Wonder if Colin Powell noticed

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I see that former War Secretary Robert McNamara died this week. I have nothing but contempt for the so-called man. He's admitted that he knew that Vietnam was wrong but did it anyways. Not that he later concluded it was a mistake but that he knew it was wrong AT THE TIME.

He could've resigned in protest and then speaking out against the atrocity, which would've been the honorable thing to do. Instead, he stayed silent and executed this slaughter that he KNEW AT THE TIME was wrong. Was it because he liked being in the halls of power? Was it because he was too cowardly to be honest with the overbearing President Johnson? Was he a little man in too big a job? Only he knows. But I find him even more despicable than those who sincerely thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

It's said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, choose to remain neutral. I disagree. I think the hottest places are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, know what the good is and choose instead to enable evil.

Actions, reactions

Newsitem: Regarding the iPhone... Apple launched the eagerly awaited phone exclusively on AT&T's network in June, and immediately faced criticism for how resistant it was to any modification.

Observation: Resistant to modification? Impossible to use outside narrowly confined systems? This is so unlike Apple.



Newsitem: Regarding author Ayn Rand... Who is Ayn Rand? More than two decades after her death, readers still debate the morality and cultural influence of the provocative Russian-born author whose "objectivist" philosophy culminated in her 1957 magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. The 1,192-page novel unapologetically fictionalized an individualist philosophy that praises selfishness, scorns charity, and turns monopolists into paragons of virtue. Biographies by spurned lovers and collections of her letters reveal Rand as a passionate, sometimes tempestuous, personality, a woman with devoted loves and sworn enemies, who relished sex and dabbled in swinging, and demanded absolute loyalty from her disciples.

Observation: Because nothing screams radical individualism more than 'absolute loyalty' to someone else.



Newsitem: President Bush has announced that the new war strategy in Iraq looks promising.

Question: Does this mark 25th 'promising' new war strategy in Iraq or 28th? I've lost count.

Followup: Bush says a US pullout from Iraq would make the country as bad as Vietnam after the US withdrawal.

Observation: Since 4 million (civilians alone) perished during the Vietnamese civil war, I think our esteemed leader should be more concerned that Iraq will become like Vietnam was BEFORE the US withdrawal.

What if Iraq becomes another Vietnam?

While most pro-war folks (of the few who remain) attack anyone who makes the slightest hint at an Iraq-Vietnam analogy, President Bush has embraced such comparisons. He warned that a precipitous withdrawal would trigger the kind of upheaval seen after the departure of the US forces who were propping up the South Vietnamese dictatorship.

"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he said. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens."

Of course, this is pure deceit on the president's part. No one argued this. The main argument was that continued US participation in the Vietnamese civil war was having worse consequences than withdrawal would. And this argument was vindicated by the course of events.

The Vietnamese civil war lasted for 16 years. Some 4 million Vietnamese civilians were killed and countless more injured, orphaned and displaced. Only a small fraction of these occured in the year and a half following the withdrawal of US forces when the South Vietnamese army (numerically much larger than the North's) was fighting for its own country.

The US political leadership of the time tried to make the public swallow hysterical predictions of chaos and menace to American security should the Vietnamese civil war be decided by... the Vietnamese. They also peddled the delusion that military might could settle a fundamentally political conflict.

The UK Independent also has a good piece addressing Bush's pap.

And what if Iraq does become another Vietnam, as Bush warns?

What Bush doesn't mention is that while Communist Vietnam became a totalitarian state, its regime didn't murder anywhere close to the 4 million civilians who were "collateral damage" in the war to save them.

What Bush doesn't mention is the politically incorrect fact that while it's hardly paradise on Earth, Vietnam is a less horrific, more stable place in 2007 than it was when US troops withdrew.

What Bush doesn't mention is how many times has communist Vietnam attacked or threatened America since 1975: zero.