Not HST on Nixon by a long shot, but fun to read anyway.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.
Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
We are aware of all internet traditions.
FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.
Glad to see john eastman going through some things.
Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.
“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”
Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.
They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.
Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.
My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.
Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.
Let me file that under fuck it.
Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?
scav
read with pleasure indeed.
The Saff
Interesting piece. I saw David Halberstam four years ago on Nantucket. He was inteviewing Buzz Bissinger about Bissinger’s book on Tony LaRussa.
SGEW
The best part of Galloway’s piece, in my opinion, was Attackerman’s response to it, involving Ice-T.
Napoleon
@The Saff:
That guy was absolutely my favorite author.
Tom Fitz
Right on.
In his biography of JK Galbraith, Richard Parker aledges that McNamara conspired with Pentagon top brass to disobey JFK’s directions to de-escalate and get us on the way out of Vietnam. Even before I read that, I thought McNamara should be writing all his half-baked apologies from a prison cell.
KidA
Bob Herbert, NYT, has a great column on the passing of one of “the best and the brightest.”
Jonny Scrum-half
I don’t know McNamara except from “In Retrospect,” his book, and “The Fog of War.” He seemed to me to be very impressive on a lot of levels. It’s easy to accuse him of being a war criminal and a murderer — I think that he even acknowledged the point behind those allegations. But I thought he was a great man who did the best he could in a position of great responsibility, who ultimately determined that he had erred, and who then tried to help others understand those errors so that they wouldn’t be repeated.
It’s true that his admissions of mistakes won’t bring back the dead of Vietnam, but the lessons he distilled into his book in 1995 would have prevented the Iraq War, had our “leaders” applied them. At some point, that’s all he could do.
Gus
Bullshit. That was all self-justification. He believed in 1965 that we couldn’t win the war, yet he went in front of the cameras every day to say how swimmingly the war was progressing. He has the blood of tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese on his hands. I will agree that he was very impressive on a lot of levels. He was brilliant with numbers, possibly the perfect bureaucrat, but he had all that knowledge without wisdom. His attempts at expiation were way too little, way too late.
Jonny Scrum-half
Gus — I don’t disagree that McNamara, like anyone else, engaged in self-justification. But he addressed your point about his public statements regarding the war, noting that it’s not really clear how someone in his position can handle such statements, when there are many different audiences (the American public, our allies, our enemies, our rivals like the Chinese and Soviets, etc.). I’m just not willing to cast aspersions when I haven’t had to deal with that sort of responsibility and those sorts of dilemmas.
Regarding his attempts at expiation being too little and too late, I disagree. The lessons that he wrote about may have been too late for Vietnam, but they weren’t too late for the Iraq War. “We” — as a country, led by an Administration determined to ignore those lessons — simply didn’t listen to them.
Wile E. Quixote
@Jonny Scrum-half
I am, he was a liar and a mass murderer. He’s the American version of Albert Speer and the people who bought into his bullshit contrition, which he only revealed years after the fact and after it might have done something to prevent some of the deaths that the Vietnam war caused, are chumps and suckers.
gypsy howell
I am.
Jonny Scrum-half
Gus — Don’t you think that McNamara’s comments in the past 15 years, even if you regard them as “bullshit” and too late to change history regarding Vietnam, are important and helpful for later situations? Like Iraq, for example, or when people in the future beat the drums for more wars?
Comrade Stuck
And I would like to say that all those who are short on insight and long on judgment can blow it out their asses.
Maude
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Go to the Vietnam memorial in DC and try explaining that to the names of the dead.
Gary Farber
Say, speaking of Nixon, you know about those new Nixon tapes released a couple of weeks ago? And you know that myth that rightwingers love to sell about how the Liberals In Congress Stabbed South Vietnam In The Back?
[self-promotion] If anyone’s interested, I have a bunch of documentation here from Nixon and Kissinger’s own words on the tapes and memcons on how in fact Nixon himself orchestrated the Congressional cut-off of funds to get Thieu to sign on to the peace accords.
Plus, of course, links to my past posts documenting how Nixon and Kissinger in their own words explained how South Vietnam could never win, and would collapse, and how they just needed to postpone this until after the 1972 elections.
[/self-promotion]
Wile E. Quixote
@Comrade Stuck
Given the fact and content free crap you’ve written about McNamara I’m sure that you’ll start writing sycophantic apologias for Dick Cheney any day now. I mean after all, you have such insight into what motivated a lying, mass-murderer like Robert S. McNamara so tackling Cheney and explaining how hard things were for him won’t be too much of a stretch for you.
Comrade Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
You are one simple minded little shit. Every thing that happens in the world is run through your pea brained ideological filter al a Kos style. You don’t what the fuck you’re talking about. You blame Kennedy for the missile crisis and Mcnamara for Vietnam without a shred of experience of living in those times. Snot nosed know it all brat, full of piss and vinegar and dumb as a fucking rock.
Jonny Scrum-half
Maude — I’m not sure of your point. The dead are dead. Nothing is going to bring them back. If you think that McNamara was a psychopath who enjoyed sending kids to their deaths, there’s not a lot to argue about.
I think he was a brilliant guy placed in a difficult position who did the best he could, along with a lot of other people addressing very difficult situations. Many of those people made some very big errors in judgment, and as a result a lot of people died unnecessarily.
McNamara owned up to those errors in judgment, and did what he could to help the world avoid a repeat.
Gus
Comrade Stuck, favor us with your insight. All I see you doing is name calling. I disagree with Jonny Scrum-half, but at least he made an argument for me to disagree with. Jonny, after seeing the Morris film, I wanted to believe it. McNamara came off as a brilliant guy, which I believe he was. Yes, he was in a difficult position, but I think he made things much worse by staying on. I can say this: I don’t think of him as intentionally evil. He should have stayed at Ford, where a mistake would cost millions of dollars, rather than millions of lives. The best thing I can say about him is I believe he was sorry, and I believe he suffered for his decisions. I even believe his attempts to make amends may have been sincere. Again, way too little, way too late. I think what set me off was calling him a “great man.”
Comrade Stuck
@Gus:
This thread is a continuation of several on this topic. If you want to get my”insight” then feel free to check them out. Otherwise, mind your own fucking beewax, I wasn’t talking to you and was returning the name calling in kind to Wiley dude.
Gus
Oh, I didn’t know this was a private thread.
Comrade Stuck
@Gus:
Not private. Just consider my comment as good advice.