Posted on 08/19/2007 8:05:59 PM PDT by ventanax5
Try explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory. You’ll provoke not a counterargument—let alone an assent—but a blank stare: Who or what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the Persian Wars altogether.
It’s no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history—understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict’s outcome and its consequences—had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
And what will we do about all these op;inions based on ignorance. George Bush majored in history, reads it all the time, and was last reading the Algerian war. What he needs is citizens who reqad more and opine less.
I'll just add that studying history gives people better perspective. It enables one to imagine the range of possibiities from a course of action so that little things are not blown out of proportion. That is sorely lacking in all coverage of the Iraq war.
That sounds about right.
That would do it.
I have no doubt that, given opportunity for reflection, you will withdraw your observation as it applies to Stonewall Jackson.
I see nothing in Jackson's campaigns which violate the laws of 19th-century warfare or even of modern warfare.
Incidentally, I experienced the identical academic reaction, described by Dr. Hanson, to military studies a decade earlier in the 1960s before the Vietnam War had become a factor.
A big part of the problem is the post-modern irrationalism that is taught nowadays. Mere facts do not matter, so a news reporter may not be bothered at all if he discovers that he mis-reported something. Facts are taken to be merely meaningless social constructs that get in the way of the real truth — the real truth being your feelings.
It isn’t just military history. If you gave my three liberal sisters a test on American history, I sincerely doubt that any of them could pass the test. You’d get blank stares on virtually every question. Ditto for geography.
Fax. We don’t need no stink’en fax. It’s what they want, how they feel, don’t confuse them with the facts.
Don't forget, these are the same people who question whether or not the troops should have a certain kind of body armour, or whether Aegis is a viable defense system, or whether a "surge" in Iraq makes sense.
pwned!
One small objection - that description matches the curriculum of military science of which military history is only one part. At least that was the case when I sat through some of the most interesting classes on campus on the topic. These weren't populated just by enlisted students and ROTC types, either - it was a serious curriculum of which the history portion came under the rubric of the history department. That was, admittedly, in the 1970's.
What has changed isn't simply a rejection of militaria in general although that is certainly contributory. It is a change in the history and historiography canons themselves to include the "new" history which includes race, "gender" and sexuality filters, and such hideous amalgamations of ideology and sheer BS as "Peace Studies." The very methodologies of this "new" history make the classic study of military history impossible.
Victor Davis Hanson has propounded at length on the topic and probably need not be recommended yet again. I would point the curious reader to Gertrude Himmelfarb's The New History And The Old for an appraisal of how this all came about and where it's likely to go. Highly recommended.
You summed it up well. Still, I think these journalists would be seen as "useful idiots" in a totalitarian regime, particularly when it came to towing a Marxist line. I mean think about it, when it comes to totalitarianism, what are these journalists going to do? Become suddenly law-abiding, pro-democracy, pro-freedom loving, pro-Constitutionists?
When the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam they judged many of the Viet Cong—their allies in the fight against the U.S. and RVN—as “politically unreliable” and imprisoned them. Though the National Liberation Front (VC) was Marxist in ideology, many of its members were not Stalinist as the North Vietnamese had become under Ho Chi Minh.
thanks, bfl
LOL! Perhaps that's the direct French translation...but I think that it would be rendered "The Offensive Tet" in English.
"If you don't understand weapons, you don't understand fighting. If you don't understand fighting, you don't understand war. If you don't understand war, you don't understand history. And if you don't understand history you might as well live with your head in a sack."
The good Colonel knew how to turn a phrase.
L
Hasn't always been this way... :-(
Ummmm how do you figure that?
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