What a fantabulously glorious waste. Air shows, especialliy military aircraft, in particular fighter jets, are awesome, awesome, awesome. We saw some F15s, F/A 18s, Harriers, and less exciting aircraft. Now, I think the Top Gun, Tom Clancy, height of the Cold War era was the most exciting in US military history (and you would too if you were anything like me, as in, even having the board game; those Civil War reenactors ain't got nothin')
I say all that because military tech is awesome (and so is the board game I linked above, by the way).
But I also say it because it's such a waste. Not just the gas and staff time and maintenance that went into the actual air show. But also the engineers and financial resources that went into the planes and their bombs rather than, say, bridges and schools. It is not at all contradictory to love the technology and support the personnel while also suggesting we should shift massive resources (but not all) away from blowing stuff up and to building stuff. It's a pretty direct tradeoff.
The fair is also an interesting cultural experience. This was just St. Louis County, not the even more fun extremes of a state fair, but it's still noticable that virtually everyone is white and there is a positive love-fest for all things military (even though, of course, minorities are overrepresented in the armed forces). The announcers' scripts for some parts of the air show were essentially PR and ads for the military, and perhaps out of everything I found it most interesting that there were clear attempts to change impressions about Vietnam. Why, might you wonder, would the military have an interest in cleansing the image of that excursion a tad?
5 comments:
Nate--Because of people like Jane Fonda and Walter Kronkite. That's why.
Charles
Are you saying Jane Fonda and Walter Kronkite are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, many more Vietnamese and Cambodians, and the waste of huge amounts of tax payer dollars?
For their part, the military "won" every skirmish. But the whole point is that, no matter the sacrifice of blood and ingenuity and money, a militaristic policy by the civilian leadership is not always the best course of action.
That doesn't answer my question of why the urge to pretty up the ugliness that was Vietnam.
It's like the classification of both civilian and military footage of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Personally, I don't think it was a particularly unique atrocity, but the very fact that information about the brutality of the events was covered up so completely is the most damning evidence that the top leadership consciously thought that the American public, even when steeped in the ugliness of racial hostility toward the "Japs", would disagree with the decision. Any decision that cannot be justified in full public display of all of its benefits and costs is a decision that should not be made in a nation espousing democratic values.
Because information is so critical to a market-based democracy, attempts to manipulate it are the surest sign that something suspicious is going on, whether it's a car salesman, a columnist, or a commander-in-chief. Militarizing everything in society is a legitimate choice. We could decide we'd rather buy the Air Force toys than take kids to the doctor. We could decide we'd rather buy the Army more attack helicopters instead of giving the Coast Guard more search and rescue choppers. In fact, those are just the kinds of decisions that our leaders in Washington have made for many years. I find it worthy of questioning when entities that stand to gain from public funding attempt to alter the public's view of the cost-benefit equation. Do you not take interest in the same critical thinking exercises, or do you simply not like the likely response?
Nate--Good Lord, son, you don't even make sense here. You are right about us whipping the shit out of the Viet Cong wherever we encountered them. Political will was lacking though. Isn't that always the case?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't atrocities. They ended the war. The firebombing of Tokyo was much worse (and by the way, God Bless Curtis Lemay).
Your argument about the public not knowing about the atom bomb doesn't hold water. I've read many studies that show Americans wanted to win the war with the least amount of casualties to Americans even if that meant roasting the Japs. (Again, God Bless Curtis Lemay).
Vietnam was an exercise in not taking it to them when we could. We fiddle-faddled around and did nothing decisively.
As far as your question goes, I believe our government is in place, much like it was in the 1700's--doing the best it can, not perfect, certainly not nefarious, but striving to do the best it can for all of us.
I think you probably have a predilection to being an anti-authoritarian and that colors most of your posts.
What do you think?
Charles
My question was why make a concerted effort to recast what was, in the end, a very unpopular, very costly, very destructive, and very lost war. Is that not an interesting question?
As to making sense:
1) I was expressing confusion regarding how Jane Fonda and Walter Kronkite fit in. I think you mistake them for people who actually had influence over policy during the 1960s and 1970s.
2) I agree with you that the atomic bombs weren't uniquely bad (although we apparently have different views on the morality of killing large numbers of people, which is a separate but fun debate) My point is that whether it be carpet bombing or atomic warfare or, dare I say, suicide bombers, they're roughy moral equivalents. Mass destruction, but of little military usefulness. In detailed studies of Allied bombing following World War II, we found our efforts didn't have much effectiveness; so we proceeded to do even more in Southeast Asia.
I'm not sure how you can deny, though, that the footage of the atomic bombs was withheld from the American public. If some of the Japanese filmmakers hadn't made illegal copies of negatives against the express wishes of the American command following World War II, much of the footage would have been lost. The American military ordered all footage of the bombs sent to America where they were classified and held from the public for decades. Much of the footage was quietly declassified in recent years, but you had to know it was declassidied and to ask for it specifically to find the footage. Isn't it an interesting question to ask why we can't be trusted to watch grainy black and white (and even some color) images of the aftereffects of the first and second nuclear blasts on a major population center?
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Nate--I bring Uncle Walter and Jane into it because they were the face of what most people knew about the Vietnam war. They had the face time on the TV.
I would imagine it colored quite a few people against the war.
That's what I meant by the air show guys doing a rah-rah job for the military.
Charles
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