Re: [Marxism] Re: Stan Goff's response (Is the 'heretic' for real?)

[paul bunyan <cutemdown2003@xxxxxxxxx>]

Fred Feldman <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
.

>But I suspect that Iraq is a very radicalizing experience, in ways that
>are different from Vietnam partly because the war is pretty different.
>And I believe the current situation, with both the rising violence, the
>rising crimes of the military, the lack of clear military success, and
>the sense that the high command doesn't have a strategy for victory can
>generate a lot of tension, a lot of thinking, and quite possibly also
>quite radical ideas.

One of the big differences among those serving in the military now and during 
the Vietnam war, was that in Vietnam, the military was made up of a generation 
that grew up during the 50's, when dissent for all practical purposes was 
almost outlawed, andn WWII was everyone's favorite war (nearly all our fathers 
and uncles were veterans of that war). Even the movies, many shown on the late 
show on TV tended to glorify the military and war. I've often wondered how many 
teenagers from that generation joined the Marines having watched "The Sands of 
Iwo Jima", with John Wayne. Don't laugh-I'm serious. It took the horrors of 
Vietnam, and life in the twilight zone of the military, to overcome tendecies 
to do as you're told and to keep your mouth shut. It wasn't until after the Tet 
offensive of 1968 when US military morale started declining on a large scale.

The current generation of military age people have more access to information 
then the Vietnam era generation did. Whether they avail themselves of that 
information, and what they do with it is another question. Oversimplification 
on my part is in the interest of brevity.


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