Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA04752 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 17 May 2000 18:47:24 +0100 Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 10:40:16 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Useless memes To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3922D980.918CF8A6@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-PBI-NC404 (Win95; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: ja,en References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB1A2@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Vincent (and Bruce),
Vincent:
> I think this view-
>
Bruce:
> >We were not allowed to win because of media and governmental
> > intervention.
> >
Vincent:
> does a dis-service to the fervency of Vietnamese nationalism.
>
> One of the new memes to emerge out of the Vietnam War in America, is that
> the war was lost purely because of internal dissent, and that the conflict
> on the ground in Vietnam had nothing to do with it. This is patently untrue.
We had superior force, but that is not everything. The North had
superior force during the Civil War, but without the doggedness
of Grant, the South might have won.
What would it have meant if we had won? Could we have established
and maintained a client state in Vietnam? Would we have done so?
Colonialism is not part of the American ethos (the Phillipines
notwithstanding). We could support Chiang Kai Shek on Taiwan, not
on the mainland. MacArthur warned us against a ground war in
Asia.
When I was living in Tokyo in the 60's I read an interview in the
Japan Times with Ho Chi Minh. One thing he said seemed to me to
be the handwriting on the wall. "You do not understand the
strength of our national spirit. We fought the Chinese for 1,000
years, and drove them out. We fought the French for 50 years, and
drove them out. We have fought the Americans for only 4 years,
and we will drive them out, too." As an American, I knew that we
did not have that kind of determination. It wasn't our country,
was it?
Best,
Bill
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