Equations

An issue raised tangentially in Robert Kenner’s documentary How Vietnam Was Lost got me thinking. The film is a clever interplay of an infamous moment during 1967 when two American battalions were ambushed in the Vietnam jungle with the lost of 61 GIs, paralleling events back home at the University of Wisconsin when anti-war protests turned violent for the first time, with students protesting at Dow Chemicals’ (the makers of Napalm) campus recruitment being truncheoned and hospitalized. The two events taken together proved a ‘turning point’ (Kenner) in public perceptions of the War, proving to many that it was unwinnable (though it would go on for another 8 years). Whilst the former showed for the first time the vulnerability of ground troops the latter saw the first in the cycle of violent demonstrations which brought home a civil war to complement its foreign counterpart.

But it seems to me that what proves a ‘turning point’ in public perceptions of the Vietnam War is that the massacre of 61 US soldiers was an unconscionable outrage despite the fact that in this particular skirmish they were outnumbered 10-1 by Viet-Cong. The implication seems to be that any more favourable a rate of odds and of attrition would have made the battle justifiable. We should bear in mind that by 1967 the death rate on the side of the VC numbered at least 133,000, whereas deaths on the American side numbered just 9,000, mostly because ground combat had been limited in favour of carpet-bombing (courtesy of Dow). 133,000-9,000 reflects fairly closely the 10-1 hit which the Delta /Alpha company took in the infamous ambush: the deaths of 61 Americans in one go are seen by those back home as sufficient reason to stop the war.

It occurred to me that a Catholic is going to have a hard time reconciling these figures with the notion of the equal value of all souls. Not that I’m a Catholic, but I do hold out against the arbitrary prioritizing of one person’s life over another’s. My reckoning is that here one GI’s life roughly equals ten Gooks; anything else - one GI worth only five Gooks say - tips the balance in the public’s mind, makes the war too costly. Any comparison with the equation of lives in Iraq that now helps tip the balance away from American support for the war would be entirely beyond the scope of the present post.

Comments

[Alain]

YH, thank you for posting this. I assume your last comment is sarcastic, no? It is an interesting coincidence that I just posted on Senator Eugene McCarthy, who represented a shift in the perceiption of certain parts of the ruling elite.

I think that comparisons in general between Vietnam and Iraq are difficult. One of the greatest differences is that there was a draft during the 1960's, even though many found a way out of it(like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Clinton, etc...). The stakes for the general population were so much higher than they are today - so few families are asked to make the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. Of course, this completely ignores the indifference to the human costs for Iraqi's, but I think it explains the limited public mobilization against the war.

Thanks Again.

[YH]

Hi Alain, I agree the difference between drafted and volunteeer wars in terms of their effect on public opinion back home is important. Recruitment from social classes at arm's length from the elite and the (in)visibility of body-bags would be another feature which distinguishes these wars. George Caffentzis is quite good on how the debacle in Vietnam created a qualitative leap in teachnologies aimed at minimising US war deaths, a New Warfare Deal which the anti-war struggles of the 60s and 70s inadvertently achieved. My point was more about the kind of threshold of moral perception which tips American opinion against a war having little relation to the disproportionate number of _enemy_ soldiers and civilians killed. This much I suspect has remained the same. It's a peculiarly myopic morality which emerged on that day in '67.

[et alia]

YH is right; anti-war rhetoric is only rarely about the condition of the Iraqis. It's "My God, our troops" pretty much 24/7. Meanwhile, the Lancet's figures of ~ 100K Iraqis dead still holds OK, yes? What of them?

[Alain]

et alia and YH, I agree with you. I did not mean to suggest that the Iraqi casualties are irrelevant or even properly recognized as victims. Clearly there is a "peculiarly myopic morality" at work here. I wonder if it is possible for most Americans to ever see the Iraqi's as equally deserving of the right to live? I have heard many Americans (co-workers, family, friends) say that they are shocked that Iraqi's do not seem to "appreciate" what we have done for them - a truly remarkable statement.

[Craig]

The Ancient Greeks, as I recall, came up with two equations to express different forms of equality. Unlike us, who think of equality in terms of outcome or opportunity, the Athenians expressed their understanding of equality in terms of 'arithmetic' and 'geometric' equality. The former was the type of equality that should prevail in democracies, while the latter was the type that should prevail in aristocracies.

Manin, in his Principles of Representational Government (which I am currently reading), explains in the following terms:

Greek culture distinguished between two types of equality: arithmetical equality on the one hand, achieved when the members of a group all receive equal shares (whether of goods, honors, or powers), and geometrical or proportional equality on the other, which was reached by giving individuals shares whose value corresponded to the value of the individuals concerned, assessed according to a particular criterion, whatever it might be.

Thus, two individuals A and B receive shares a and b in the following way:

arithmetical: A/B=a/b=1
geometrical: A/B=a/b=>1

Apparently, fill in for A=Americans, B=Viet-nam-ese, a=American Deaths, b=Viet-nam-ese deaths.

[NWC]

Interesting. Which one did the Athenians think they lived in, and were they all in agreement by the way?

[Craig]

When a democracy, they certainly (and I'm trusting Manin here) thought in terms of arithmetic equality. He defends this perspective by reference to the extensive use of the lot to select magistrates, juries, courts, etc. On his understanding of the lot, it arithmetically (in conjunction with a principle of the rotation of offices) distributed the probability of obtaining office. However, Plato/Socrates clearly thought arithmetic equality (and the lot) was a ridiculous idea. Aristotle, on the other hand, understood arithmetical equality (and the lot), but equivocated somewhat.