On Dec 13, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Dan Minette wrote:
When a foreign policy graduate student at MIT,
who received a degree in government from Harvard states that your point
differs from historians and political scientists who are studying the
period, then it is highly likely that you hold such an opinion.
Hold such a what of an opinion?
That you are much more capable than they are.
Ah. I don't believe I ever claimed I was much more capable than they were to understand anything. That doesn't mean my insight is incorrect, though.
First off, who precisely are these "they all" to which you refer?
The folks that Gautam was referring to in his origional post.
These folks have not been listed. This is a little like a journalist saying "sources claim that..." when not naming who the "sources" are. It's just not enough. It's not a citation. It's barely even hearsay.
By contrast your query was quite reasonable. I tend to respond a lot more reasonably to questions that aren't asked in a belittling, condescending or otherwise snotty tone. I don't think I need to explain why.
Sure, few people like negative tones. Sarcasm, while making make one's point should be used _very_ sparaingly IMHO. I can understand why you don't like it.
But, you also led with your chin, there....boldly proclaiming certainty in
an area in which scholars tend to put forth their ideas in more measured
tones.
"Boldly proclaiming certainty"? Oh really? I thought all I did was suggest that the current admin had to be fairly dim not to have learned from history.
To the earlier exchange, I think the question's pretty clear: How is it
that so many people seem not to have learned from history?
Before learning from history, it's worthwhile to understand just what the
lessons of history are.
Um, that *is* learning from history. What you basically just said is that in order to learn from history you have to learn from history. I won't disagree with the tautology, but as arguments go it's not the best. ;)
The lessons we can learn from Viet Nam would be a
facinating source of discussion. I think it is also a field where honest,
reasonable people can still differ greatly.
I'll agree on both points. However, I think there are probably some points that are pretty clearly indisputable. I thought I did a pretty good job, way back when, of listing what those points were.
Well, if you read his posts, you would have some familiarity.
How?
By reading the side notes when he writes. Many of us do that from time to
time. In particular, he mentioned it when DB was writing about how clear
and obvious the right actions the lessons of history are. I know certain
things about you from reading your side notes. For example, I'd guess you
don't teach electrical engineering at your college. :-)
That's true. It's actually origami as meditation.
On a more serious tack, the reading of sidenotes about a person would suggest I read everything a given individual posts, and I don't. I skim, but if it looks like a noteful of vitriol and bombast I tend to move on rather quickly. (Contrarily if the subject is not one of interest to me in some other way, I again won't read it.)
I believe it's unreasonable in the extreme to expect me to know even partial bios about anyone I've never met in person. To have knowledge of the academic background of a not-every-day poster in a forum where diverse topics are brought up and there's often more pushed out than can easily be taken in is more than I believe I can be fairly expected to do.
foreignAre you arguing that there is no such thing as scholarship in history,affairs, and political science?
Course not. Where did I say I was?
Well, you stated, on several occasions, that your opionon was right and those folks who worked in the area clearly missed the lessons.
I never said any such thing. I said I think there are some lessons that are more or less indisputable. That's quite different from what you claim I said.
If scholarship does exist, on what basis would you say that? Why is your casual observation right, and their scholarship wrong?
What "casual observation"? I took plenty of history classes over the years, even though it was not in my major or minor lines of study; and I have paid attention to it and to social changes over the years partly out of hobbyist interest and partly because such areas are of interest to me as a writer.
As has been pointed out, there is not a consensus on many elements of history. There are, however, some things that are not really up for rational dispute. Underestimating one's enemy is foolish; that's not arguable. Viet Nam was one example of what happens when one's enemy is underestimated. That's not in dispute either.
I don't think it's my assertion that triggered anyone's objections; I think what hit a nerve was the next logical conclusion: That the current administration is incompetent at best, and can and should be held directly responsible for the disaster in Iraq, and that they damned well ought to have seen it coming months in advance. They were warned repeatedly by multiple learned individuals about the foolishness of the course they'd set, yet they chose to ignore both current warnings and the lessons of history.
That's an opinion, and it's mine, and I believe it's right. It's based in my understanding that there were some signal truths learned in Nam (or at least brought up by it) that were overlooked or deliberately ignored in Iraq. I don't see any part of the foregoing that is unreasonable. Nor do I see any part of the foregoing wherein I suggest I know more than some nebulous cadre of unnamed experts.
