Word: wars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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THIS MEANINGLESS consensus, however, is not as harmless as it looks. It has, in fact, the potential to undercut anti-war sentiment in two significant ways. It vindicates and humanizes supporters of the administration: See, they say with a complacent shrug, we're not so bad. We, too, oppose barbarism...
...beyond that, striking closer to home, is the tendency of this flood of moral outrage to legitimize the U. S. presence in Vietnam. For as soon as we focus our concern on how the war is being fought, we implicitly concede that it should be fought. Without this concession, indignation over the tactics of the war has no meaning...
...justified in classifying the Song My massacre as a "tactic" of the war. The press, by the very quantity of its coverage, implies that the incident is an unprecedented misfortune. Americans can rest assured, therefore, that the whole episode was unique, the work of a handful of deranged criminals who disgrace their uniforms...
...fact this criminality is institutionalized in our war strategy. The guerrilla tactics of the NLF have prevented us from fighting a conventional war: we simply can't hold any territory long enough to "win" the countryside (the Hamburger Hill/Huc syndrome...
...small temptation, as you can see, to be diverted by tactical questions of the war. The fact that the Song My incident is far from unique should intensify, rather than obscure, our condemnation of any American presence in Vietnam...