You just can't ignore history
More than half of the 402 Alabamians polled in a recent Mobile Register survey said the United States achieved either a win or a draw in the Vietnam War.
Poll director Keith Nicholls tried to connect the survey results to reality: "[S]ome people might want to point to this war as perhaps a foreign-policy defeat but not a military defeat. It's really the only way these results make sense, if you assume that people are really informed about these issues."
Even likelier: Some Americans think the very idea that the United States could ever lose, or that our leaders' decision to go to war could ever be bad, is unpatriotic or treasonous, so they simply put on rose-colored glasses and see what they want to see. Many of those citizens likely also feel that to support U.S. troops, one necessarily must support all wars in which they're sent to fight.
Refusal to learn from history is, of course, a sure-fire way to repeat it. The Alabama commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars said it best: "As a nation, it doesn't seem that we learn our lessons very well."
Poll director Keith Nicholls tried to connect the survey results to reality: "[S]ome people might want to point to this war as perhaps a foreign-policy defeat but not a military defeat. It's really the only way these results make sense, if you assume that people are really informed about these issues."
Even likelier: Some Americans think the very idea that the United States could ever lose, or that our leaders' decision to go to war could ever be bad, is unpatriotic or treasonous, so they simply put on rose-colored glasses and see what they want to see. Many of those citizens likely also feel that to support U.S. troops, one necessarily must support all wars in which they're sent to fight.
Refusal to learn from history is, of course, a sure-fire way to repeat it. The Alabama commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars said it best: "As a nation, it doesn't seem that we learn our lessons very well."
posted by Alabamian at 7:35 AM
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