Monday, October 25, 2010

In Retrospect, by Robert S. McNamara - a belated review.

By proxy:  Occasionally, books get another surge or popularity apart from the first printing and go to a second edition.  This is a book that easily deserves a second printing, if indeed it has not had one yet:  The reasons are clear, and one obvious one is the U.S. government, when McNamara was secretary of defense leading up to the escalated military expeditions to southeast Asia, did rely on a kind of war of words and of numbers against the Viet Cong and what remained of the Viet Minh from colonial times.  The world of computerized strategy had been introduced from business into the way government worked and the wars we fought.  Everyone, including the French, probably, was using some sort of computer to study and determine everything from interpersonal to regional and global conflicts.  That is not a mystery today.

 

What does remain a mystery for most Americans concerned by developments in South and southeast Asia during the 1950’s through the end of the Viet conflict in the early 1970’s is how could we have devastated the communist and socialist enemy so thoroughly and then been declared “losers,” and resoundingly.  Some of this in one way or another has to do with the fact that many and much of the fighting in the Viet war was South of a demilitarized zone (17th parallel above Hue City) where Viet Cong incursions made more and more headway as time went on.  Bombing Hanoi might have been effective, but it was ignored by an American public focusing on the pitched armed struggle in the South that was portrayed in everyone’s living room at night.  There were also the American press, various popular socialist revolutionaries and their student followers everywhere, who gave in psychologically to flourishing, but probably fairly isolated, if not very misinterpreted and overstated, aspects of the Viet conflict.  The flip side of giving into the image of the Viet Cong and its chief general Vo Nguyen Giap (which is what the well – known flower power movement did and the press appears to have done) as a superior fighting force was the belief that southeast Asia was in a series of “domino” states that would cascade into communism should Saigon City fall to the North.  There is also the serious criticism of the U.S. that Westmoreland, Taylor, and McNamara were at cross – purposes; a hint of this might also have made for poor morale in the field and thus the war unwinnable.  

 

Not only has the “domino” theory been disputed and disproven but the flower power movement has also been declared to have been counterproductive, and even disavowed by some or declared just to have been a mistake of hubris and plain ignorance.  It was morally wrong to try to persuade people that things like the scent of flowers would draw the enemy to a more peaceful demeanor (trees might have been better, but trees take longer to grow and require more husbandry than flowers.)  That the domino effect would draw the world into a communist abyss has been equally disparaged in later years.  The domino effect was the domestic solution to the flower children and its cautionary advocates have survived the Viet and Cold War and other conflicts whereas most ‘flower children’ everywhere are at most tepid on either front.  With respect to the current military conflicts and the overall effects of the conflicts in southeast Asia, one can draw actually glean very few similarities in how they are / were resolved:  The Viet conflict, and its ancillary actions were resolved in a political environment designed to disparage a popularly elected president, and were resolved in reaction to an official call for drafting more people into the military when an elite and volunteer armed forces were on the immediate administrative horizon.  None of those circumstances prevails today, for the most part, and history itself will really judge for better or worse the U.S. reaction to global terrorist threats, as recognised first by the war on terror under Clinton and then under Bush and Obama.

 

 

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Another "personality" to learn about and follow (at your own risk.)

 Yesterday, I heard a very interesting interview that originally took place in 2009 in a theatre in New York with John Stewart (The Daily Show:)  This person, who espouses every liberal view and who sees the humour in that, has an excellent television show that is worth watching if you are the same type of person he is – Mr. Stewart is probably a really nice guy to have a beer with, and it shows in his humour, in his style of speech, and everyone should try to catch his show more often before tuning into Leno or Letterman.  He has from what I can see very funny and interesting guests, and his “reporting” television style with Colbert and the other members of the team is nice to watch.  Steven Colbert is actually serious about what he does, and this is what makes the show so off the wall sometimes.  That’s the way it seems, any way.  The entire crew on this show is a bunch of nice guys from New York, and probably in several other cities at one time or another, and they’re nice to watch.  This is not a review as I have not watched televsion consistently since I was a child, and do not even know media trends, and do know in any event that if you enjoy slapstick for young people, this is what it is.  Everyone knows you take your chances with comedy shows, and for some people John Stewart’s and Steven Colbert’s might be a good match for you.  Happy television – watching, and don’t forget the radio, too.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

How to agree with 'liberal' economy and its proponents.

Robert Reich this week (Work of Nations, et seq.) and just within the last couple of days has mentioned a thing or two in response to an effort to increase the retirement age in France and the suggestion by some the same thing needs to happen in the U.S.  In a classic example of an economist who thinks of everything, he recommended the income ceiling on the FICA and OASDI should be raised.  Instead of the cynical view that government coffers are never full and always need more revenues to support an increasingly aging population, especially that taking advantage of social security benefits, and thereby calling for the hike in the official Social Security retirement age; Mr. Reich proposes another revenue raiser that would further stratify income by, again, taxing the rich – just make the system more progressive and continue taxing the income and wealth made through wages, for example.

Raising the Social Security tax ceiling is a nice idea, but in fact will raise so little revenue due to the greater and greater minority of highly – compensated (HCI) wage earners having less and less contribution to the tax base and thereby, again, to the overall revenues to the Treasury.  A better analysis and recommendation might be, and people like me do not have all the details, to do what policymakers did for a while in Ireland:  lower the overall business tax baseline and by this stratify the tax revenues of the country.  In Ireland, at least for a while, this resulted in greater tax revenue collections and state and industry and commerce remained happy with the results.  The situation in France is difficult because the electorate is very opinionated against the bureaucracy and subject to ownership of its position as victim thereof:  People like me understand the increase in the retirement age in France as a sign the economy is getting better, at least somewhat lately, and that fortunately people are living longer.  This given even the long and lazy work days sometimes the French have, not to mention the partying and wine – drinking that souses everyone when there’s a good harvest or good holidays, of which there are quite a few.