Word: vietnames
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...flakes respond in various ways. Some ostentatiously unload home computers on the first day and effectively guarantee a summer of alienation right there. Others talk only about science fiction, and some boast prodigious drug habits. These are the kids who read the newspapers and know every battle of the Vietnam War, Many come from Bronx High School of Science, where they win debating trophies or excel at ping pong...
These criticisms aside, his analysis of Vietnam is pertinent and thought-provoking. Perhaps most frightening--and most effective--is the essay after which the collection is named. In it, Chomsky contends that efforts to erase the "Vietnam syndrome" have spurred renewed international tension. By the "Vietnam syndrome," Chomsky means the "reluctance on the part of large sectors of the population of the West to tolerate the programs of aggression, subversion, massacre and brutal exploitation that constitute the actual historical experience of much of the Third World, faced with 'Western humanism.' "The task for the United States in the aftermath...
This whitewashing of America was partly accomplished by the purge of President Nixon during the Watergate "farce," Chomsky argues. Instead of prosecuting Nixon for his "serious crimes--the merciless bombings of Laos and Cambodia and the murderous 'pacification' campaigns in South Vietnam..." Americans chased their President from office in the name of morality, charging him with committing what Chomsky calls "petty criminality...
...hostage crisis in Iran further served to rid the country of its post-Vietnam guilt. Instead of seeing the immorality of propping up the dictatorial shah, Americans learned only that we should "overcome our reticence, develop more destructive strategic weapons, deploy forces prepared for rapid intervention throughout the world, 'unleash' the CIA, and otherwise demonstrate our pugnacity." He sums...
Chomsky's characterization of the United States as a "propaganda" state like all the rest--distinguishable only by its more effective and seductive salesmanship--is particularly hard to swallow. For every Sidney Hook who dismissed the havoc of Vietnam as "an unfortunate accidental loss of life" and "the unintended consequence of military action," there was a Noam Chomsky, willing--and able--to stand up and decry the madness. Maybe the reaction came to little too late, but Americans eventually rebelled against their own government's policy and, through their action, ended a nightmare...