Related book plug: War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
Written by a war reporter who basically goes on at length about how people really behave in war as he has learned by many years of standing in the mud watching people get blown up.
One of the points the author makes is that pretty much every war has these big myths about why The Cause is so important which in retrospect look totally false. Frequently it is amazing how quickly the myth just disappears from the culture after we're all done leaning on it. Anyone who objected to the myth while it was in use was a traitor, but anyone who gloats about how they told-you-so after the myth is discarded is ignored or considered a self-serving whiner.
Cross ref also Harlan Elison's rant in _The Glass Teat_ after somebody high up in the (maybe Nixon?) administration basically said that the Vietnam War was a disaster and bombing S.E. Asia maybe wasn't such a good idea. H. goes heavily sarcastic and asks in essence whether the people who were harassed and ridiculed for saying exactly that a couple of years before were going to get an apology.
And of course not. 30 years on the Vietnam War is largly acknowledged to be a total con job, but those who objected to it are paradoxically still presented in the culture as Bad Guys (or at least clueless and self-indulgent).
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branchandroot
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Date: 28 January 2005 17:42 (UTC)Written by a war reporter who basically goes on at length about how people really behave in war as he has learned by many years of standing in the mud watching people get blown up.
One of the points the author makes is that pretty much every war has these big myths about why The Cause is so important which in retrospect look totally false. Frequently it is amazing how quickly the myth just disappears from the culture after we're all done leaning on it. Anyone who objected to the myth while it was in use was a traitor, but anyone who gloats about how they told-you-so after the myth is discarded is ignored or considered a self-serving whiner.
Cross ref also Harlan Elison's rant in _The Glass Teat_ after somebody high up in the (maybe Nixon?) administration basically said that the Vietnam War was a disaster and bombing S.E. Asia maybe wasn't such a good idea. H. goes heavily sarcastic and asks in essence whether the people who were harassed and ridiculed for saying exactly that a couple of years before were going to get an apology.
And of course not. 30 years on the Vietnam War is largly acknowledged to be a total con job, but those who objected to it are paradoxically still presented in the culture as Bad Guys (or at least clueless and self-indulgent).
It's a sick, sick, sick world we live in.
-JKL