vietnam – Mathematical Software

October 12, 2022

[Video Review] Lessons for Ukraine from the Vietnam War?

With President Biden invoking Armageddon and the United States embroiled in a hot proxy war with Russia, the other major nuclear superpower, in the Ukraine, the lessons of Vietnam may be especially relevant today. The Fog of War is a 2003 video documentary on the career of former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009) primarily focusing on the Vietnam War in which 58,220 Americans and many more Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians perished. The war had a reported cost of $168 billion in 1960’s dollars ($950 billion in 2011 dollars). McNamara was Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson from 1961 to 1968. He has been widely criticized for his leadership of the war effort. It is sometimes presented as a mea culpa by McNamara.

The documentary is essentially an interview with McNamara, eighty-seven (87) at the time, interspersed with historical news footage that sometimes contradicts McNamara’s often opaque — one might say foggy — answers. In many respects it seems like a non-apology apology in which McNamara makes hazy statements that in fact avoid responsibility, passing the buck repeatedly to his former boss Curtis LeMay, President Johnson, unnamed subordinates (for the decision to use the Agent Orange “herbicide” in Vietnam), and others while sounding deeply but vaguely concerned about his fellow man. It is structured as a self-help video for future generations with eleven lessons from McNamara — all the sort of general mostly feel-good platitudes common in self help materials: e.g. “Empathize with your enemies” — a touchy-feely variant of the old standby “Know your enemies.”

At no point does McNamara say something like: ” I made decision X. In retrospect it was a bad decision and I regret it.” In discussing the controversy over Agent Orange, he says some people think the chemical was dangerous, implies someone else made the decision to use it, says he cannot recall who made the decision, and expresses vague concern, not really regret, that it was used during his tenure as Secretary of Defense. He does not discuss the taboo on use of chemical weapons in warfare that grew out of their use in World War I, a taboo that even Nazi Germany which had developed nerve gases far deadlier than the weapons used in WWI obeyed during WW2. Surely there should have been a cabinet level review — with the President and Secretary of Defense (McNamara) involved — of any decision to use a chemical weapon.

Good Cop, Bad Cop?

Good cop/bad cop is a psychological tactic used in negotiation and interrogation, in which a team of two people take opposing approaches interrogating their subject. One interrogator adopts a hostile or accusatory demeanor, emphasizing threats of punishment, while the other adopts a more sympathetic demeanor, emphasizing reward, in order to convince the subject to cooperate.
The “bad cop” takes an aggressive, negative stance towards the subject, making blatant accusations, derogatory comments, threats, and in general creating antipathy with the subject. This sets the stage for the “good cop” to act sympathetically, appearing supportive and understanding, and in general showing sympathy for the subject. The good cop defends the subject from the bad cop. The subject may feel able to cooperate with the good cop, either out of trust or out of fear of the bad cop and may then seek protection by the good cop and provide the information the interrogators are seeking. The order can also be reversed. When performed in this manner, the good cop will try to gain a subject’s trust. If that fails, the bad cop will intimidate the subject to make them crack under pressure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_cop/bad_cop

In many respects, McNamara’s interview and the documentary reflect what seems to be the modern liberal Democrat Party line on the Vietnam War — and the more recent Iraq War II. Something like: the Vietnam War was a mistake. Kennedy and Johnson meant well. Nixon didn’t. JFK and LBJ were browbeaten and misinformed into the debacle by hard line and often dishonest military and CIA leaders such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay whom McNamara paints as an ogre, CIA Director Allen Dulles, General William Westmoreland, failed Republican 1964 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and others. Once Nixon became President, the naive ineffective but much smarter and more caring Democrats “woke up” and abandoned the war.

In 1964 Lyndon Johnson ran as a peace candidate against the crazed maniac war Republican war hawk Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. The documentary has a brief clip of Goldwater stating bluntly that the US is in a war in Vietnam and the administration is lying to the public, which indeed seems to have been true.

