Friday Roundup
Happy Friday-morning-after-Thanksgiving! A hearty thank you to all of you readers and commenters for consistently helping make this site a better and more fun place (for me, at least) to hang out.
Today is a day for re-reading P.G. Wodehouse and his description of Jeeves and the magic morning-after drink he famously created for Bertie Wooster, an elixir with a “secret ingredient” Bertie was never able to divine. Now on to politics…
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* Really good read: The Soviet experience in Afghanistan is weighing heavily on the thinking of Robert Gates and other Afghan surge skeptics.
* The challenge Obama faces in selling the Afghanistan war to a skeptical base: Frame it as “just one part of a much bigger strategy involving diplomatic, multi-national and civilian aid efforts.”
* A top House GOP conservative says he’s “surprised” that General McChrystal isn’t publicly backing up GOP criticism of the pace of Obama’s decisionmaking on Afghanistan. Instead, McChrystal says Obama’s engaged in a “thoughtful process.”
* Republicans are far more concerned than independents or Dems that a trial in New York will let Khalid Sheik Mohammed get his message out, though indys do oppose the trial.
* Creator of GOP litmus test clarifies intentions, says it’s not a purge.
* The Obama administration, it turns out, really does have lobbyists on the run, and they’re pushing back.
* China signs on to targets for greenhouse gas emissions, and Copenhagen negotiators are cautiously optimistic.
* The White House says behind-the-scenes pressure on China over Iran may have paid off.
* Conservative commentators keep trying to make the American people care about Obama’s bow. Why won’t the silly public listen to them?
* Pro-life Senator Bob Casey emerging as a central player trying to broker an abortion compromise for the health care bill.
* And know this: Glenn Beck is way too mighty to kowtow to the puny Sarah Palin.
What else is happening?
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“Really good read: The Soviet experience in Afghanistan is weighing heavily on the thinking of Robert Gates and other Afghan surge skeptics.”
That’s all I ask for right now – just don’t forget history.
“The Obama administration, it turns out, really does have lobbyists on the run, and they’re pushing back.”
Ok, purists, will you back off a little now?
LOL. Thanks Greg. Jeeves was the master manipulator.
PGW’s best writing – the shy Gussie Fink Nottle giving a speech at the village fair when he is completely soused. A gem.
Damn Greg, I’m off to routing my library.
” BECK: I don’t think things are hoots. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a hoot. I would never use the word hoot, and I respectfully ask that every time my name is brought up she would stop using the word “hoot.” [...]
No, no I’m just saying — Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine, can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? What? Come on! She’d be yapping or something, and I’d say, “I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.””
this is too frakking funny.
The Soviet experience in Afghanistan – I call it the russians’ vietnam.
I hope Obama continues to “dither”.
Tena – You think that twit from tundras will start whining now about glenda and call him teh evil librul media out to get her ?
“Tena – You think that twit from tundras will start whining now about glenda and call him teh evil librul media out to get her ?”
Why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
amk – I love it when they eat their own.
Why don’t all those noisemakers on Afghanistan volunteer? It’s so easy to talk tough thousands of miles from the front. The kagans, man and wife, are still pontificating at the WaPo. How can people so consistently wrong (Gerson, Kraut et al ) still command space there? Maybe this is a bit too close to home eh Greg? Never mind.
“Why don’t all those noisemakers on Afghanistan volunteer?’
The worst mistake we’ve made in recent time was to eliminate the draft and go to an all-volunteer military. That freed the government up to use them to play with since they volunteered.
We have a standing army, which we DO NOT NEED, and the wherewithal to have little wars everywhere.
Bring back the draft.
alan
As that british civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby (of Yes, Minister fame) says of his minister Rt Hon. Jim Hacker MP, Greg is “courageous”.
When Egos Collide: The Untold Story of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin.
Just to judge from the people I was around yesterday – nobody likes the war in Afghanistan and nobody much wants to see it continue and sure as hell don’t want to see it escalate.
This is going to be a huge challenge for this administration. I just keep praying to whatever might listen that Obama will be the one who reverses this damn trend of getting us bogged down in these stupid wars.
No Draft. No Draft. No Draft.
If the draft was in place. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld would have send in millions of Troops to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and North Korea simultaneously.
Never feed the war machine, and do not give me that rubbish about how the draft would send the children of the wealthy and privileged into combat. No it would not. Those people always find a way out of serving.
