Monday, May 14, 2007

Vietnam vs. Iraq

Study the graph at right for a few minutes (click on it to get a larger version).

What’s your reaction?

If (like me) you’re old enough to remember the news reports during the Vietnam war, you might have the same reaction I did: the anti-war agitation in the media now is at least roughly similar to what we saw in the late 1960s and (especially) the early 1970s — but the casualties we suffered in Vietnam dwarfed the casualties we’re suffering in Iraq, and clearly the level of anti-war emotion in today’s American public doesn’t even come close to the anti-war emotion in the public toward the end of Vietnam, when we had many anti-war riots and (as I can personally attest) soldiers and sailors were routinely disrespected and reviled.

What do you think is going on here?

1 comment:

  1. In the old blog, Pringle said:
    It a result of the media focus on each loss. During Vietnam which I do remember well, we would lose 30 troops in a day as compared to 3 in Iraq. Daily news reports were sad as hell but we continued fighting and losing more. Today the media whips up a frenzy over our losses to the extent they show the grandmother of a dead soldier. They give her air time, anti-war speach time, whatever they can capture the TV audience with. I too dislike how we are trapped and being ambushed. War is hell. The media wants us to suffer every day. As much as I dislike our situation in Iraq, I fault the TV Liberal scaremongers for serving the nation with this daily meal of trash. I don’t watch it.

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