THE REAPPROPRIATION OF THE VIETNAM WAR:

Also in the privacy of my own room last night I wrote a bit on why I thought Debray's editorial in the NYT over the weekend was on target in important respects. I'll spare you the gory details and just make this side note: in her recent post, Jane Galt argues that, among other things, many educated Americans don't know that South Vietnam was a separate country from North Vietnam and that the Vietnam war was simply the fulfillment of our treaty obligations with the South (and, of course, a battle against communism).

Many Americans also don't know that the French showed us by example that a war in Vietnam would be a failure, that colonial ambition there would only bring about pain and suffering, and that we should not start down the domino theory train by propping up a corrupt and silly South Vietnamese protectorate. On Sunday, Debray counseled the U.S. to take France's colonial lessons to heart. We still should.

As a side note to the side note, I'll bet twenty bucks that as our new domino theory begins to take hold of U.S. foreign policy and we begin to engage in democracy-building on the heels of war, we'll see an ever more loud defense of U.S. intervention in Vietnam and an ever more loud insistence that long-haired demonstrators doomed what was a noble and winnable effort. I've already heard some of my Weekly Standard reading friends make this argument. My emotional response: AAAAH!! STOP THE ELECTORAL CYCLE, I WANT TO GET OFF!!!! At least popular culture still seems to think that the Vietnam war was a bad idea.