Only 58%?! Iraq is a worst-case Vietnam on steroids. It does not seem such great news to me, especially when 33% still link Saddam to 9/11. I mean, what's up with that?

I berate the media as much as anyone, but for most of Vietnam, the media was just as clueless. Yet, many people questioned our motives there anyway. Most of the silent majority began to question Vietnam, too, and accepted the findings of the Watergate hearings in the end. Watergate was a big deal because, to a certain degree, people trusted government and expected honesty on the big issues.

Now, elected officials can be caught red-handed and I sense that a third of the country can only believe that it is just politics- a smear by the opposition. Most of the rest of us think that it is business as usual; because it is. But, that 1/3 of the country wearing blinders refuses to look honestly at any situation that might rock their fundamental beliefs (in some mythical America, in Bush, in the Word).

I berate the media as much as anyone, but for most of Vietnam, the media was just as clueless.

No, in Vietnam, the reporters stationed in-country were pretty quick to grasp what was going on, and remarkably free to say what they thought. It was the US public that remained wilfully clueless for too long, and the US government that misled them. What's been worse in Iraq has been the active collusion of reporters and media networks who ought to know better - who sometimes do know better - but who decided that the current rules of the game made it inappropriate for them to do anything but cheerlead Bush Admin policy and US military actions.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

I can’t really argue with you there. Certainly, reporters had a free hand in Vietnam (and the Pentagon learned from that “mistake” quickly). But media sources were limited then and, in the main, reported the anti-Commie line. Non-domestic news was obtained through the three nightly half-hour broadcasts, local papers (from AP/UPI), or WaPo/NYT. The government misled, but through the media.

Edward Murrow was critical of Vietnam before he went to work for JFK, but the way I remember things is that the MSM generally reported the “conflict” uncritically through ’67 or later (after Tet?). At any rate, I believe the conflation of the regressive conservative movement since Reagan (social, fiscal and evangelical conservatives in lockstep) and the skillful exploitation of 9/11, has spawned a susceptible, knee-jerk public that, like some of our leaders, refuses to face reality.

I would agree.

Reporters in-country complained regularly that their U.S. based editors, in obedience to the conventional wisdom of the establishment, rewrote or refused to print their stories. The editors' explanations? It wasn't what they were hearing. The public wouldn't believe it. Reporters based in Vietnam were too young and inexperienced to be trusted. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Editors' attitudes changed after Johnson "lost" Cronkite.

No, you're right. Yesterday's NYT article said that accordintg to Woodward, Cheney meets with Kissinger about once a month. I guess the right word isn't really "decorate" as much as it is reinforce or reassure.

The White House holds those semi-regular meetings with former SecDefs and SecStates but if they meet so often with Kissinger outside that formal framework, it seems to me that it was a calculated risk. I doubt they intended to keep it some big secret. They didn't want to go around waving the Kissinger banner, but once a month meetings aren't exactly secretive either.

Having presumed that American History is still taught in HS and having assumed that recent graduates might well have encountered a map of Vietnam, I checked myself from saying as much.

*generic sigh* The history courses, especially if they are chronological, may or may not get to this relatively recent history, but there's a chance.

What worried me is when, not long ago, I happened to be talking with about five African immigrants, who told me that I was the first American they had met who could even find their countries on a map (I had to clarify if someone meant Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, or Guinea-Bissau), much less know something about the countries. While I doubt it will happen, there are bound to be more conflicts in Africa as well as post-HIV nationbuilding, and, bizarre as it might be, to have some people prepared.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I question, and in earnest, whether Bush could find these countries on a map. His administration destabilized an entire region in ignorance - by their own admission - of the divisions within Islam that would drive events after the initial invasion. Similarly, a man who can't pronounce "nuclear" has been entrusted with the power to lead us into nuclear war. In both cases, we see the arrogance of ignorance. Considering the similarities between the Iraq and Vietnam conflicts in the context of the timeline of history leads to the jarring realization that nothing was learned, as real soldiers and civilians die for pretend-noble goals and war criminals repeat the role of sloganeering to disparage dissent("Cut and Run" replaces "Love It or Leave It").