In August of 1964, only three months before the Presidential election, there was an alleged series of incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin near Vietnam where the North Vietnamese allegedly “attacked” the US fleet. These attacks seem to have killed or injured no one and caused either no or minimal damage. McNamara discusses the “attacks” assuring the viewers that yes the “attack” on August 2 occurred but the second attack on August 4 was apparently a “mistake” by somebody, not him obviously. Usually the term “attack” brings up thoughts of events like the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans or Pearl Harbor with 2,403 deaths in 1941.

Nonetheless, President Johnson seized upon the “attacks” and gave a speech to the US population seeming to claim the US was bombing North Vietnam as he was speaking, which would have required the planes to be airborne from their base in the Pacific before the alleged second attack. Not surprisingly Barry Goldwater pointed out the timing problem and was ridiculed. Goldwater would give several speeches during the election campaign questioning the incidents and suggesting a coverup.

In the Fog of War McNamara’s vague assertions about the incident and audio tapes played by the documentary suggest Johnson and McNamara may have been misled by either incompetent or willfully deceptive military officers who sound rather unsure of their own claims. Since 1964, tapes have been released indicating Johnson and McNamara privately had doubts about the incidents, which nonetheless did not delay or moderate the immediate statements to the public or the reported counter-attack, the bombing.

Of course, with no casualties, the President and Secretary of Defense could easily have released a reassuring statement through the Presidential spokesman indicating there had been a possible minor incident with no casualties and the US was investigating to determine what actually happened before responding.

The highly publicized attacks with no casualties increased fears of war during the election campaign and seem to have helped Johnson’s campaign against the right wing hawk Goldwater. Johnson was the good cop and Goldwater the bad cop — whether by design or accident. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution giving the administration a carte blanche for war in Vietnam was passed on August 10, 1964 with strong bipartisan support, not unlike the recent resolution to support Ukraine.

McNamara also seems to use the good cop/bad cop routine in his discussion of the Cuban Missile Crisis with his former boss Curtis Le May as the crazed “bad cop” warmonger planning World War III. By comparison, JFK and McNamara seem reasonable. We are led to think: Thank God Curtis Le May was not in charge. There is no discussion of the convenient timing of the crisis which boosted JFK’s approval ratings dramatically, only weeks before the November, 1962 mid-term elections.

Fog of War or Smokescreen?

Both McNamara’s answers on camera and the documentary emphasize McNamara’s brilliance: a top student before attending Berkeley, an Irish kid atypically outcompeting smart Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese students at Piedmont High School in Piedmont, CA, a top student at Berkeley, attending Harvard business school, a key aide to Curtis Le May during World War II, and whiz kid at Ford before being tapped as Secretary of Defense by JFK. Yet this self-described genius (I think he probably was a genius) repeatedly passes the buck by portraying himself and his boss, tough Texas politician Lyndon Johnson, as naive simpletons repeatedly hoodwinked and even intimidated by subordinates. Who us? We were only in charge!

Lessons for Ukraine?

While the Fog of War’s eleven self-help platitudes are of little practical value in the modern crisis, there is a sobering lesson, not a new one.

Governments, including specifically highly educated, intellectual liberal Democrats who preach peace and brotherly love, frequently lie, blatantly and on serious matters such as war and peace, sometimes just to win the next election — no matter the subsequent costs to the nation or the world. Super smart officials like Robert McNamara lie and are often excellent liars and masters of double talk. They get away with it too; McNamara was rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a cushy, highly paid job as President of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.

About Me

John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

August 14, 2022August 15, 2022

[Book Review] The Gray Lady Winked

The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions, and Fabrications Radically Alter History
by Ashley Rindsberg, Mark Crispin Miller (Foreword)

Midnight Oil Publishers (URL: https://midnightoilpublishers.com/)
May 3, 2021

First Edition
283 pages, including Notes and Bibliography (no Index)

My Rating: 3/5

The New York Times is arguably the most influential newspaper in the world. Its’ uncritical repetition of government and Democratic Party propaganda regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns has drawn critical attention to its news reporting as never before in US history. Ironically, former Times reporter Alex Berenson has become a leading critic of the government’s often changing COVID and lockdown claims as well as the Times dubious reporting.

