This week marked the 38th anniversary of the American ground withdrawal from
Vietnam. At the time The Spectator ran the following leader, condemning the Pentagon’s often inhuman conduct of the war, which it deemed counter-productive. Reading the piece, it becomes
plain that the conduct of war has changed beyond recognition. Modern strategists have dispensed with napalm and have embraced aid and development instead. Whatever Julian Assange might intimate,
Afghanistan is emphatically not a re-run of Vietnam.
‘Thinking About War
The more our think tank men think about war, the worse our wars become. Sophistication means worse. Men thinking in tanks brood upon killing trees. We know it is silly: but the activity continues. The latest reports emerging out of Washington discuss the pros and cons of defoliation through herbicides in the context of a Russian invasion through the main European gap “between Liege and Mainz and Bonn and Kassel”.
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