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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
Caged Bird: "Tony Blankley Says Iraq More Important than Vietnam"
Labels: Iraq, Vietnam, wingnuttery
And to think they call them "jolly"
Thanks to Caged Bird for this incredible find!
On the McLaughlin Group program aired on Sunday, 4/1/2007 Tony Blankley described the ultimate sacrifice of 58,209 Americans in Vietnam with this declaration:MR. BLANKLEY: The Iraq war is much more important than Vietnam. Losing Vietnam did not create the kind of world danger that losing Iraq would. So we can't afford to lose Iraq, even though we could eventually, as it proved out, afford to lose Vietnam.
Seated next to Blankley was Pat Buchanan. Buchanan did not object to the characterization of Vietnam as less important than Iraq. Pat Buchanan sat mute. I expected outrage that Blankley could blithely and dismissively reduce the tragedy that is still Vietnam to a cost/benefit equation. I disappointed that no one called him on it. I was appalled that no one reminded Bucahanan of his complicity in the justification of the Vietnam War.
Fortunately, we have Buchanan's own words . Buchanan is quite voluble about the treason of those in opposition of his rationale for the war and those who disagreed that we could afford the cost of the 200,000 killed or wounded and the net future value of their families.
McLaughlin archive
- posted by Caged Bird
Book Excerpt: Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland"
All Hail Perlstein
As a get-well gift to Steve Gilliard, whom I admire profoundly and who has taught me much about military affairs, I offer the following excerpt from my forthcoming book Nixonland on one of his favorite subjects: the collapse of the American military in the field in Vietnam.
With best wishes for a speedy recovery.
- Rick Perlstein
On February 8, 1971-...20,000 ARVN troops poured over Laos's border. The B-52s, F-110s, and F-4 had made their way smooth, and for a good ten days they marched without real Communist resistance, a splendid romp: confirmation of the wisdom of Vietnamization, Time reported noting the prowess of the ARVN's "crack" First Division.
Then the tide turned.
Forty thousand Communist troops counterattacked in waves. The counterattack was made easier by the the fact that South Vietnam's President Thieu, the keeper of the tiger cages at Con Son, hoped to have as few ARVN casualties as possible so the army could protect him against any potential coup, so he ordered his general to let them rest for five days--in a military operation that depended on speed. Two determined Communist divisions hammered them mercilessly. Nixon, panicking, demanded, "We must claim victory regardless of the outcome." The military objective was to be the Laotian town of Tchepone, a stronghold for Ho Chi Minh since the French fought in Vietnam in the 1950s, the "hub of the Ho Chi Minh Trail."
Nixon came up with a plan: "It would be a great public relations coup if the ARVN actually reached Tchepone."
So they scripted a military dumbshow: two thousand bedraggled South Vietnamese soldiers were airlifted to the town, whose once fearsome anti-aircraft batteries--and every building besides--had already been pounded into rubble by U.S. ordnance. William Rogers and President Thieu both announced a famous victory. Dutifully, the press reported one: "Major Victory by South Viets," rhapsodized the always gung-ho Chicago Tribune; "Viets Overrun Key Laos Base," reported the usually skeptical Chicago Daily News.
In fact ARVN radio frequencies were commandeered by the North Vietnamese, who used them to call in American salvos against ARVN positions, and the "crack" ARVN units hugged the skids of the helicopters that had inserted them into battle rather than fight....
Among radicals the Laos offensive did not result in widespread protest: just the bombing of the Capitol privy, an occupation of the Stanford computer building led by the Maoist Melville scholar H. Bruce Franklin, some fires at the new University of California campus at Santa Cruz, little else. The really dangerous protests were all in Southeast Asia. On March 20, along Route 9 by the Laos border, a captain ordered two platoons to wade into heavy enemy fire and retrieve one of the downed helicopters and armored vehicles providing rear support the ARVN "advance." The platoons refused to budge: why fight for these cowards who clasped onto the skids of retreating helicopters instead of fighting themselves? A lieutenant colonel arrived pleaded with them, then ordered them: Fifty-three still refused, and also refused his order to provide their names. No disciplinary action was taken. The brass's fear now was that the mutiny would spread company-, battalion-, or brigade-wide. The American Army was collapsing in the field. "I just work hard at surviving so I can go home and protest the killing," explained one G.I.
