Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Outrage D'Jour Du Mois

Baby boomer nostalgia is bad enough at the best of times, but right now the BS meter is redlining. While the sane people think of this year’s big anniversary as the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day, the Worst Generation are busy celebrating thirty years since the fall of Saigon.

Actually, the Left is remarkably more restrained these days than it used to be in celebrating the victory of the humane and progressive forces of North Vietnam. With other people this could be the first stirrings of a sense of shame, but with Liberals this is merely tactical, a recognition that reminding people that they were once on the same side as vicious Communist psychopaths may negatively impact on their inability to help the West lose our modern day war. Hence, the massive overuse of the passive voice in these ‘Nam reminiscences: they’ll tell us Saigon fell, but they’ll never admit it got a mighty push from the Fourth Estate. But now people who wrote articles about how the blundering US forces could never defeat the brave peasants of the Viet Cong are claiming that the Communist victory just somehow happened.

The most enraging reminisces of all come from those journoweasels who stayed in Saigon. They invite us to marvel at their devil-may-care courage in staying in a city about to fall to murderous Marxist savages, well, real courage would have been writing that at the time. But no, these people scribbled nonsense about ‘agarian reformers’ and the like, but now want us to marvel at their courage in spending several minutes in a city occupied by those self-same ‘agrarian reformers’. And never mind the fact that the people of South Viet Nam couldn’t just hop a plane to somewhere civilised when all that reform got too much.

Everything the Left ever said about Viet Nam was a lie. That’s no surprise, what it was about then is what it’s about now: the Left demonstrating its hatred for Western Civilisation, and if that means carrying water for sadistic Marxist vermin or Islamofascist scum, well, that’s the price you have to pay. Take these examples from the Beeb’s notorious (D)HYS:

The Vietnam War should have taught the Americans that they are not invincible and that technology has limits. However it appears that George Bush has not learned from Vietnam and continues to believe that the Iraq situation will improve some day. Unless American and so called "coalition of the willing" troops remove their noses from the business of others more needless lives and money will be wasted.
Jason K Lee, Toronto, Canada
Here are the limits of technology: the US Army was sent in to destroy the Viet Cong, a mission that was achieved – partially thanks to the disastrous Tet offensive – by mid-1968. The Communists were then forced to rely on North Vietnamese regulars. It took four years before they could mount a major offensive, it took the US less than twenty days to bomb it into the ground. The Communists then signed the Paris Accords ending the war until such time as US forces had withdrawn, they’d rebuilt their strength and a Democrat Congress could be relied upon to stab the South Vietnamese in the back. Nevertheless, during the whole war, the US Army lost nearly 60 000 troops – Hanoi admitted a loss of 1.5 million.

But yes – the US should stop flying airliners into buildings. Wait – that didn’t happen.

One thing I'd like to point out is the 'lesson' the Bush regime learned from the Vietnam war: control as much as possible the information coming from the war zone and your own population will not rebel against the war.
Changcho, California, USA
And here is the basic pathology of the Liberal: the era when the American people were dependent for information on a Triopoly, all providing the same commentary from the same Liberal perspective, was a Golden Age of press freedom, as opposed to now, the era of cable, talk radio and the blogosphere. Everyone knows the Milbloggers are all Rove plants.

It is pathetic that my country has learned nothing from the legacy of Korea and Vietnam. For the last half century, the United States has repeatedly violated the sovereign rights of other nations. It is profoundly ironic that a nation founded on the principle that people have a right to choose their own form of government grew to become a nation that denies this right to other nations.
In each of these unjust, unfounded wars, thousands of innocent civilians have been killed, not to mention the steep cost in lives for American soldiers. And, in every case the "threat" has been specious. Vietnam paid a horrible price for American interference. I wish that the world and particularly America had learned from this, but sadly the lessons have been forgotten.
Kate Treatman-Clark, Annapolis, Maryland, US
Never mind Viet Nam – if the modern Left really can’t distinguish between North and South Korea then no wonder they’re in such an intellectual death spiral. Still, if being conquered by an invading force from a neighbouring country counts as choosing your own form of government then it’s hard to see what the Left’s beef is with Operation Iraq Freedom. Then again, words mean different things to Liberals. Take the idea of a specious threat from Communist expansionism – apparently creating mayhem in Africa and South America, as well as enslaving Eastern Europe and China doesn’t count – mind you, the Left never set much store by what happens ’out there’ anyway. If there’s no anti-Western angle they don’t want to know. That’s why the same journalists who went into a feeding frenzy about My Lai just don’t care about this:

The Vietnam War is always in my mind even. I was little during the war but that war cost me my father. The Vietcong put him in the so-called concentration camp and he never returned home after that. He was killed in that camp due to the lack of medicine, sanitary and human rights. I cannot forgive the Vietnamese communists for taking my father away from me and my family. Who give the Vietcong that right?
Lan, Los Angeles, USA
Tsk! As if Liberals have got time to worry about some slitty-eyed weirdos: Stop being so selfish, we’re busy trying to bring down AmeriKKKa here.

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