The Gray Lady Winked attempts to be a comprehensive expose of controversial and clearly inaccurate, even fraudulent news reporting by the paper dating back to its coverage of the Nazis and Stalinist Russia in the early 20th century. Although the New York Times has long been criticized by many, this appears to be the first attempt to cover the controversies and scandals in a single book — an audacious and difficult undertaking given the scope of the New York Times news reporting.

The Gray Lady Winked is a short book with ten chapters, each covering a controversial news story: the Nazis, the Ukraine famine under Stalin, the Times muted coverage of the Holocaust despite or perhaps because it was a Jewish newspaper, Herbert Matthews glowing coverage of Fidel Castro, David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan’s questionable reporting from Vietnam, the early coverup of radiation sickness in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US government and the Times working hand in hand, the controversy over the death of Muhammad al-Durrah — a ten year old Palestinian boy shot during the early days of the Second Intifada in 2000, the Times questionable and inaccurate reporting after September 11 and on the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), questionable reporting on an alleged epidemic of violence by veterans of the Iraq II and Afghan wars, and finally the super-controversial 1619 Project with its dubious claims the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.

Each of these chapters covers a complex topic that could be and in many cases has been covered by entire lengthy books, some of which are used as references. The Gray Lady Winked skips other scandals and controversies such as the infamous Kitty Genovese murder Times reporting which falsely portrayed an entire neighborhood — thirty-eight people — watching a young woman raped and murdered from their apartment windows without calling the police and the controversies over Raymond Bonner’s reporting on El Salvador in the early 1980s.

Article Debunking Times Reporting on Kitty Genovese Murder

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.62.6.555

I felt the book’s driving agenda and goal is to criticize and discredit the Times reporting on Israel, specifically the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, where the heavily Jewish Times is accused of a pro-Palestinian bias if not a sinister agenda. In particular, coverage of the death of Muhammad al-Durrah and the Second Intifada by then Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Deborah Sontag and her husband Walter Orme come in for heavy criticism.

Ashley Rindsberg lives in Israel with his family according to the book and presumably is an Israeli citizen. To this end, the book collects many historical episodes of questionable or false reporting by the Times to discredit its coverage of Israel: see they have done it to many others and could do it to you too dear reader.

I found some of the arguments emotional and unconvincing, notably in the chapter The White Taffetta Gown: “People Who Happen to be Jewish” which covers the Times muted response to the Holocaust. The phrase “white taffetta gown” is drawn from glowing Times coverage of the marriage of publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s daughter Marian to Orvil Dryfoos on July 8, 1941 even as the Nazis were massacring Jews in Ponary, Poland.

The Nazis and the Holocaust are a touchy and emotional topic, especially for Jews. It is usually difficult to challenge arguments that invoke the Holocaust.

The chapter argues that anti-semitism was rife in the US and in heavily Jewish New York City in 1941. Rindsberg seems to blame the Times downplaying of the Jewish origin of the Sulzberger family and many, many Times reporters both on fear of anti-semitism and on the “assimilationist” views specific to German Reform or Conservative Jews such as the Sulzberger family. The book seems to argue that the Times should have loudly announced their Jewishness, lead the charge to publicize the Holocaust — with no certainty this would save a single life and no fear of losing the Times vast influence in the US and the world in the face of the alleged pervasive, deep rooted anti-semitism in the US.

There are a number of problems with these arguments. Many Jews, not just German Reform/Conservative Jews like the Sulzbergers, downplayed or disguised their Jewish origins at the time. Many of these Jews — in Hollywood for example — were Eastern European, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian, etc. in origin and not German.