Soldiers wrote semi-seditious slogans on their flak jackets and helmet headliners ("The unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary, for the ungrateful"; "Eat the apple, fuck the Corps"). In basic training, at Fort Bliss, where soldiers were calling commanding officers by their first name, they passed practically through anyone who promised that wouldn't go absent without leave (AWOLs went up fivefold between 1966 and 1971). In country, soldiers caught in infractions responded: "What are they going to do about it, send me to 'Nam?" They used to arrest soldiers who attended off-base protest rallies. But if they did that now military police would do little else.
Life had first reported on the new G.I. protest movement in May of 1969: the off-base anti-war coffeehouses; the underground newspapers; the terror all of it struck in the hearts of the military establishment. The Student Mobilization Committee opened a G.I. Press Service, mailing bundles of anti-war newsletters--including legal options for soldiers who'd like to resist--to a list of 300 active-duty G.I.s. The first combat refusals began. Scotty Reston wrote on August 27, 1969: Nixon "has been worried about the revolt of the voters over Vietnam against the war...but now he also has to consider the possibility of a revolt of the men if he risks their lives in a war he has decided to bring to a close." He was paraphrasing a common soldiers' lament, especially among draftees: now that Washington was talking about getting rid of the draft, which of them would be the last to die for a war even the President seemed to admit was a mistake?
After the October Moratorium, a sergeant wrote on behalf of his infantry company: "the Moratorium had wide support. It was, in fact, very much a morale builder. The men are intelligent enough to realize that the peace demonstrations are on their behalf.... While many wore black arm bands for the October 15 Moratorium, they are for the large part prevented from demonstrating their feelings on the war." Life then interviewed one hundred soldiers throughout South Vietnam. That revealed that "many soldiers regard the organized antiwar campaign in the U.S. with open and outspoken sympathy," and "are not demoralizing troops in the field." One private said, "I think the protesters may be the only ones who really give a damn about what's happening."
Monkey-wrenching was epidemic. Psy-ops officers who knew Vietnamese rewrote propaganda leaflets to condemn the Saigon government. Aircraft carrier crews grounded planes. Government-issued amphetamines--"speed," an epidemic of which was destroying the counterculture in Height-Asbhury--meant to keep soldiers alert on patrols, were gobbled recreationally. So many were smoking put (it traded for tobacco cigarettes at an exact one-to-one exchange rate) that the Army started cracking down. So, just like in the Haight, most moved on to heroin, smoked in cigarettes. It was odorless, one soldier noted, so "I can salute an officer with one hand and take a drag of heroin with the other."
Myth and reality
Recently people have commented that they'd like to see a general strike or a new anti-war movement, and frankly that amused me.
Because if you want to talk about living in the past, a fictional past, that's a good way to start.
Let's state the obvious: the anti-war movement failed. Badly.
It alienated the middle class, it failed to gain any congressional victories and anti-war legislators were defeated (Al Gore,Sr, Ralph Yarborough)while US troops were in Vietnam. It also led to two Nixon elections.
While many may feel some misty colored memories for the antiwar movement, it's mostly nostalgia. People say "we stopped the war" and I nearly have to laugh out loud. They didn't stop shit.
So how did the Vietnam War end?
The US Army stopped working.
By 1971, the US Army was rife with drug abuse, racial tension, and an inability to function in combat. Soldiers took to monkey wrenching the system. People want to give credit to a GI movement, but there is no evidence that other than writing newspapers and reflecting low morale, that it did anything to end the war.
The reality is that the soldiers opted for passive resistance, sometimes violent resistance. They wouldn't patrol, they would cover for people living off post, they would alter forms. In some cases, you had combat refusals or combat avoidance.
