Word: podhoretzes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Were in Viet Nam, Norman Podhoretz...
...history chokes Podhoretz's imagination; in his pachydermish outlook. George McGovern is not much more than another Henry Wallace, and the early 1970s Congressional inquiries into the CIA are just about the same as the McCarthy hearings. This antiquarian outlook keeps Podhoretz from under-standing that the opposition to the war spring from something more than Communist tendencies or native. The unstated backbone of Podhoretz's argument is that there were really only two possibilities in Vietnam--Stalinist totalitarianism, or American-backed authoritarianism. What the New Left was saying--correctly--was that neither of those was any good, neither...
...were brutal in Korea is no excuse for Vietnam-cruelty is not governed by rules of precedent. And the antiwar movement paid much less attention to the My Lai's and Son My's than it did to the day-in and day--out operation of the war. Nothing Podhoretz says matters...
Where the left was wrong was in their estimation of the North Vietnamese. As Podhoretz currently points out, the steady stream of folk singers and Nation writers flowing into Hanoi really thought it was a benevolent government. They were wrong in thinking that Ho Chi Minh stood for justice, peace and poetry. But they were not wrong in thinking those goals worth pursuing...
...agree with Podhoretz that in some measure the left too-willingly backed the communists in Vietnam. But that is a far cry from agreeing with Podhoretz that the U.S. background the rights with Translating ideals into something real will continue to be hard work: it is though a much more noble task than shedding the blend of the innocent in supported an evil status...