Victory

Support the Victory Caucus after watching a minute and a half of classic war film footage.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

I think you missed the point of that scene. And the movie, for that matter.

[Dan Riehl]

Life is like a cafeteria - you take what you want and you leave the rest!

[91B30]

Fear the Stetson.

http://timblair.net/ee/images/uploads/300million2.jpg

[hobo]

Kind of reminds of my kid, bless his heart. He'll be home in two months, then back to Iraq for another six. One thing he emphasized was not to believe much of we read in the media. When the 'stringer' passes the story to the military for screening, the reporter in the Green Zone edits it and it is sent to the news rags for printing. Some things never change.

[Oregonian]

Okay, I've seen some idiotic posts on Dan's blog, but this one takes the cake.

Either A) "Riehl World View" is actually an incredibly clever parody of right-wing lunacy, or B) Dan Riehl is ready for a one-way trip to the funny farm.

"Apocalypse Now" and "Heart of Darkness" have many powerful things to say about our misadventure in Iraq, but neither one is an argument in favor of it. Sane minds don't really enjoy the smell of napalm in the morning...

[Darth Malice]

The enemy never forgets Napalm.

[scarshapedstar]

"The enemy never forgets Napalm."

If you listen closely, you'll notice that he's talking about bombing a hill with no enemies on it.

[Oregonian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TrangBang.jpg

[Legalize]

Here's a better way to support "victory" in Iraq: http://www.goarmy.com/flindex.jsp

And, Riehl, you chose the wrong Robert Duvall character to represent your "point." Frank Burns is a much more apt representative.

[seekeronos]

Napalm was uniquely effective in Vietnam, since it was useful for rapid defoliation as well as anti-personnel suppression; it was an excellent field weapon for a jungle war.

It would probably not be so useful in the quasi-urban settings of our current conflict, although it might be useful for subduing an armed compound or group of safehouses such as kept by Mookie Al-Sadr's band of merry muslims.

A more effective antipersonnel weapon might be tank-mounted flamethrowers and the use of canister rounds (giant shotgun shells fired from the main cannon of an M1A2 Abrams tank) to hose down wide areas of attack against personnel.

Or clustered fragmentation weapons delivered from the air.

[BobInStamford]

A sure sign of a loser is anyone who watches movie clips to get excited for a losing war and joins anything called a 'Victory Caucus'. You sheep are getting more pathetic by the day.

[Darth Malice]

Burns/Hot Lips......my favorite couple...When I was in Korea the guy who played Frank Burns came by where I was stationed .He was doing a tour and I saw him at OSAN AB....nice guy....patriotic American.

[Legalize]

And yet, Darth, you do not get the joke.

[ME]

Another example of the awful comprehension abilities of conservatives...

You watch that scene and get a hard-on for victory? You obviously didn't extract any meaning from it beyond what is presented to you non-symbolically on screen.... that's kinda sad. Does that inability of yours carry over to other art forms? When you read animal farm, did you think it was actually about animals on a farm?

And you choose to bring up Vietnam when calling for "victory"?

I think you're deranged or something. Daou should stop picking on you... it's not really fair, is it?

[Darth Malice]

We just need to produce and use more napalm legal...San Fran would be a great testing groung :)

[Darth Malice]

Liberals think some animals are more equal than others.

[Patty]

Victory.

Say it loud and there's music playing
Say it soft and its almost like praying

Victory.

(borrowed from Leonard Berstein, Westside Story, "Maria")

[Dan Riehl]

Daou should stop picking on you... it's not really fair, is it?

I'm glad he links me, I appreciate it. As to your point about the movie, doesn't strike me as the Duval character was in Conrad's work. Coppola used it to parody something he doesn't understand. Duval played it honestly. It bothers you that there are men who almost delight in fighting and even killing for a cause "they" believe it? Too freaking bad, wimp.

[scarshapedstar]

"Coppola used it to parody something he doesn't understand."

Meanwhile, Dan The Understander watches a madman reminiscing about impotently bombing the hell out of a bunch of grass and trees and calling it "victory" and thinks it's a ringing endorsement of American foreign policy.

[Kluck]

Mr. Riehl, I think you are a bit confused about the LTC Kilgore character in APOCALYPSE NOW. Coppola did not use him to "parody something he doesn't understand," nor did unit commanders of the type that loved the smell of napalm in the morning necessarily "believe" in the "cause," as you write.