What do we need a draft for; unless you want to piss of the rest of the world, more than we did during the Bush/Cheney years.
It was the draft that allowed Johnson and Nixon to keep on escalating their stupid war.
No Draft. No Draft. No Draft.
N
“It was the draft that allowed Johnson and Nixon to keep on escalating their stupid war.
No Draft. No Draft. No Draft.”
Liam, it was the draft that stopped that damn war. Volunteers don’t protest – they want to fight. It’s their job.
The draft means they have to be more careful. It’s the draft that ended Vietnam.
God, Liam – we are creating a class of professional soldiers. We have the largest standing army we’ve ever had.
The draft pisses everyone off – even Repugs. It’s leverage against the government to stop sending drafted Americans to die.
God Tena,
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own set of facts. We do not have the largest standing army we ever had.
We have had far less people killed in wars, since we ended the draft.
Compare what happened in Vietnam, when Johnson and Nixon could just keep on rounding up more draftees as soon as they came of age, and kept on sending them into their Slaughter House.
Not having a draft is the best brake on Presidents who want to wage wars of choice.
If we did not have a shortage of Troops, there would be a million Troops in Afghanistan now, and another million in Iraq, and probably that much in Iran.
I want to starve the war beast, and you want to feed it.
Heroin Addicts Pressure President To Stay Course In Afghanistan
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/heroin_addicts_pressure
“LOS ANGELES—As the White House considers sweeping strategic shifts in the war in Afghanistan, heroin addicts across the nation called on President Obama Monday to stick with the current U.S. policy, which has flooded the world market with low-price narcotics. “There’s no need to change nothing, Joe Biden,” said addict Reginald “Bones” Dillow, who, when conscious, is an outspoken proponent of the U.S. military strategy that has resulted in a nearly 40-fold increase in Afghan opium production since the end of Taliban rule in 2001. “Everything is so cheap—it’s all totally fine like it is, right? Over there, I mean. Why would you want to…do the…[garbled].”……………”
Liam – where were you in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 71, 72, 73 an 74?
I was watching Vietnam vets protesting along with about half the rest of the country because nobody volunteered to die in Vietnam.
You lose that argument with an all volunteer army.
dude – you want with argue with everything I say, fine.
But I do know what I’m talking about. The draft ended the Vietnam War.
I live through it, OK?
Folks: I received a copy of Speech-less by Matt Latimer from Gramps. This guy was in Bush’s speech writing shop. I recall Morning Joe being snippy asking ” who is this guy”. I am at page 82 and get the impression that Members, Senators, staff and others make up a good sprinking of dumb asses. Its fun. This guy is pretty shallow and suggests our Senators and members are no better. His first boss was a maroon. Anyone else has a take?
Tena,
You are full of it. The draft did not end the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese won the war, and we were forced to flee from the roof tops.
The protest did not accomplish any of the things that you claim they did. They got Nixon elected, and he expanded the war into Cambodia, which set the conditions for the Pol Pot regime to slaughter millions of his own people.
When did the US declare a cease fire in Vietnam, and start to withdraw it’s Troops. It did not happen. We were still waging war up to the very end, when the North Vietnamese Troops conquered the South, including the Capital City, and we had to flee for our lives.
Liam = And I love you too.
Look, the draft is the only frakking way that rich kids have to go fight alongside poor kids. Right now, we have an army made up of mostly poor kids and minorities who are desperate to do something with their lives and couldn’t afford anything else.
Yes the draft did end that war. That has been the consensus on that war forever – I can’t believe you are really going to argue this. It was a huge factor – nobody wanted their kids to be drafted to die in the jungle.
The whole country turned against it on that basis. It tore the country up on that basis – kids leaving for Canada to avoid the draft.
The draft sux, but an all volunteer army allows the government to do something it has never done -send mothers and fathers of small children into combat. We’ve been doing that – knowingly orphaning children.
They never drafted whole families. The draft is the only thing that makes sense because people who are drafted do not want to fight in stupid unnecessary wars. They are willing to fight for the country when it’s really needed.
But Vietnam proved that drafting people and sending them into wars of choice just mobilizes the entire country to protest.
Because that’s what happened. I’m not full of it, LIam and I”m damned tired of you telling me I am.
You’re no genius yourself, believe me.
So tell me, Liam – why did we go to an all volunteer army right after Vietnam?
