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Was this election a Second Great Awakening for the Religious Right? I believe it was. Most of the new Republicans are pro-life.
I don't think so - I think that it was an expression of frustration by the broader electorate.Many voters were naive enough to believe candidate Obama's campaign promises and middle of the road voters are disillusioned by certain political failures and falsehoods (extreme partisanship / Pelosi politics of not even making an appearance of consulting the minority party, GITMO remaining open [talk about a naive promise], NSA wiretaps not only still ongoing, but increasing [another naive promise], and excessive spending). The majority of voters in America aren't as clueless as Washington tends to believe.I also believe that this frustation manifested itself in two forms - 1) there are angry voters who felt that Washington is out of touch and has largely gone too far, and 2) the majority of the folks that put the Democrats into power in Congress four years ago didn't vote. Turn out was pretty low for those who voted Democratic four years ago (and two years ago) while turn out was up for folks that didn't vote four / two years ago.A re-awakening of the religious right? Not so much as a lack of energy and apathy from the classic "swing" voters.(and just a personal rant / pet peeve -- prior to the election we kept hearing that Congress and the President inherited all these economic problems from President Bush - do they think that our insitutional memory is so short? Didn't the Democrats have control of Congress for the last two years of the Bush presidency? Didn't their partisan obstructionsim contribute to the current problems? Don't many of these economic problems stem back to the unbridled growth of the 1990s? Didn't we have the "dot com bust" in the late 1990s that was only eclipsed by 9-11? The issue, in my mind, isn't solely a Republican issue. It isn't solely a Democrat issue. It is, in my very humble opinion, a partisan issue. By that I mean that there are too many in politics who are placing the welfare and advancement of their party ahead of the welfare and advancement of our nation. The last time that I truly beleive that politicians as whole put the nation first was in 1994 when both sides determined to work together to advance the welfare of the country. Unfortunately that didn't last long and was largely sidetracked by a BJ under a desk. I don't even think 9-11 bridged that divide for very long - we were united against a common foe (although a foe that we had trouble identifying) but that didn't necessarily mean that political partisanship disappeared for very long for any issues beyond foreign policy. Anyway, rant over. We'll have to wait and see, but I think that even with the new crowd coming to DC there will be continued partisanship on both sides. I think that it will take an even larger political "bloodletting" in 2012 and probably 2014 before we start to see substantial change in the primacy of the political party over the national welfare.)
The practical and political solution would be to task NASA and the Department of Education to work together to enhance and advance public education in math and science. NASA could be given direction to establish a 5, 10, 15, and 20 year plan to advance public school math and science curriculum – they build, oversee, and manage the evaluation and progression of the curriculum while the department of education is given some of responsibility for managing the implementation. Most importantaly, elementary and secondary math and science education would be geared toward a specific goal – a visible and measurable end state.Just a thought.
I love the conspiracy theorists… their arguments never have to make sense, only raise the slightest shadow of a doubt.I had the honor a couple of weeks ago of having dinner with Buzz Aldrin - he told the story that a couple of years after the Apollo 11 landing a conspiracy theorist confronted him outside of restaurant accusing him of faking the whole thing. The guy was being an "X"-hole and actually shoved Buzz. Well, Buzz, like the combat fighter pilot that he is, decked the guy.Spend a little time with Buzz and look in his eyes - do doubt, the man walked on the surface of the moon... the man secretly held communion on the moon... and was forever changed by it.
Scout – do you really think that Captains Kirk and Picard needed cell towers to communicate with Enterprise? Obviously, the device in question is more advanced than our currnet primitive systems!
I think it was Giap who said something along the lines of “a hundred thousand people die every day, it is irrelevent if they die in battle or in poverty.” (or words to that effect).
Aren't local book lists approved by local school boards based on guidance from the state?
That's basically how it works in Virginia. The state board approves a list of texts and local schools boards can select from the list. There are teachers assigned to selection committees and they're usually paid a couple of hundred dollars for their participation - whether or not they do more than look at the covers or titles of the books I don't know. I would imagine that there are certain incentives provided for selecting certain books.Where I live in Northern Virginia, the book in question was pulled from the schools within a week of this breaking. Knowing how things work, I doubt seriously that anyone looked at the book in question before it was purchased and put in the classrooms - and I doubt that many looked more than a week ahead of the lesson plan then. In my own experience, when my son was in the 5th grade up here we had a bit of a "to do" with his teacher who taught that the carpet baggers were instrumental in getting the South back on its feet after the Civil War, providing many valuable services in reconstruction. ???