LTC Kilgore makes it clear that he has nothing but contempt for the Vietnamese (he calls them "gooks," "savages," etc.), and is clearly motivated by the "thrill" of combat, not by some greater cause about saving Vietnam from itself. LTC Kilgore certainly has no second thoughts about reducing villages to cinders. Interestingly, and accurately, LTC Kilgore shows more respect for the VC than the ARVN: remember the scene with the ARVN officers dissin' the wounded VC?

A lot of Vietnam veterans (lieutenant and below) could relate to the LTC Kilgore character as someone amped up on adrenaline and testosterone, who loved mixing it up with the "gooks," and who saw the war (and his own troops) as stepping stones on his career path. These squadron and battalion commanders were known as ticket-punchers, and while often personally heroic and certainly anti-communist, it would be a stretch to say that they knew a helluva lot about Vietnam itself. In other words, it would be hard to claim that they "believed" in any "cause" other than killing Charlie and collecting the Silver Stars and Distinguished Flying Crosses they needed to make colonel.

Commanders like LTC Kilgore killed a lot of VC and NVA (they were certainly tactically proficient), but they also generated more than they killed with their tactics. Flattening villages is not a great way to win hearts and minds.

If LTC Kilgore is the conservative's idea of an inspirational military hero, well, what can I say?

[seekeronos]

The thing with war is:

If you do a half-arsed job of killing your enemy, and quibble over it at every turn, he will eventually come back twice as strong as when you first started (compare WW1 Germany with WW2 Germany).

Destroy your enemy's ability to wage war completely - root and branch, and what very little is left may even become manageable, and potentially, an ally. (consider post-WW2 Germany and Japan).

If we find ourselves failing in Iraq, it is not for lack of our soldiers' fighting spirit or technological ability; it will be because the American people, and the elected officials (both Democrat and Republican) have failed to implement a war policy that allowed our generals to be generals, who could have lead our men to squash our enemies with neither mercy nor respite.

Fear of the sword goes a long way toward restraining the foolish ambitions of wicked men, especially the Islamists who live by their swords.

[Dan Riehl]

well, what can I say?

You could say at least we know how to fight and win a war.

[Ron]

It's easy to cheerlead war from the sidelines and in someone else's backyard. Seekeronos and Dan Riehl have the mental maturity of pre-teen children. Rah Rah.

[JoBomb]

My dad and his brothers were liberals who helped win WWII.

My mom is a liberal who was a nurse in WWII and Korea.

She patched up a lot of liberals who came home and made many little liberals who love their country.

[Dan Riehl]

"She patched up a lot of liberals"

Classical Liberalism was quite patriotic. I rarely, if ever see that reflected in the neo-liberalism of today.

[templar knight]

seekeronos, you hit the nail on the head. Bravo! And Ron, tell us how you would prosecute a war.

[Kluck]

Not to be rude, Mr. Riehl, but must say that your comment that "we [conservatives] know how to fight and win a war," was a bit weak.

I guess the easy rejoinder would be: Nixon & Vietnam, Bush & Iraq. (You could say that Ike the Republican won in Korea, or at least got the best deal that was possible, but Ike was hardly a conservative.)

Arguments about conservatives and liberals aside, it is difficult for a Western democray to defeat insurgents: the amount of bloodshed involved is almost genocidal (more than civilized people can stomach), and a foreign army just doesn't have the staying power to defeat insurgents fighting in their own backyard. Nations like the U.S. and Great Britain are ashamed of their My Lais and Bloody Sundays; such tactics were just standard operating procedure for the Romans and the Nazis and the Soviets. (And, hell, even with their taste for kill-'em-all savagery, the Nazis and Soviets don't have a great track record in defeating insurgencies.)

Your general theme regarding Iraq is that we need to take the gloves off. The French certainly took off the gloves during their long occupation of Algeria. In response to one Muslim riot in 1945 in which 100 whites were murdered, the French army slaughtered approximately 15,000 Algerians of all ages and both sexes. The French army also resorted to torture that would make the Abu Ghraib stuff look like child's play.

The Algerians still won. Just like the Vietnamese still won despite massive U.S. bombing, and scorched-earth infantry operations.

Anyway, the whole point was that you were celebrating a war-mongering lunatic like LTC Kilgore as some kind of exemplar of martial virtue. And all I'm saying is that guys like LTC Kilgore were not beloved by their troops and platoon leaders, and though they killed a lot of Vietnamese, they did not win the Vietnam War.

