Vietnam

Or: "My Marines are winning this war, and you people are losing it for us in your papers."
-- Dispatches
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Do you ever say to yourself, "Hey -- I don't really understand what the Vietnam War was all about?" Well don't be too hard on yourself. Nobody understands it. Nobody understood it at the time, and it hasn't started to make more sense since then.
Wikipedia's article on the war is extraordinarily well-written and concise. When I say "concise" I mean it's incredibly long but considering how complicated the war was... well it's pretty darn concise.

I have a friend whose dad was a Lt Colonel on Westmoreland's staff. Apparently the dad said that "General Westmoreland is hands down the stupidest man I've ever met."

The age-old questions are:

• Why did the true believers want the war so badly?
• Why did it take so long for the American public to realize that the government was lying to them?

The US military has been plagued by incompetence since its inception. And the stereotype is that, at least for the beginning of each war, they're fighting it like it was the last war.

The irony is that the lesson the military took from the war was that you couldn't trust the newspapers. The reason that's ironic is because of how credulous the American media was, for so very long. The US newspapers and TV would be the mouthpiece of every general who told them the war was almost over until finally, finally, the BS piled up so much that even they had to finally admit that there was no winning the war.

Boundaries Not Authoritative

And then almost exactly the same thing happened again with the Second Gulf War. Credulous press, believing every lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction. The military opened up to the media just a little bit, so that they could gush over the weapons and the glory of men in battle.
But maybe, just maybe, the total level of Malarky was recognized just a little bit faster this time around. Certainly far fewer people (American soldiers and everyone else) were killed.
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But that's not where I'm going with this. I'm on my way to the Goldwater-Nichols Act and how we have the best (and smartest) military we've ever had.
But I'm not there yet.