Trump spoke honestly when he said he thought men who went off to fight in the Vietnam war were suckers. It was a stupid war and you'd have to be stupid to fight in a stupid war like that, he said.
When Sonny Corleone tells Michael those who rushed to enlist after Pearl Harbor were fools and suckers, he is stating the tribal creed of the Italian family mob: You fight for your family, not for some idea of country. Michael tells him he sounds like his father, who, of course, is the Godfather. Sonny agrees, and he's proud of it.
And that is the creed of Donald Trump, who is the Don of his family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-I4VIR5yGg
I felt the same way at the time of Vietnam--not that we had no country worth fighting for but that we were not fighting for our country in Vietnam. There was the good war against Hitler. But there was a stupid war in Vietnam and I thought you had to be stupid to fight in that war.
But I would never say or think people who did go to Vietnam were stupid. They were fighting for their country, as far as I could see.
Even Rhett Butler ultimately goes off to fight for the doomed Confederacy, in the end.
My own brother, who got a rocket fired at his swift boat, and trudged through the jungle, still believes he went to war to serve his country, and if he thinks that way, he did. He had a little Rhett Butler in him then.
There was a movie called, "Born on the Fourth of July" which depicted how badly ordinary American boys were deceived about Vietnam, and there have been book length analyses, like Max Hasting's masterful "Vietnam" and Neil Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie." All of these depict the folly of those wars and the folly of fighting in them.
But once you are committed and over there, once you come under fire, all the glory stuff disappears, and you are just fighting to stay alive and to keep your brothers-in-arms alive. That much I can understand without ever having been in the military, because I've been in other less dire situations where the team mattered, and it didn't matter if anyone else saw what you were doing; you fought for each other.
So what Donald Trump was saying was, for once, honest and we can believe he meant that.
A lot of my generation agrees with him on that one level: you can be fooled into thinking you are doing something great.
But you can also be foolish: Pat Tillman dropped out of a million dollar NFL career and went off to fight in the Middle East miasma and got shot dead. And he was shot by his own men in a friendly fire incident. Such is the absurdity of ill conceived wars for no good reason.
But what Trump gets wrong is there are other wars, where you might not be wrong: the men and women who rushed off to fight after 9/11 may have been fools, but at least this nation was under attack. The foolishness of waging war on someone who had nothing to do with that attack can be argued. As John Kerry said, attacking Iraq after 9/11 made as much sense as attacking Mexico after Pearl Harbor.
And then there is that other good war: The Civil War.
America, to my mind is not exceptional in any of the ways pundits claim.
But it is exceptional in one way: It is the only country which has ever fought to free an underclass, to free slaves and the people who had no skin in the game went to fight to free slaves on principle.
It's true many if not most Union soldiers may have marched off for more mundane reasons--adventure, glory, boredom--but at some level and eventually, the war became about slavery and the armies, if they did not understand that at the outset came to know it and yet they persisted.
Those Union soldiers fought for the idea of America, for the great experiment in government of the people, by the people and for the people. That was real heroism and patriotism.
And by Trump's thinking, those Union soldiers were the ultimate in fools and suckers because they did not have to fight, and they could have made money buying and exporting and manufacturing King Cotton leaving the slaves to produce it.
This latest tempest will be kept in its teapot, but it will be interesting to see if any minds or hearts are changed.
I would bet not.
When Sonny Corleone tells Michael those who rushed to enlist after Pearl Harbor were fools and suckers, he is stating the tribal creed of the Italian family mob: You fight for your family, not for some idea of country. Michael tells him he sounds like his father, who, of course, is the Godfather. Sonny agrees, and he's proud of it.
 |
| Only your family matters: Patriotism is for suckers |
And that is the creed of Donald Trump, who is the Don of his family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-I4VIR5yGg
I felt the same way at the time of Vietnam--not that we had no country worth fighting for but that we were not fighting for our country in Vietnam. There was the good war against Hitler. But there was a stupid war in Vietnam and I thought you had to be stupid to fight in that war.
But I would never say or think people who did go to Vietnam were stupid. They were fighting for their country, as far as I could see.
Even Rhett Butler ultimately goes off to fight for the doomed Confederacy, in the end.
My own brother, who got a rocket fired at his swift boat, and trudged through the jungle, still believes he went to war to serve his country, and if he thinks that way, he did. He had a little Rhett Butler in him then.
There was a movie called, "Born on the Fourth of July" which depicted how badly ordinary American boys were deceived about Vietnam, and there have been book length analyses, like Max Hasting's masterful "Vietnam" and Neil Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie." All of these depict the folly of those wars and the folly of fighting in them.
But once you are committed and over there, once you come under fire, all the glory stuff disappears, and you are just fighting to stay alive and to keep your brothers-in-arms alive. That much I can understand without ever having been in the military, because I've been in other less dire situations where the team mattered, and it didn't matter if anyone else saw what you were doing; you fought for each other.
So what Donald Trump was saying was, for once, honest and we can believe he meant that.
A lot of my generation agrees with him on that one level: you can be fooled into thinking you are doing something great.
But you can also be foolish: Pat Tillman dropped out of a million dollar NFL career and went off to fight in the Middle East miasma and got shot dead. And he was shot by his own men in a friendly fire incident. Such is the absurdity of ill conceived wars for no good reason.
 |
| Tillman: Shot by his own troops |
But what Trump gets wrong is there are other wars, where you might not be wrong: the men and women who rushed off to fight after 9/11 may have been fools, but at least this nation was under attack. The foolishness of waging war on someone who had nothing to do with that attack can be argued. As John Kerry said, attacking Iraq after 9/11 made as much sense as attacking Mexico after Pearl Harbor.
 |
| Abu Gharib: Fighting for your country |
America, to my mind is not exceptional in any of the ways pundits claim.
But it is exceptional in one way: It is the only country which has ever fought to free an underclass, to free slaves and the people who had no skin in the game went to fight to free slaves on principle.
It's true many if not most Union soldiers may have marched off for more mundane reasons--adventure, glory, boredom--but at some level and eventually, the war became about slavery and the armies, if they did not understand that at the outset came to know it and yet they persisted.
Those Union soldiers fought for the idea of America, for the great experiment in government of the people, by the people and for the people. That was real heroism and patriotism.
And by Trump's thinking, those Union soldiers were the ultimate in fools and suckers because they did not have to fight, and they could have made money buying and exporting and manufacturing King Cotton leaving the slaves to produce it.
This latest tempest will be kept in its teapot, but it will be interesting to see if any minds or hearts are changed.
 |
| True Believer |
I would bet not.
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