Even fragging has been overblown. Most of the violent assaults were committed by rear eschalon troops in disputes over drugs or race.
In 1970 this is the number of stockade rebellions in the US Army
1970
January
* Fort Carson - Sick-call.
January 28
* Great Lakes Naval Training Center - On-base riot.
March 2
* Mannheim Brig - Stockade rebellion.
March 13
* Mannheim Brig - Stockade rebellion.
April
* Stanford University - ROTC building damaged by fire.
* Fort Polk - Stockade rebellion.
April 9
* Berkeley - Anti-ROTC demonstration turns into riot.
April 15
* Fort Carson - Sick call.
* Fort Dix SPD - Sick call.
* Fort Lewis - Messhall boycott.
* Fort McLellan - Messhall boycott.
* Fort McClellan - Sick call.
May 20
* Camp Humphries, South Korea - Attempted fragging. An American guard and three South Koreans were injured, helicopter badly damaged.
May 26
* USS Richard B. Anderson - Sabotage.
May 30
* Ponchon, South Korea - On-base riot.
June
* Mannheim - On-base riot
* MCRD San Diego - On-base riot.
* Oakland - Attempted fragging.
July 4
* Iwakuni MCAS - Stockade rebellion.
July 24
* Camp Pendelton - Armory broken into, 9 M-16s, grenade launcher and .45 pistol stolen.
July 25
* Camp McCoy - Western Electric transformer and the central telephone exchange bombed.
July 26
* Fort Hood - Stockade rebellion.
July 27
* Fort Scott - Outdoor model of a Niki Ajax Missile destroyed in an explosion.
* Mannheim Stockade - Stockade rebellion.
* North Beach - Bomb thrown at North Beach MP Station.
July 27
* Fort Dix - Stockade rebellion.
July 30
* Fort Carson - On-base riot.
August 6
* Fort Monmouth - Sabotage.
August 12
* Camp Pendelton SPD - On-base riot.
August 12 - 13
* Fort Ord - Stockade rebellion.
August 17
* Camp Pendelton Brig - Stockade rebellion.
August 20
* Berlin - Black GIs riot.
September 12
* Chanute AFB - On-base riot.
September 16
* Chanute AFB - Messhall boycott.
September 26
* Fort Carson - Stockade rebellion.
October
* Alameda NAS - On-base strike.
* Fort Benning - Stockade rebellion.
* USS Deeley - Sabotage.
October 27
* USS Ingram - Sabotage.
November 10
* Iwakuni MCAS - On-base riot.
December
* Kadena AFB - On-base riot.
December 20
* Fort Hood - Stockade rebellion.
By 1973, the US Army was barely able to function, with indiscipline in the ranks and open racial violence.
People want to claim this was some "movement" of GI resistance, but that's a bit much. There was no overarching goal, no political philosophy. And a lot of the underpinnings of the violence was racially motivated. Some people didn't belong in the Army, some just hated it.
The Army stopped working and that ensured it would leave Vietnam.
When people, especially those who live overseas, call for dramatic action like a general strike, they aren't aware of America 2007. America is a land of crushing debt and underpaid workers. Most families live paycheck to paycheck. To lose a job is to lose health care and risk homelessness.
When people protested in 1968, jobs were easy to get and keep. That isn't the case today.
But I'm going to argue something else: the current antiwar movement has been a raging success.
Why?
First, 70 percent of the public wants the war to end.
Second, recruiting has been crippled.
Third, there is now an antiwar majority in Congress. War opponents are given a full hearing in public. Unlike Nixon, Bush is reeling in the polls over the war. The "silent majority" is against Bush, as are most of the editorial pages.
This domination of the antiwar position allows people to ignore protests and limit their fallout. The damage ANSWER does is limited because they can't define the antiwar movement.
The power of this movement isn't in the streets, it's in blocking recruiters, it's in electing politicians. It does things, quietly, differently, but far more successfully than those wishing for a return of the 1960's.
George Bush doesn't care about protests, hell, he doesn't care about Congress. You want to end this war, you need politicians, not protests.