Hmmmmmm?
Tena,
What the hell does that mean. You are just talking in circles. The draft was eliminated to prevent future Vietnams, and you are the one that is calling for to restore it. What the hell did you smoke over the holidays?
You want to have millions of young people drafted, so that they will be available for the next Bush/Cheney regime to use as cannon fodder, just like Johnson and Nixon used them, and your best reason is so that we can figure out how to get some rich kids killed, in addition to the many more poor kids who will get killed, that never would have volunteered.
The only time we need a draft, is if we are attacked by a major nation, like what happened in WW2.
The rich kids who do not want to serve, will find a way around any draft. They will go abroad, or use dual citizenship, or pay some doctor to give them medical deferments.
It would be just a variation on how rich girls will still get abortions, if they are banned in the US.
Here is your argument for the Draft, in a nutshell.
The Draft was what caused the Vietnam war to happen, and for the death of fifty thousand young American soldiers, soldier, and the maiming of up to a million more. Also the death of at least two million Vietnamese people, in an American War OF CHOICE.
You want to restore the Draft, to prevent what it allowed to happen in Vietnam.
That must have been some strong stuff you puffed on.
Walter Cronkite came back and told the American People that we were losing the war.
Losing the war is what ended the war. If we were winning it, we would not have fled. It is as simple as that, and if Johnson did not have all those draftees to send, he would never have continued to escalate and escalate.
The draft and a really free press that broadcast that war into our houses every night.
The masters of war learned their lessons from Vietnam very well – eliminate the draft (which follows, since it’s democratic in nature and a professional army isn’t) and muzzle the press.
We’ve already been in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than were in Vietnam.
“d if Johnson did not have all those draftees to send, he would never have continued to escalate and escalate.”
How do you figure that? Didn’t Bush start two wars and escalate the hell out of them with a volunteer army?
Yes, yes he did.
So you were against eliminating the Draft, after what happened in Vietnam? You must have been, since you want it restored.
And dude – As far as LBJ goes – think about it – that’s when the pushback against the war started. LBJ didn’t run again because he’d escalated the war and people were FURIOUS.
Remember?
The draft gets the whole country involved. When it’s just mostly poor kids, everybody else can more or less ignore it.
Liam – I was in my early twenties when the war ended and they abolished the draft.
I grew up. I understand the deeper ramifications now of the draft and what it has enabled the Masters of WAr to do.
When everybody’s kids are at stake, everybody cares.
The all volunteer army is, AFAIC, imperialistic and it increases the loss of the middle class and the growing distance between the wealthy and the poor.
Johnson and Nixon had millions of draftees to escalate with.
Bush was restricted by not having the Draft available to use.
Rumsfeld wanted to Invade Iraq with just 30,000 Troops, because he did not have much more. Give that crazy *******, as well as crazy Bush, and Uber Crazy Cheney millions of draftees to use as cannon fodder, and they would have invaded not just Iraq, but Iran, and Syria. That is what they wanted to too, but they did not have the draftee numbers to do it with. Hell they had to take Troops out of Afghanistan, just to get their Iraq War Of Choice launched.
A Draft would have allowed those War Mongers to set the whole world ablaze and get not just five thousand, but at least a hundred thousand US Troops killed.
Ok, Liam – have it your way.
The thread is yours.
Carry on
YOu’re the only person I’ve talked to about Vietnam who didn’t get it and you’re one of the only people I’ve talked to on the left who didn’t get it about the draft.
But have it your way – it’s all yours, that’s what you want, you got it.
Add up the dead and wounded from the Korean war, and the Vietnam war. The draft was in place, so millions and millions of families were connected to all the Troops that were sent to those two failures.
Now, add up the death count from the wars, since the draft was eliminated, to this very day.
People always rally behind a war effort, at the outset, regardless of how many of their family members are or are not in the military. They only turn against prolonged losing conflicts.
It happened with the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict.
And it has happened with the Iraq Folly, and it is now happening with the Afghanistan mess.
The only difference is the Draft got far more soldiers killed in Korea and Vietnam, than have been killed in all the non-draft conflicts since then.
Tena,
You feel free to challenge people on here, all the time, even thought they are progressives.
You sure are in love with the concept of group think.
A Draft is a tool for waging large wars, and you are the one who is promoting it.
You are saying that the best way to keep an alcoholic sober, is to provide him with an endless supply of booze.