I can also tell you that I have no sympathy whatsoever by the medieval-minded religious fanatics responsible for 9/11, and those insurgents in Iraq who drive car bombs into schools and marketplaces. . . . but if you think the answer to Iraq involves unleashing an army of LTC Kilgores, then, again, I don't know what to say.

[91B30]

Kilgore is the left's caricature of an Army officer, might as well run him out and praise him to get their blood pressure up.

The Brits beat back an insurgency in Malaysia (oh heck there's a whole list of successful campaigns against insurgents if you take the time to look for it http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200501180829.asp ).

Dan's right about the left post Vietnam-a defeat for America was all to the good for them. They had decided that America was what was wrong with the world, and a good many of them still believe it.

[Kluck]

To, 91B30: yes, the Brits won in Malaysia, but the insurgents in Malaya were part of a hated minority. They did not have the support enjoyed by, say, the FLN or the Viet Cong.

And, yes, the Salvadoran army did squash that insurgency, but they did it the old-fashioned way with death squads and the wholesale destruction of villages (inhabitants included). Not exactly a model for a westernized democracy. The U.S. is not going to employ such tactics in Iraq.

Anyway, if "LTC Kilgore is the left's caricature of an Army officer," then Mr. Riehl should not be celebrating his craziness. I don't think, as you indicate, that there was anything ironic in Mr. Riehl's praise. I think he said what he meant, and meant what he said. (And I'd love to hear him expand on how adept conservatives are at fighting and winning wars.)

Oh, one other thing: I don't think LTC Kilgore is actually "the left's caricature of an Army officer," but a surrealistic representation (in what was a surrealistic movie) of the ticket-punching battalion commanders of Vietnam who made such a negative impression on their lieutenants and grunts: you know, the super gung-ho lieutenant colonels who went "gook"-hunting from their command ships (see Gregory and many others), encouraged troops to mutilate enemy dead (see Hackworth), carried enemy skulls around (see Patton the Younger), blithely wiped villes off the map then turned around and handed the newly-made refugees a box of C-rations to make it all better, etc., etc. (This kind of behavior was reported at the time, and I can imagine the kind of stories Coppola was told by the young veterans with whom he spoke in the late-60s and early-70s.)

Finally, please don't include me in someone who thinks that "America was what was wrong with the world [after Vietnam], and a good many of them still believe it."

I think America is the greatest country the world has ever seen, the saving grace (along with other western democracies) in an otherwise violent and dark world; also, at a gut level, I absolutely despise the religious fanatics with whom we are at war in the Middle East.

On the other hand, I also fear that Bush is one of the greatest incompetents in our history (conservatives know how to win wars indeed), and I think it's a little nuts for Mr. Riehl to be pulling LTC Kilgore out of his hat as the answer to the quagmire in Iraq. Holy shit!

[91B30]

Kluck-in point of fact (due to the fact that many-if not all-on the left are inclined more to see America's flaws rather than her greatness) it may be that conservatives are the only ones who are willing to still fight America's wars (this was almost absolutely true in our squadron), but I'll let that go.

I think you're wrong about how Kilgore was portrayed. I think if you look at how commanders are portrayed in popular culture you will see that they are generally shown as madmen-there are far too many examples to be ignored, which is both incorrect and unfair.

I also think you are wrong about COL. Hackworth. I read his column regularly before he died and also read several of his books as well a the book of a young troop who served under him. He was an expert at fighting the enemy on his own terms and most of his troops admired him.

Got to run for now, more later.

[Kluck]

Hey there, 91B30. You are right: Colonel Hackworth was a man of immense physical courage, as well as being an expert in guerrilla warfare. He was also much admired by his troops.

However:

1.) Hackworth liked to brag that he was the model for the kick-ass LTC Kilgore of APOCALYPSE NOW.

2.) When Hackworth commanded the 1/327th Airborne Infantry (1st Bde, 101st AbnDiv) in 1966, his troops (rather, some of his troops) cut ears from the VC they killed. This was reported at the time by Ward Just, a reporter who accompanied Hackworth's unit (and was, incidentally, much admired by Hackworth). I probably overstepped when I said Hackworth encouraged this mutiliation of the dead, but he certainly knew about this behavior, and apparently did nothing to discourage it.

Interestingly (as reported in WHERE THE ORANGE BLOOMS and UTTER'S BATTALION), another battalion from the same brigade was investigated for chopping off the heads of dead VC at the unspoken encouragement of the battalion commander (the battalion commander issued all of his troopers with hatchets, and they did with them what they knew he wanted to do with them). Even more interestingly, after Hackworth departed, his battalion became involved in a series of atrocities later revealed in the book TIGER FORCE.

