The Gulf War and the “Ghosts” of Vietnam

The excellent article by Nora Eisenberg on the LRC site this morning reminds me of the response by President Bush I afterward. I remember he was quite giddy and he told the crowd that the “success” of the Gulf War had exorcised “the Ghost of Vietnam.”

In other words, the inability of Iraq to fight back against the onslaught of death and destruction that came from the U.S. Armed Forces was a great thing for this country. After all, Americans still felt bad about themselves for not having been able to exact a surrender from the Vietnamese, and the country needed a psychological boost.

There is one more thing I remember. Lew and the Austrians like Murray Rothbard were among the few people to openly speak out against this atrocity. Their words were not popular, but in the USA, truth rarely wins popularity contests these days. Most Americans prefer lies and plenty of them.

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8:30 am on February 28, 2009