I know, for example, that he had Stanley Hoffmann as his senior thesis advisor and has Dr. Hoffmann's professional respect.
Gee, since my Psychic Friends® TeleHelmet™ is in the shop this week, I
guess I have to cry mea culpa for not knowing that particular datum.
How shocking, utterly shocking of me to overlook this blatantly obvious
piece of information.
I just provided it to you; I don't think he specifically mentioned it on
this list...he just mentioned that he worships the ground that Hoffmann and
Huntington walk on. So, I didn't expect you to know it before. But, given
that he went to Harvard and majored in government with a strong interest in
international affairs, there was a good chance he has some association with
them.
You seem to be impressed by Harvard; maybe I'm misreading that. I'm not impressed. An education is only as good as the student. Putting an institution on your resume as your alma mater signifies nothing of objective worth. I'd think the election of 2004, which featured two Yale men, would provide a good example of what I mean by that.
To associations and who and what and how, no, sorry, I don't study the luminaries of PolySci enough for their names to have buzzword value to me.
It would seem you chose to overlook the other items I listed. And it would seem you chose to overlook the context I later gave for mentioning Rummy and Cheney.
This, Dan, is why I don't particularly have a lot of patience sometimes
when discussing things with you. I have to restate things I said in
earlier posts on the same thread. That gets frustrating.
I read what you wrote, and I still didn't see what the connection between
these two and 'Nam was...since they were involved in Defense after the US
was out of 'Nam. Cheney was secretary of defense during the fairly
sucessful Gulf War I, and Rumsfeld held that post under Ford, so I just
couldn't fathom what they had to do with 'Nam.
They were there, in position to be privy to information that most other people in the world never could have got, while Nam was happening.
For instance, this site
<http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1969.html>
Shows a long tapering off of involvement well into 1972, three years *after* Cheney and Rummy were in Washington. They were there thils this stuff was going on. They couldn't have been unaware of the problems and mistakes made daily. And they got us into precisely the same imbroglio three decades later.
To me this is a textbook (!) example of not learning from history.
supporter ofA couple examples of this was quoting a well know liberal ecconomist and member of this list, as well as former member of the Clinton administration, as a clearBush.
Oh? I must have overlooked something then. Who, where, etc.?
I was thinking along the lines of:
<quote> The problem is that the foregoing assertions, which are glossed over and buried in a way that makes it seem like they wish to be hidden, carry no weight, even though the entire crux of DeLong's argument is (in essence) that the desperately poor choose to remain so....
DeLong's argument sounds very suspiciously like some of those advanced to support slavery, but that's hardly surprising, as toiling day after day making mats for a corporation, with no hope whatsoever for advancement or escape, is, in essence, just that......
Of course this is precisely the same kind of drivel one hears from wealthy people in the US as well. And as the divide between rich and poor becomes greater in our "jobless" economic "recovery", as the middle class -- which used to be the backbone of American society -- continues to shrink, we're going to continue to see more dreck spewed from patsies such as DeLong as the US continues to more closely resemble the very third- and fourth-world countries it exploits for cheap labor now.
<end quote>
I'm sorry, but I read what looked a lot like an apologistic sellout to multinationalistic pressures. That's how the argument was presented, opr at least that's what came through to me.
On a tangent, please bear in mind that there's very little difference between Republican and Democrat when incomes hit seven figures and more. Any industrialist who argues for outsourcing and borderless nations in the interest of promoting economy is probably not arguing for the good of the people; ht's almost certainly arguing in support of his own profit margin. If there are some people somewhere who benefit, well, that's convenient, but not necessary. And if there are people whose ability to make a living is gutted by the change, well, that's "regrettable", but it's not going to change anything.
I'm still stinging from the fatuous unction exuded a couple years back, when I was "downsized" myself, by people who said in essence that it was good for a whole lot of poor people overseas, so I should just shut up and tolerate my unemployment.
I still don't buy that argument and it disgusts me every time it's put forth, and I will continue to object to it in terms as extreme as I wish whenever I encounter anything that smacks of it.
Or calling the Viet Nam war a war to overthrow a communist government.
That's precisely the line that was handed to the US during the conflict, unless I'm woefully misinformed.
No, it wasn't. It was containment: Stopping the spread of Communism.
It's a fine distinction, but possibly valid. Contrarily I had understood that a main goal was to get North Viet Nam back -- to unify the country -- and that would mean overthrow of the government or, in today's terms, "regime change".
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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