Another Vietnam?

I went and say The Quiet American last week with Wiley, and it made me think a whole lot about what we ("we" here meaning the American government) were trying to do there, and how badly we did it, and how I can't shake the feeling that we're doing the same thing in the here and now with Iraq and the Middle East as a whole.

I took a grad class on the Vietnam War when I was in school. Although I realize that it came with the requisite liberal bias found on most college campuses, iI still feel a little more educated on the era than a lot of people my age - we didn't live through it, and standard issue history classes never covered it, and all most of us are left with is the memory of popular culture.

One of the strongest things I came away from after that class was just how badly we had understood the countries involved. This stemmed from both our having poor information, coming from poorly educated and equipped diplomats, civil servants and intelligence gatherers, and from our willful misunderstanding and ignorance (both ignoring information we didn't like, and making sure our information sources were those that would tell us what we wanted to hear). It follows that our lack of understanding the poeple and their culture led to our consistent mis-steps, underestimation of the people (both our allies and our enemies), and ultimately our failure there.

We caused so much death and devastation in Vietnam, and I cannot help but believe that much of it could have been avoided if, in the early years of the involvement - (even going back to the 1940's and '50's and their fight against the French for independence, and certainly by the 1960s and the Kennedy administration) we had actually understood better the country, the people and their culture.

I can't help thinking and fearing that we're doing the same thing here in our dealings with the Middle East - once again, we have a people and culture who are fundamentally different in beliefs and practices from the US (for both good and bad), and we're being blinded by our own ignorance and hubris into making terrible mistakes and thinking we know what we're doing when we don't. I know it's a different era of warfare, and a different kind of fight, and I don't think we'll be pulled into the same kind of long, drawn out conflict as we were then, but I can't shake the feeling we're walking a tightrope over giant mawing pits with unimaginable horrors lurking within them, because once again, we're charging ahead without knowing what we're really doing.

It makes me unspeakably sad to think so - that we haven't learned better from our mistakes of the past. I hope I'm wrong.

First robin(s) of spring!

This morning, I looked out my back door, and saw that most wonderful of things - the first robin of spring! Then there were two! and another and another and another. Suddenly, I had

the first FOURTEEN robins of spring

in my backyard. It was starting to feel like a scene out of the birds.

Widget silliness

The other day when I was out inspecting my garden looking for evidence of bulbs sprouting, Widget was outside with me. Imagy and I pointed out the little shoots to her, telling her that they were flowers coming up, and that they'd be flowers in a few more weeks. (I try to have cut flowers in the house on a regular basis, so she knows all about and loves flowers.) She thought it was neat, and kept trying to touch them.

This morning, I wandered out there to check on them, and to do a little more clearing of last year's weeds. Widget was already outside with Imagy, and she wandered out towards the front to see what I was doing. She came up, and practically buried her nose in the dirt, yelling "Look flowers, look flowers!" while trying to grab at them. Silly, silly kiddo.