3.) After Hackworth commanded the 4/39th Infantry in 1969, he told his old friend Ward Just about how he planned to use a branding iron to burn the battalion motto (HARDCORE) on the chests of the VC the unit killed. The plan was abandoned because no one wanted to carry a heavy branding iron around on patrol.

Ward Just wrote about the ear-cutting and the (planned) branding of dead VC at the time (in TO WHAT END and MILITARY MEN). Hackworth did not deny anything. In fact, he and Just remained friends until Hackworth died.

LTC Gregory's "gook"-hunting was written about by one of his former subordinates in THE LOST BATTALION. COL Patton's enemy skull became the subject of an official investigation, and was mentioned in THE FIGHTING PATTONS (as was the regimental commander's Christmas card from Vietnam which included a color photograph of shot-to-shit VC with the legend Peace on Earth).

[Kluck]

Oh, 91B30, I should add that Hollywood's portrayal of almost everybody (from military officer to police officer to housewives) is skewed to the dramatic, and is thus unfair to the boring, workaday whole. Drama almost always trumps reality on the screen.

In any event, this whole thread started because Mr. Riehl grabbed a surrealistic, uber-aggressive Hollywood example of a military officer, and presented this figure as a example of martial splendor. His implication was clear: guys like LTC Kilgore are the answer in Iraq.

He then said that conservatives know how to fight and win wars.

I don't think Mr. Riehl knows of what he speaks, and would not be sticking my nose in here if not for my personal distaste for faux tough guys like Mr. Riehl who seem (in my view) to treat war as a video game, and seem to have no second toughts about the carnage they urge be unleashed in places like Iraq. (I think the other posters here, like ME, JoBomb,Legalize, and starshapedscar have Mr. Riehl's number in that regard.)

I really shouldn't be taking this discussion so far afield as to get into "incidents" involving COL Patton, LTC Hackworth, LTC Gregory, etc. (except to rebut the idea that the mad LTC Kilgore of APOCALYPSE NOW is an invention of the Left).

The real point is why Mr. Riehl admires LTC Kilgore, and why he thinks conservatives know how to fight and win wars.

One other thing: I'm presenting the negatives regarding the U.S. officer corps in Vietnam. I'm not presenting a well-rounded picture. Why? Because I do not think that Mr. Riehl (and the current crop of conservatives in general) are aware of the negatives.

Wish Mr. Riehl would jump back in here. He really should amplify his original point, and his follow-up about conservative expertise in waging war. Or maybe he just threw some meaningless point out there, and is bored with the whole subject.

[91B30]

Kluck-COL Hackworth had an immense ego and was something of a braggard, that is something which no one who ever read anything he wrote would distpute. As far as the other officers you mention, you may have a point but I honestly believe that the character of LTC Kilgore was how Hollywood looks at all officers-and I struggle to think of an example of a senior officer (more than a Captain say) from popular culture who is portrayed more sympathetically.

As to your other point, I won't speak for Dan, but an aggressive and competent officer (different from a ticket puncher who just wants a CIB and BSM so that they look good in their DA photo) is the kind of man who will win battles and wars. Anyway, I am enjoying our exchange, which is much more civil than what is normally seen here.

[Kluck]

91B30, I'm not sure if I have anything of value to add to this dialogue, but I do appreciate your note about this being a civil discussion. Yeah, I have on one or two occasions offered my opinion on a blog, and the personal insults have started flying immediately. You've probably had the same experience. Not fun, or productive!

I will repeat that I think that Mr. Riehl, like many other callow young conservatives, lives in a fantasy world regarding war.... so much so that he misses the entire point of APOCALYPSE NOW so whooped-up is he by the spectacle of LTC Kilgore blowing up villages to the strains of Wagner. LTC Kilgore wasn't fighting for democracy. He was fighting because he loved war, and would have been at home in any uniform in any army at any time.

I think too many conservatives conflate having respect for those young men and women who put it all on the line in the service of this fine country with glorifying war itself.

You know about war and the military more than I, so I will not belabor the point, but I don't think Hollywood treats military officers any worse than they treat everyone. You've got Coppola's crazy LTC Kilgore, and Mel Gibson's noble LTC Moore.

I would hope that most viewers would realize that LTC Kilgore, what with his ravings about the smell of napalm and Charlies inability to surf, was a surrealistic blend of fact and fantasy meant to represent some of the darker stuff that went on in Vietnam. He sure wasn't for real.