I will say this, a draft will only give Republicans more kids to send to slaughter. They won’t care because it won’t be their kids and it won’t be the rich folks kids and it won’t be the journalists kids. It will be the poor kids who won’t have the pull or the wherewithall to know how to get a deferrment. One of the biggest arguments right now against an escalation in Afghanistan is the simple fact that we don’t have enought troops to really get the job done. To really do the job we would need an escalation of somewhere along the lines of 250 K and even then we might not win. But I can promise you this much, if we HAD 250 K spare troops around there would be a bunch of Republicans screaming at the top of their lungs to send them. And some Democrats, scared of their shadow would join in the chorus.
I have heard folks talking about reinstituting the draft for years but its a fools folly. And that goes doubly for a Democratic President trying to reinstute the draft. Yeah if you want to see a one term Obama presidency, just keep calling for THAT.
I’m kind of with Tena here about instituting a draft. My only corollary would be that deferments would be strictly limited to those with extreme physical or mental limitations. You can argue about whether or not it feeds the beast, but many countries require military service without this being an issue.
We are talking about the USA, the Global Super Power, that openly admits that it uses it’s military strength to project it’s power around the globe, and has a terrible history, in the past sixty years of rushing into, or fomenting stupid wars.
Again: I do not want to keep alcohol out of the hands of moderate imbibers. I just do not want to hand the keys to the liquor store, to a known alcoholic.
Thank God that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld did not have The Draft at their disposal.
Well, Liam, I happen to believe that if the military was not all-volunteer, perhaps the general public would’ve been more skeptical of the Bush Administration’s rhetoric before the Iraq war. I know that you don’t beieve that, so we shall have to agree to disagree….
Scary preliminary news about Tiger Woods being seriously injured in a car accident. I hope that he does not suffer any permanent impairment. He is such a unique talent, and I always love to watch someone who excels at their craft, the way he has.
http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-woods-accident&prov=ap&type=lgns
The first details are puzzling, to say the least:
“Tiger Woods was seriously injured early Friday when he hit a fire hydrant and a tree near his Florida home, authorities said.
The Florida Highway Patrol said the PGA star hit the fire hydrant and tree as he pulled out of his driveway in his 2009 Cadillac sport utility vehicle.
golf tournament at the Kingston Heath Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia. Authorities say Woods has been seriously injured in a car wreck in Florida. The Florida Highway Patrol says the PGA star hit a fire hydrant and a tree as he pulled out of his driveway early Friday, Nov. 27, 2009, in his 2009 Cadillac sport utility vehicle. Woods was taken to Health Central Hospital. His condition was not immediately known, though the news release said his injuries were serious.
FILE – In this Nov. 14, 2009 f…
AP – Nov 27, 2:54 pm EST
* Golf Gallery
Woods was taken to Health Central Hospital. Officials there did not have record of him as a patient, though the news release said Woods’ injuries were serious.
The highway patrol said the crash is still under investigation, and charges are pending. However, the highway patrol said the crash was not alcohol-related.”
I have nothing but admiration for Tiger Woods and I know they’ve said that it wasn’t alcohol related, but the guy hits a fire hydrant and a tree at 2:30 in the morning? Maybe it was ambien.
I knew there was no way a Palin/Beck or Beck/Palin ticket would EVER happen. Both of those egos are simply too overdeveloped to play second fiddle to anyone.
So, when Newsweek runs a picture of Palin that she posed for and previously endorsed it was sexist. Beck makes chauvinistic comments like describing Palin as “yapping” and declaring that she should be “in the kitchen?”
Ah, Glenn Beck, always fighting for justice and equality.
“The China Turnaround
James Fallows rounds up the headlines and finds sudden progress being made on just about every issue on which Obama’s trip to China was deemed a “failure” by the media consensus. To reiterate what I said before, I do think it’s fair to observe that it seems slightly strange to have gone ahead with the trip in the absence of a clear signal that there were important bilateral deals ready to be signed. But it looks like Fallows’ earlier argument that this lack of blockbuster headlines was obscuring a broad range of successes now has the bulk of the evidence on its side.” http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/11/the-china-turnaround.php
Liam, you wrote: “Walter Cronkite came back and told the American People that we were losing the war. Losing the war is what ended the war. If we were winning it, we would not have fled. It is as simple as that…”
Vietnam defined life for my generation with repercussions that last until this day. There was nothing simple about it from the complexities of the World War II and post-colonial empire period that drew us in in the first place to the intense divisions on the homefront to the many reasons why we finally left. This is a huge topic and I’m not going to write the book here to do it justice. But a couple of things. The big turning point in American public opinion came with the surprising strength of the 1968 Tet Offensive, which America actually won. But by then a large segment of the society had begun to question the wisdom and morality of the war, and the fact that young men from all walks of life were subject to the draft was a catalyst to that thinking. And while a large number of college men received deferments, the laws about the draft were constantly changing so those deferments were not a sure thing.
