Why would anyone be surprised by this? And what’s the purpose of harping about it? Seems obvious enough. But look at how that comments section stacks up. Not that it isn't a valid thesis, but really – it isn’t the sort that’s likely to go over well with that venue's readership, is it?
But maybe it's just a matter of perspective. For instance...
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When the first Star Wars film was released, I was eleven years old. Some six years later when Return of the Jedi came out, I was about to begin my final year of high school and wasn't feeling any pressing need to rush out and see the latter movie during its premier weekend. Me and a friend had a conversation about it; about what we knew from the adverts and the advanced promotion, and about our waning enthusiasm. What could we expect this time, the third, time around? I offered a list of predictions:
1.Han Solo would probably get a bad feeling about something, 2.Darth Vader would at some point proclaim that something else "is now complete", 3.There would doubtlessly be some short, cute aliens of some new variety or other, and 4.Five bucks says R2D2 gets shot again.
We'd been of the ideal age when the first one - or the fourth one, or whatever - came out in 1977, and we'd been some of the first in line. Not only that, but we then ran out and bought the action figures when they began to arrive on store shelves, collected the several series of baseball-style cards that followed, and even went so far at one point as to buy issues of the dodgy cash-in extrapolatory Marvel Comics series that followed in its wake. But now we were a little older, and - as happens in mid-adolescence - our interests had drifted into other areas. We were "aging out" of what had become the franchise's target demo.
And perhaps we were also becoming prematurely jaded. But fuck it, we also remembered being subjected to that wretched Star Wars Christmas TV special – so who could blame us?
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Some sixteen year later, a good many other people would get a strong dose of that same "aged out" and left-behind feeling when the Star Wars "prequels" arrived in theaters. By reviving the series for a second trilogy of films, Lucas and company were looking to appeal to a new and younger generation of viewers. What’s more, the studio and its licensees trotted out an extensive array of tie-in merchandise well in advance of the release of The Phantom Menace, more and more people – far more than usual – started to take to the notion that the films were becoming little more than thinly-disguised, mega-inflated toy commercials.
The Vietnam War, like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in our own era, is often mistaken for being an imperialist war. However, historically, true imperialist wars tend to be won quickly by the ruthless, dedicated imperialists, instead of resulting in interminable, humiliating defeats. What wars like Vietnam actually are is intellectual wars, in that their ultimate rationale derives from theories generated by small cabals of intellectuals in politically-motivated think-tanks, that are themselves dedicated to the maintenance and furtherance of the works of earlier politico-economic philosophers or philosophical schools.
These theories, usually derived from misdiagnosed, exaggerated or even invented threats, are packaged into narratives that derive plausibility by working backwards from the perceived "vulnerabilities" that are usually generated from status anxieties ("they hate our way of life") and are presented to politicians through avenues of influence previously established by corporate or military-industrial bodies that in turn stand to derive secondary benefit from any resulting conflict. Finally they are sold to the public in a series of soundbites ("The Domino Theory", "The Axis Of Evil", "The War On Terror" etc.) that turn what were originally obscure and/or marginal theories into self-evident Manichean inevitabilities.
In world history (as opposed to Western history) this kind of behaviour is a reliable indicator of civilisational decline, as it marks the moment where a society has reached a stage of wealth and comfort where it is unwilling to recognise or act on the principle that war, or any other sustained effort, requires sacrifice. The society therefore adopts the magical axiom that sacrifice can be replaced by intellect, as enacted in finessed strategy and/or technology. Only a nation in the intellectual stage in which belief in the efficacy of brainpower and technology is paramount could contemplate involvement in such wars, and indeed one of the principle self-deceptions involved in them is the belief that the enemy can quickly be overcome with either shock-and-awe firepower (technology), or by inserting small numbers of troops in advisory or policing roles to advance the cause of native allies (brainpower). In short, every effort is made to create and sustain the illusion that no serious sacrifice will be necessary.
"Rolling Thunder" was the name given to the United States’ air offensive against North Vietnam that commenced in 1965, and rolled along under various appellations ("Menu", "Linebacker", "Linebacker II") until 1972. From the start, the policy contained a striking contradiction in that though it was magically believed that sustained aerial bombing of infrastructure would persuade the North Vietnamese to capitulate, it was also considered that certain infrastructural facilities and defensive systems (primarily airfields) should be excluded from targeting for humanitarian or diplomatic reasons. This had two notable results. The first was that American bomber pilots had to fly to their targets at low-level and in clear conditions to accurately hit their targets, making themselves vulnerable to the Vietnamese defences. The second was that the policy clearly set itself up for expansion and compromise on the event that it’s initial targetting conventions failed to gain results.
Within a year of the beginning of "Rolling Thunder", the North Vietnamese had started to collect large numbers of downed American pilots, and this presented them with an opportunity for a propaganda coup, which they initiated by inviting the world’s media to Ho Chi Minh City, nominally to confirm that their prisoners were being well-treated, but with the real motive of re-framing the conflict in sympathy with their viewpoint.
What amazed (and even to some extent appalled) Western journalists was the enormous confidence the North Vietnamese had in their eventual victory. At first this was suspected of being some kind of bluff, but as the sheer ebullience of their hosts persisted, through every rank of official they came across, for the entire duration of their time in the capital, the realisation dawned that the Communists meant it. They really expected to win. And the basis for their confidence was simple - they knew that they were prepared to sacrifice more, to endure more, than the Americans and their allies.
The U.S. could never match the levels of sacrifice of their enemies, even though they had committed themselves far more than they had originally intended. The only way they could escalate their effort was through moral compromise; firstly by loosening their definition of what constituted an acceptable target (by taking in civilian areas), then by increasing the amount of ordnance dropped (by engaging heavy B-52 bombers) and finally by secretly breaking international law (by bombing neighbouring Cambodia). Even today, footage of the destruction wreaked by the American bombing of the Indochinese countryside provokes a kind of hypnotic awe. Like Hollywood, the United States military had become addicted to pointless pyrotechnics.
The lesson, which still hasn’t been learned, and perhaps for many deeply embedded cultural reasons, cannot be learned by Westerners, is that technology has the potential to be utterly degrading, in that it offers both diversions from, and false solutions to, problems that require true personal sacrifice to overcome. The cycle of identifying a problem, attempting to utilise an intellectual or technological method to overcome it, failing, and then blaming oneself is, I suspect, perhaps the underlying source of the terrible levels of depression that underpin technologically advanced societies. Perversely, every failure of technology only increases the almost mystical belief that modern society has in it, to the point where people even expect to be raptured away in Singularity with it.
Nevertheless, somewhere far up a river, deep in the Vietnamese jungle, one United States Army officer truly understood the latent power of self-sacrifice and the Human Will. A heretic to contemporary Western principles, he himself had to be exterminated.
