Just browsing through the May 21 Wash (com)Post book magazine and I see a review by Stanley Karnow of the Michael Sallah book, "Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War." The (com)Post title for the review is "Crimes of War."
I suspect that the book authors do not agree with the review. Nonetheless, the reviewer, a journalist in Vietnam, practically slobbers over the possibilities of American war crimes in Vietnam -- and elsewhere, aka Abu Graib. He blames America for some of the worst cruelties of Tiger Force in Vietnam, committed by latinos, who, he says, did it becuase they were "harrassed by Anglo supremacists back home." Did this line of thought come up during Abu Graib? Perhaps the fraternity-mentality defense, but none of this class/race b.s. that this moron feeds upon. Pathetic.
What I must assume was the worst of the "war crimes" that the reviewer discusses amounts to a stupidly small number of deaths in 120 people over 33 days in 1967. Sad, yes. Defining of the entire war in which millions died? Shut up. That'd be a single lost bomb over a Tokyo suburb in 1944. Same motive, same effect.
And 1967! The war was plenty popular yet. Anyone who looks to that date for justification of the Vietnam War's futility is just pulling grass. "Look! Look!" Without later events whatever happened in 1967 means nothing. Same goes for today's news. What happens next is all that matters. We musn't let the fools get us down.
Perhaps the present "unpopularity" of this war will help sustain it. With so many Americans not expecting quick results, perhaps their pessimism may be translated into patience and fortitude. Here's to hoping.
Here's to hoping.