The World War II generation had largely believed they were doing their part in a just war and didn’t really question the draft. But many of their children’s generation out of self regard (as many of the older generation believed) or an honest belief that the war was wrong, protested so strongly against the draft that it drove Lyndon Johnson from office. In the duplicitous Nixon/Kissinger years, the slippery promise was always that we were getting out, that the war was going to end. Very few people were expecting some sort of major victory, and that had been true at least since Cronkite’s statement at the time of Tet (though his opinion was hardly some kind of decisive factor; there were countless voices).
For many people, the inequities of the draft became part of the larger immorality of the war. While more privileged men risked having their lives interrupted, it was the less educated who ended up doing most of the actual fighting and dying while people with college backgrounds tended to serve in support capacities behind lines. But the fact that virtually all young men could be ordered to serve–and in a war many bitterly opposed–had a huge psychological impact on how the country felt about the war. There was no way to find distance from it as there has been with our volunteer forces that tend to be drawn from a fairly narrow socio-economic background.
It is my sense that George W. Bush could not have made such a headlong rush into Iraq if our armed forces had still been composed of draftees. People who aren’t professional soldiers need a stronger case for a war that asks them to disrupt and risk their lives. Given the fact that there’s been serious opposition to the Iraq War since it began, I think it’s crazy to believe a draft could have allowed the kind of escalation there that we saw in Vietnam. Our politicians and media would have been forced to take a more responsible position. The public would have demanded it. And believe me, if you think there’s opposition to the Afghan war now, it is a pale, pale shadow of what we experienced during Vietnam.
As far as the question about whether we should re-instate the draft, Tena’s points are fair. But there’s the opposite side of the coin that a smaller, volunteer force ties our hands to an extent when it comes to military adventurism, though it also lets some decisions slip more under the radar. But whatever side people come down on on this, there’s no escaping the fact that a force of draftees engages the attention of the nation in a very broad way because it comes close to every home. It becomes a matter of not just feeling sorry for other people’s losses but of contemplating our own.
And if anybody is looking for more perspective on our wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, nobody does it much better than Hendrik Hertzberg: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/11/30/091130taco_talk_hertzberg
That’s a really excellent post, ABC.
I won’t jump into this subject other than to point out that the present situation includes a huge proportion of mercenary forces (corporate hired and employed soldiers and logistics people) who are, by contract stipulations, outside of standard legal jurisdiction and who are not going to return home as whistle-blowers. They are employees, not citizens. Their allegiances and motivations are different and that difference is not positive.
The following is from Andrew Sullivan following a “deficit hawk” editorial by Rove in the WSJ (more at the link below):
“I remember very vividly a heated argument with Karl Rove over eight years ago in which I worried about spending and deficits. “Deficits don’t matter!” Rove kept repeating in that nasal world-weary tone he has. After a bit, I said, “What do you mean, deficits don’t matter? Don’t you remember the 1990s?” “No, no, no, no, Andrew,” he replied. “What I mean is that people don’t vote on deficits. That’s why they don’t matter.”
I learned then that nothing beyond short term politics motivates Rove. Nothing…” http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/the-emptiness-of-karl-rove.html
Rove’s statement to Andrew mirrors exactly Dick Cheney’s statement to Paul O’Neill that Reagan had shown that “deficits don’t matter” though Rove found a need with Andrew to be specific as to why they don’t “matter”.
This is why they can lie with such facility and why they can work so diligently to create a fearful, misinformed, marginalized, powerless and violent citizenry with no apparent remorse at all.
There are times and situation where some of the very worst people rise to power. The suffering of others has no real significance except where it might lead to the diminishment or impediment to their power and dominance.
From the broken record department:
Republican Reagan increased the US debt by 260%.
Republicans Reagan and Bush 1 increased the US debt by 400%.
