A Quote by Stephen Colbert
There is a residual sense for me, having grown up in the early '70s, that I did not know I had, which was a sense that the military are different than I. Because there was such a divide between the military world - and there still is, because there's no draft - and the civilian world is one of the rotten harvests of the Vietnam War, was this sort of bifurcation of America in that way.
Related Quotes
Yes and no. Because America has only about 1 percent of the population serving in the military, it is hard for many civilians to understand the sacrifices military families make. However, my experience is that after the Vietnam War, the public learned that they should support the military whether or not they support the war. You've seen that outpouring of support for the veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship. Any explanation that fixes culpability on individuals is insufficient. No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts produced similar results. In both conflicts, the general officer corps designed to advise policymakers, prepare forces and conduct operations failed to perform its intended functions.
Vietnam was the first time that Americans of different races had to depend on each other. In the Second World War, they were segregated; it was in Vietnam that American integration happened in the military - and it wasn't easy.
You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the vantage point of quarter century in time? We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense, it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.
I don't know that I had a sense that there was such a thing as "the poetry world" in the 1960s and early 70s. Maybe poets did, but for me as an onlooker and reader of poetry, poetry felt like it was part of a larger literary world. I mean, even the phrase "the poetry world" reflects a sort of balkanization of American literary and artistic life that has to some extent happened since then.
I had grown up during Vietnam. I had no connections to the U.S. military, and I had a pretty cynical default opinion about the U.S. military.
There's an ocean of misunderstanding. It's called the civilian-military divide. I had a lot to learn about our military - who they are, what burdens they carry.
World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.
The reason we've always had a civilian in that job [Secretary of Defence] is because we really believe that it is policymakers who ought to control the military and not have the military control the military.
I refused to adopt civilian way of life and slowly influenced my civilian surroundings to do things the military way. My civilian career as an entrepreneur and founder of a defense contracting company has been an extension of my military service.
There was sort of a negative association with the military. Maybe growing up in the South or being in a family with members of the military, I didn't have that negative connotation, but I did have this 'separate' connotation. I was ashamed to realize I had it and did not realize I had it until I was [in Iraq]. I was so impressed by the people I met over there and there was just a sense of connection and gratitude towards those people.
I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.
I'm a military man, I did what I did only because my country had to be saved from tribalism and feudalism. If I failed, it was only because I was betrayed. The so-called genocide was nothing more than just a war in defence of the revolution and a system from which all have benefited.
As for Vietnam, what matters is that Kennedy successfully resisted pressure to send anything more than military advisers, a stance that was a likely prelude to complete withdrawal from the conflict. There is solid evidence of his eagerness to end America's military role in that country's civil war.
It should not be hard to say that Vladimir Putin's military has conducted war crimes in Aleppo because it is never acceptable for military to specifically target civilians, which is what's happened there, through the Russian military.
Oddly, the military world is one of great sameness. There is an orderly quality to life on an army base, and even the children of the military are brought up with that sense of order and sameness.
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