Indeed the Holocaust did not become a pop-culture phenomenon in the US until the 1970s. Although the Nazis were almost always portrayed as monsters, heavily Jewish Hollywood largely steered clear of the Holocaust and specifically Jewish issues in movies and television prior to the 1970s, portraying the Nazis as an insane threat to everyone which was the US government line during World War II.

For example, the IMDB list “The 50 Most Moving Holocaust Films” lists only seven (7) movies before 1970 with only three (3) from the United States (Hollywood): The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), The Pawnbroker (1964), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). The floodgates opened in the late 1970s with the NBC Holocaust TV miniseries (April 16-April 19, 1978) with an estimated 120 million viewers, as well as other videos and books such as Ira Levin’s techno-horror Joseph Mengele book and movie The Boys from Brazil.

Outside of big cities such as New York most Americans had probably never even encountered a Jew (“Rindsberg”) or “a Person Who Happens to Be Jewish” (“Times Assimilationist”) — might well have thought them to be ancient history or a myth found only in the Bible. It is not clear how most Americans in 1941 would have responded to a loudly, militantly Jewish Hollywood or New York Times.

How rife was antisemitism in the US, let alone heavily Jewish New York City in 1941? One of the remarkable aspects of the 1920s and 1930s was how many Jews, either immigrants or the children of immigrants mostly from Eastern Europe, were somehow admitted to the top Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton during this period. The Jewish Virtual Library for example claims that twenty-one percent (21%) of Harvard’s 1922 freshman class were Jewish. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem

Percentage of Jews at Harvard in 1922 according to Jewish Virtual Library (Screenshot August 15, 2022)

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, there were 3.3 to 3.6 million Jews in the United States in 1920.

Jewish Population of United States in 1920 (Jewish Virtual Library Screenshot August 15, 2022)

According to the 1920 US Census, the total US population was 105 million (117 million with outlying possessions).

Jews constituted about 3.4% of the US population in 1922, but 21% of the freshman class at Harvard, the premier educational institution of the ruling elite from which eight US Presidents have earned degrees: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.

This heavy representation of the tiny US Jewish minority predates the reforms that created the SAT tests to recruit some mostly middle class students from across the country and more diverse backgrounds. Readers may have heard of the quotas to limit the fraction of Jews in Ivy League schools at the time, but as with the 15-20% Asian quota practiced by these schools today, these quotas were much larger than the percent of Jews in the general US population then or now.

Jewish sources usually credit the unusually high representation of Jews, a tiny minority, in Ivy League colleges such as Harvard during the 1920s and later to “merit,” but…

The Ivy League schools at this time were far from the modern ideal of competitive, meritocratic higher education. They derived most of their students — with the apparent exception of Jews — from elite prep schools often modeled on the English “public schools” such as Eton and Harrow that prepared students for Oxford and Cambridge. This was the heyday of Anglo-American (WASP) elitism. This meant the entire graduating class from elite prep schools such as Philips Exeter, Philips Andover (George H.W. Bush and George W Bush’s alma mater), Groton (FDR’s alma mater), and others, would go to one of the Ivy League schools. These were nearly all the children of wealthy, often politically connected white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Other groups such as Irish Catholics had great difficulty getting into these top schools. Joseph Kennedy, the President’s father, was able to get into Harvard, but this was almost certainly because his father was the boss of the Democratic machine in Boston and Harvard had to keep the city government happy. One could go on in this vein for some time. Rife with anti-semitism?

The Gray Lady Winked is useful as an attempt, probably the first attempt to give a comprehensive account of the history of questionable and indeed clearly false reporting in some cases on major consequential news stories and events by the Times. This is a huge subject and the chapters are often too short to adequately cover the complexities of the stories. The Jewish “inside baseball” and pro-Israeli bias detract from some parts of the book. A second edition might address some of these issues. At present it may be the best treatment of the New York Times history of errors and controversies.

About Me