He only seemed real, and admirable, to Mr. Riehl. Which is scary.

[Jon G]

Here's what the war's really doing to the Army and National Guard.

Lieutenant General David Poythress, the state adjutant general for the Georgia National Guard, 12/17/06:

“There is a danger of breaking the Army, but there is an equivalent danger of breaking the Guard. Guardsmen don’t sign up to be full-time soldiers. If that’s what they wanted, they’d join the active Army.”

General Peter Schoomaker, Chief of Staff United States Army, 12/14/06:

“At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component. Further, because almost all reserve component units have already been either partially or completely mobilized in support of the Global War on Terrorism, current mobilization policies and practices require the Army to rely on individual volunteers from the reserve components. This runs counter to the military necessity of deploying trained, ready, and cohesive units.”

Lynn Davis, a senior analyst in the Arroyo Center, a division of the Rand Corp. that does research for the army, 9/22/06:

“The continuing frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the U.S. Army so thin that there are few brigades ready to respond to crises elsewhere.”

Andrew Krepinevich, retired Army officer and author of a Pentagon report arguing that the Army is “in a race against time” to adjust to the demands of war “or risk ‘breaking’ the force in the form of a catastrophic decline” in recruitment and re-enlistment, 1/24/06:

“You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue.”

George Joulwan, retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, 12/5/05:

“And we’re fighting in all of Iraq, and we’ve got deployments in Afghanistan and worldwide. They are stretched thin. Whether they’re broken or not, I think I would say if we don’t change the way we’re doing business, they’re in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that.”

[Kluck]

True dat, Jon G. I'm going far afield from the main subject (Mr. Riehl's immature fantasies about war), but I will say that it's tragic that the whole war effort rests on the shoulders of a relatively small number of military personnel who are expected to pull repeated combat tours while 99.999% of the country goes on about their lives.

[91B30]

Jon G-I think you have made a couple of mistakes in your post: first the Georgia AG is only a Major General, only the chief of NGB is a LTG. That's a minor mistake, but I also take exception to his remark that NG soldiers "don't sign up to be full-time soldiers". We don't sign up to avoid doing our duty either, and accept that we will be deployed occasionally. It is a myth-derived from the Vietnam era-that the guard is not meant to go to combat, Bradleys, field artillery and Abrams are not meant for disaster relief. I will also speak frankly and say that many of us resent that some on the home front seem determined to undermine our efforts.

As for GEN Schoomaker, I am glad that he has finally come around to the position that the Army needs to be expanded, many conservatives have been saying that since the late 1990s, when it became apparent that Clinton and Bush senior had gone way too far with the "peace dividend" cuts. I did not hear this cry from liberals at the time, just the opposite in fact-I am glad that the Dems have come around to my point of view, rhetorically at least. Many on the right admire Rummy, but I am not counted among them as he obviously did not understand how to use the Army or Marine Corps, although he also had many innovative ideas.

I can only tell you what the situation is in my own unit: we redeployed from the desert in late 2005 and reorganized according to the Army's new TO&E for heavy units throughout 2006. We are scheduled to redeploy in 2009 (I am looking forward to it, for a variety of reasons). We are currently not at strength, but we could deploy again with a short time to come up to strength (which is what we had to do before our last deployment in any event). Few of us have much dread of the prospect, in fact some have already volunteered for another deployment (I have done two since 2003 for a variety of reasons). My take is that the Army is stressed, but far from broken. Senior officers are not above the same kinds of rhetorical excess that are seen in other political types in trying to get what they want from the power brokers.

Kluck-I got a forwarded e-mail the other day, it was a picture of a squad on a raid somewhere kicking in a door. The caption read: "America is not at war in Iraq. The Army (substitute Marines per your preference) is at war in Iraq. America is at the Mall."

[91B30]

In my previous post I meant that Schoomaker toed Rummy's line about expanding the force early in his tenure as chief of staff, not that he was a liberal. Rummy had the idea that he could reshuffle the deck and get more combat power from the Army by switching from a division-centered force to one with a brigade nucleus. This idea has some merit, but it does not preclude increasing the force (the simplest argument in favor of this is that it is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it). In addition to that, Army Times did a story about how many soldiers, of the total force-regulars=reservists, had deployed (and the total number of deployments) recently. Surprisingly, a large percentage of soldiers had not deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan and so are available for deployment in some capacity. The manuver elements have mostly done at least one deployment, and we need more combat troops, but there are forces available to take up some of the slack-even today.

[91B30]

@#$%!-should read "regulars+reservists"