It is going to be one of my ten favorite movies of all time. I cried several times anticipating the outcome of tense scenes.
The key is to let the movie transport you back to 1971. At that time I was 16 years old, very caught up in student protests of the war, and co-editor of my high school newspaper.
A libertarian can get behind all of the major causes of the movie: women’s liberation; freedom of the press; anti-war.
Tom Hanks is forgettable playing Jason Robards.
For all the effort to make Bruce Greenwood look like Robert McNamara, his was the least convincing portrayal in the movie.
Yes, I’m sure the people who fled Vietnam – after the Democrat-controlled US Congress refused to supply the S Vietnamese military with the means to defend their own country – will thrill to the bravery of a rich DC socialite risking a slap on the wrist for exposing the secrets of the Kennedy/Johnson administrations. I think I’ll pass.
Meanwhile, most of the press today, while congratulating itself over the gumption (to be fair) shown by its now-remote predecessors of two generations ago, has become a conveyor belt for the talking points of the permanent government and its satellites in academia, think tanks, and establishment-friendly advocacy groups, and ignores anything (e.g. the exposure of Obama’s protecting Hizbollah from law enforcement, the protests in Iran) that does not fit the establishment story line.
There have always had three big questions on the Vietnam War:
1) Was there any possible way the US could have won without occupying Vietnam indefinitely? I still thing the main lesson of Vietnam was it is impossible to “Win The Hearts And Minds” of people after you endlessly bombed their nation.
2) Would have the US withdrew from Vietnam without the loud war protest?
3) How much did the Vietnam war drag the booming post-WW2 economy down and cause the inflationary 1970s Long Recession 1974 – 1982? The war took a lot of government and population resources which weakened our competitiveness against the coming German and Japan manufacturing. My guess the US would have still suffered Recessionary 1970s economy (as the Boomers hitting the job market) but it would have contained better without the Vietnam War. (I still say the Iraq War 2 had a similar impact on the Housing Bubble. It happens anyway but not as bad.)
1) No. The South Vietnamese government was not competent. A lot of people who know nothing about war in general, and this war in particular, believe that if we had just left some troops or kept sending them money or something, there would have been a different outcome. Was not in the works.
2) Probably. I am a bit older than Arnold and served in the military then. The protests may have helped push things along, but it is hard to describe the effect of learning how much our government had lied to us about the war really hit people. Remember that the draft meant that many families were affected, so in a war with no clear ends, it generated a lot more negative feelings.
3) Arnold’s territory, but I think it helped push us into the inflation we saw after the war.
Steve
Thanx.
2) Was the government simply lieing about their success or were they measuring success incorrectly? For the most part the troops were winning battles in troop levels but this was likely a poor measurement left over from measuring past wars. (especially WW2) And in terms of Vietnam the troops would have success but somehow the North Vietnamese would pop up somewhere else. That is one aspect I don’t like about people claiming Bush lied about Iraq. I remember the 2002 and deciding the Bush administration did not prove its cases for war to me.
“A libertarian can get behind all of the major causes of the movie: women’s liberation (notice Meg Greenfield stereotyped into the Style section); freedom of the press; anti-war.”
I value this blog, but don’t self-identifying libertarians have any embarrassment over this kind of puppy-doggish tail-wagging over the political victories of people who have contempt – at best – for libertarianism and for free-market principles generally?
Also, at this point, it should be clear that the Left’s commitment to “women’s liberation” and “freedom of the press” is highly qualified, contingent and situational. And it is also evident that they are willing to support pointless, counterproductive military interventions to paint themselves as “patriots” (e.g. Obama keeping us in the “smart war” of Afghanistan for all of his two terms) or for ideological reasons (Libya – an intervention that was not only stupid but IMHO unconstitutional).
“I value this blog, but don’t self-identifying libertarians have any embarrassment over this kind of puppy-doggish tail-wagging over the political victories of people who have contempt – at best – for libertarianism and for free-market principles generally?”
This is strange. The draft ended due to the work Milton Friedman. The draft is clearly anti-individualism. Antiwar.com is a bastion of libertarianism. Freedom of the Press is banal and widely shared by everyone. Libertarians are generally pro-choice, etc.
And yet what you write feels so very correct. Libertarians have always been a very small group within larger liberal factions. I’m going to venture to guess you’re not on the liberal side of the libertarian spectrum. If you were, you’d be disappointed that libertarians get short shrift in the grand liberal project. As it stands you appear to be saying they’ve wasted their time in a movement they don’t belong in.
FWIW, I’m not a libertarian at all. I am a conservative who generally supports a free market approach to purely economic problems (note the word “purely”). I see no value-added by libertarianism, i.e., the ideology holding that government force is generally justified only to deter or prevent force or fraud.
It seems dubious to me to attribute the ending of the draft to Milton Friedman, as if he was the major force in bringing that about, and to state that “everyone” supports freedom of the press (it depends on how you define “the press”). Being “antiwar” does not contribute to individualism if it leaves your society vulnerable to attack by despotic enemies. This was not the case with Vietnam, of course, but some libertarians (not our host) discredit themselves by refusing to acknowledge that, for example, WWII had to be fought.
Peggy Noonan rightfully criticizes the misleading historical fiction in The Post: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lies-of-the-crown-and-the-post-1514505833?mod=ITP_opinion_0&tesla=y
I think it demonstrates a certain world view that fails to describe the wide and deep Bolshevik threat in late 50s and early 60s. Communism is a supremacist ideology, imperialistic, expansionist and violent. Bolsheviks were not only deeping their totalitarian control , enforced by an efficient police state and a Gulag of chilling horrors, of eastern Europe and what misleadingly called the German Democratic Republic, east Germany. but expanding to Cuba, South America and Cambodia, Southeast Asia. Were it not for US military presence in South Korea, it, too, would have fallen. Were it not for USA military presence in Germany , Europe and Japan, after their unconditional surrender obtained at cost of blood of millions, Europe, Japan would have been in jeopardy and likely fallen, too. In 1962, the Bolsheviks controlled more people and more land more effectively than anytime in history in all the world. The Bolsheviks were thought, at the time, to be invincible and could not be defeated, only contained.
President Kennedy was a committed anti-Communist and was murdered by a committed Bolshevik who had not other motive.
Failure to discuss this most salient threat presents a distorted view of the Vietnam war and its cause as if the “Red Scare” was mythical.Those who advocate for free markets and individual rights seem to underestimate an enemy committed to destroying our way of life and the ideas of free markets and individual liberty. I would have thought they would have been more alert.
Winston Churchill called WWI “avoidable war” and an “unnecessary war”. For many reasons, the British public and the British political leadership failed to perceive the nature of NAZI and its totalitarian view of vioent world domination. There were reasons that those in power and the public did not see what they did not want to see. Nevertheless, the threat was real and failure to confront an incipient danger led to horors of WWII. Kennedy-Johnson and those who initially supported the Vietnam War were attempting to avoid the mistakes that led to WWII. Today we see in Vietnam and North Korea the results of Communism.
Global trade and economic independence, free markets and international commerce did not prevent WWI. It was commonly thought by political and economic elites before WWI that war and miliary force were futile because destroying the enemy’s property would be to destroy your own property. Empirical, real world reality, verified by experienced proved them wrong. “Men and Women do not live by bread alone ” as godless, scientific Communists believe without reservation.