"Ain't Gonna Study War No More..."

[Don Kaag <dkaag@turbonet.com>]

Sunil:

The latter.

One of the reasons I love our country so much is that we can say what we think.

As the hackneyed phrase goes, " I deplore the things that you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say them."  I both served in, and later protested, the Vietnam War.  I served because we live in a representative democracy, and there is civilian control of the military.  Individual military people don't get to pick and choose which war they think is a good one.  They follow their legal and lawful orders and say, "Yes Sir".  We have an apolitical military, and that is as it should be, or we might end up with rotating dictators like many of our southern neighbors.

Having said that, I believe that both our civilian leadership and our senior military leadership failed the country in Vietnam, and that American citizens had the right and the responsibility to make their feelings known about that.  Unfortunately, hatred of the war many times turned into hatred of the people who bore the brunt of it.  The treatment of returning veterans was appalling, and that was wrong.  The most effective means to end the war would have been for the voting populace to throw the rascals out, and vote in people with some common sense and a realistic world view.  But that didn't happen.  The United States has always been a "work in progress", and democracy is loud, unruly, and many times wrong in the short run.  Hopefully, we learn from our mistakes.

There is no doubt that news coverage of the war on a daily basis and consequent anti-war turmoil affected the safety and morale of the troops in the field getting shot at, and the ultimate end of the conflict.  I do not question the American people's right to know, nor do I question their right to make their feelings known, but I simply point out that while we won every major battle with the enemy, the North VIetnamese ultimately won the war because they convinced the American people that they were willing to fight on forever, regardless of casualties, and they knew from watching American news broadcasts and our newspapers that we were not.

Short answer:  Disagree as much as you want with the administration's military policy.  Support the people in the military who work hard and endure miserable conditions to do a difficult, dangerous, job.  But don't advocate the dissolution of the military services because you feel the money could be better spent elsewhere.  That is simply not common sense, given the world we live in.  The Congress and the President have a responsibility to the American people  to "support and defend" the United States of America and its people.  That cannot be done without a storng, well-equipped, military establishment.

As a Historian, I would point out to you the ill-prepareness of our military services for WWI, WWII and Korea.  Our forces and equipment were allowed to shrink and budgets were slashed prior to those conflicts due to a general feeling that peace would last forever, and that all of the world's problems could be solved short of war.

We were wrong.  And hundreds of thousands of American men, ill-equipped and outnumbered, died in valiant attempts to buy time while the country geared up, men were drafted and trained, and the military was brought up to a wartime footing.  Ask the men who were forced to surrender to the Japanese at Bataan, and who endured the infamous Death March across Luzon, what they thought of America's prepardness:  "We're the battling bastards of Bataan/No momma, no pappa/ No Uncle Sam..."

In my opinion, Teddy Roosevelt was right:  "Speak Softly, And Carry A Big Stick".

He believed in a strong military, and built one while he served as president.  Because the country was strong, he never had to use it.  There were no wars on his watch.  No one was stupid enough to start one.  Working from a position of strength, he became a world-renowned "honest broker", asked by the other Great Powers to adjudicate world problems.  For his negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War and the North African confrontation between France and Germany, he was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

We should follow his example.

Regards,

Don Kaag


On Monday, September 2, 2002, at 01:12 PM, Sunil Ramalingam wrote:

I certainly have a lot of questions after reading your post, Mr. Kaag, but let me try to limit myself to this one paragraph.  You wrote,

"What I posted to Ms. Sullivan may have seemed a bit harsh to you, but I consider those who were born and live in this country, with all of its benefits of freedom and luxury, and yet refuse to either defend it
themselves or respect those who have volunteered to do so to be immoral parasites with a Pollyanna world view."

By respecting those who have volunteered to defend our country, do you mean that we should not question military policies implemented by political or military leaders?  By that I mean, should dissent stop once military action starts?  Or do you mean that even if we disagree with what our military is doing, we should not dump on the men and women whose job it is to carry out their assignements?

Sunil Ramalingam



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