Jake – I guess my metaphor was a little off. My main point is that we weren't fighting the war in a way aimed at defeating the North Vietnamese. We were fighting it – on a strategic level – to not lose to them. U.S. strategy was focused largely on defeating the Viet Cong, and when they showed up in unit strength, the NVA. In no way do I want to minimize the casualties, as each one was a personal tragedy. My comment on irrelevance was meant on the basis of evaluating success criteria. Under Johnson/MacNamara/Westmoreland we evidently identified the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese critical vulnerability as their inability to replace losses and maintain troop strenghts in the field. In the case of the VC, I think that they were right. In the case of the NVA – well, evidently they were wrong given their inability to go after them in North Vietnam.
I think you've discovered what we all pretty much already knew, that our public education system is nothing more than a propaganda venue for the government.
And a cash-cow for publishers... >:(
If he is defeated in his re-election bid, could he return in a “Grover Cleveland'esque” second term?---My opinion, the primary problem with our current political situation is that politicians, by and large, have greater loyalty to the good of their party than to the good of the nation.
So the current administration and the mess in Iraq are both long term influences of Vietnam. This is a very deep analysis; it looks like you?ve really thought about it.
A couple of other thoughts -- our country and our military are products of our history. The expertise in logistics and deployment that we witnessed in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan can trace their roots back through every conflict we've had in the 20th Century - largely back to the logistical debacles associated with our invasion of Cuba in the Spanish American War at the end of the 19th Century.The execution of precision bombing that we witnessed in the first Gulf War and in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan had their roots in precision targeting efforts in bombing North Vietnam, but can easily be traced to an outgrowth from the strategic bombing campaigns and dive bombers of the Second World War.And the "body count tallies" of Vietnam can largely be traced to previous conflicts - in particular the campaigns against Japan in the Second World War where the influence was on "killing them all" because they wouldn't surrender and couldn't escape.
And yes, 58 000 American casualties compared to the 1 100 000 North Vietnamese, not to mention the non-military casualties indicates that the US was winning.
Now, this is what is at the core of my first post in this thread -- focusing on the body count and casualty totals is largely irrelevant. It's like counting strikeouts in a baseball game -- of the 27 outs per side in a game, we struck out 25 batters and they only struck out 5 of ours. But that's irrelevant to how many runs are scored. We largely defeated the insurgency an defeated the Viet Cong - and we soundly defeated the North Vietnamese Army in practically every major engagement - but we failed to prevent them from winning the war. How many of the enemy killed is irrelevant if it doesn't degrade their ability and will to fight. Clausewitz said that war is an extension of politics (policy) by other means -- in the case of our involvement in Vietnam, we fought on the ground, but we failed to understand that the "other means" that Clausewitz was referring to extends well beyond just firefights, armies, and battles.
I have been in the military for over 21 years as a Combat Arms soldier and I am here to tell you that prior to the start of the insurgency in late 2003 there was no training or classroom work done with regular line soldiers on counterinsurgency and no doctrine was propagated prior to the publication of the new COIN manual in 2005. We made it up as we went along in 2003-2005. No doubt we made plenty of mistakes but I think we did quite well given the conditions we worked under and that we were fighting a war none of us had trained for.That is my 2?.
Everyone's experience is different - we did what could be counterinsurgency training when I first went in the Corps in the early/mid 1980s. Our senior battalion officers and SNCOs were all Vietnam vets, so perhaps that shaped our focus. In the early 1990s we also studied and tried to implement the lessons of the Marine Combined Action Platoons from Vietnam - as well as studying the Marine Corps' old "Small Wars Manual" --- both of which were key components of the modern COIN manual. Now, was this widespread? I doubt it. But that was my experience.
I think that the biggest legacies of the war consisted of the willingness of our national command authority to commit us to a military action:1. Without establishing clearly defined success criteria (President G.H.W. Bush got it right for Desert Shield/Desert Storm and was taken to task for it).2. Without mobilizing (and maintaining) popular support and involvement in the war / war effort3. While keeping it a secondary concern/priority to domestic and social policy.Another concern, from my limited viewpoint, is that we failed to coordinate military strategy with national policy. Our participation in the Vietnam war was a logistical masterpiece, coupled with a flawed military strategy. Winning what LBJ called "this piss-ant little war" was never a top national priority. As a result, military options were limited (in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam) where we could not go after the enemy (the NVA) in a way to destroy his ability and will to fight. So, instead, we turned to fighting a counter-insurgency. In a weird and somewhat ironic twist of fate, we largely won the counter-insurgency but that victory was totally irrelevant because we didn't defeat the NVA. We directed our main effort against the enemy's deception plan, so to speak... which had very little to do with our national policy of containing communism. To put it another way, our goal / desired end state was not to defeat the North, it was to preserve the South. That's akin to fighting not to lose rather than fighting to win.
