls. But, of course, women will never understand because they re the ones who have to endure it.
Another bane of being a woman, they say, is having to deal with that time of the month which makes her cranky, emotional, and depressed. Well, let me inform you women that we men undergo similar phases as well, but on a level way more intense than you could fathom. A woman couldnt possibly comprehend how cranky, vulnerable, and suicidal a man can get for a stretch of time as long as even a year whenever the Indian Cricket Team goes and makes a mess of a match that they should have won blindfolded. Forget the monthly mess, ladies, this one bugs us every minute of every hour of every day we live. Therefore, women have their womens problems and we guys have the Indian Cricket Team. You tell me which is worse.
What Ive revealed so far is merely the tip of the iceberg. Although, I feel its safe to assume that men all over the world are wising up to the real truth. Never again should we drop our heads in shame and walk away tongue-tied when a woman tells us that we have it good. We should stand up and bravely put ourselves down. Dont let any woman tell you that youre happier than them; stand your ground and prove to them that youre more depressed than Vincent Van Goghs optician. And if they corner you and pull out their trump card- the labor pain card- smile back confidently at them, take your cap off and show them the huge bald spot thats staring back with a vengeance.
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