Republican Bush 2 more than DOUBLED the US debt (and that doesn’t include the uncounted trillions his cronies in the Fed gave Republican Bush’s corporatist buddies).
It’s the Republican Debtor Party.
Right wing economic frauds have done more damage to America than a hundred thousand terrorists ever could have.
Foster: I am at roughly at page 100 of the book Speech-less. It is hilarious about Senators: Byrd reading his poems,Reid as the worst speechmaker. Senators making speehes to an empty chamber, the dislike for McCain, the men who carry Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s purse are are instructed to put away make up in a fridge, Borrin’ Orrin. Some stuff on Trent Lott: cleaning up his pavement without a shirt on. When I think of his perfect thatch I can’t see him without a shirt.The stuff on the Singing Senators is a hoot.No wonder this guy never got on to tv. He shows us what a hollow place the Village is.
The draft was in place when Truman took us into the Korean conflict. Where was all the massive resistance to that, based on the case people have been making for how the Draft will act as a very effective push back system, against a rush to war.
When the N. Koreans were pushed back over the 38th parallel, Truman could have stopped there, because that would have established the very same border between the North and South, as existed before the war.
Truman decided to go for the kill and conquer N. Korea, because he had the draftees, an endless supply of cannon fodder, and he ended up getting a massive amount of them slaughtered.
What lesson did the country learn from that. Did they learn that the next time a President starts to send our drafted sons into such a such war, we will know better, and we will express our objections, and make sure that this time, our drafted sons will not fight and die for a mistake.
No they did not. Along came Vietnam, and all those drafted sons were sent off to another stupid war, to fight and die for another mistake, and we got what we always get, in America;
The usual bullshite about yellow ribbons, and support our Troops, and we must finish the job, and don’t let my son have died in vein, and….. you know the rest of the sorry story.
The more young sons, and now daughters, that are drafted, the more families will feel the need to rally around the cause that their own flesh and blood are caught up in.
That is my last word on the subject. If we get attacked by a major power, then I will be in full support of a draft, to take on that large foe, until that happens, I think that a Draft would only make our small stupid wars, far more deadly, and would not nip them in the bud, as some people think a draft would.
It never has in the past, and we lost a hell of a lot more troops in our last two stupid wars, when the draft was in effect.
That is all I have to say on the subject.
All, Saturday roundup coming soon.
Saturday roundup posted, all:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/economy/saturday-roundup-3/
I quick thought re: news coverage during Vietnam vs. today’s conflicts/wars. I’ve only seen newsreel or documentary footage and have read that Vietnam was in “everyone’s living room”. My question for those who remember, was the reporting more hard-hitting and graphic than what we have now? If so, do you think the lack of it now has helped American’s avoid the reality of war?
A top House GOP conservative says he’s “surprised” that General McChrystal isn’t publicly backing up GOP criticism of the pace of Obama’s decisionmaking on Afghanistan.
It would appear that conservative hasn’t served in the military.
My question for those who remember, was the reporting more hard-hitting and graphic than what we have now?
I was too young to give you a good answer. I will say that my impression was the coverage of it was endless, but that’s no surprise since I turned 10 in 1970.
I can say this – that’s probably a difficult question to answer well because television was still a new medium when that war was being covered. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s that color television was even widely available. Before then all broadcasting was in black & white, and even that was a stunning development.
As to draft/no draft, I think the underlying problem is the permanent presence of a large standing army/military. With it, the temptation to use it is overwhelming. I think Eisenhower knew that would happen.
ChuckinDenton–There was a definite slowness in terms of the media moving away from the establishment view on Vietnam. There’s always a certain inertia, a certain desire to believe that the people in charge are getting things right and acting on solid information and good intentions. But in answer to your two questions, I would say yes and yes. There are no longer many war correspondents of the kind we had in Vietnam and earlier. There’s really very little war coverage in our era of news as entertainment when bureaus have been shrunk in size or closed down, and that means people think more about balloon boys and gate crashers than about war. And for how long has most of the coverage of Iraq been little more than stock footage of soldiers on patrol kicking in doors? The grip on the national psyche is far, far less and, again, part of that is because large segments of the population don’t personally know the people who are fighting.
BTW, with a draft, things ratchet up. You don’t start with a huge standing army of draftees just waiting for a conflict to erupt.
Thanks everyone for your replies.
got lots of good topics here, really enjoy reading them, thanks