Culture Wars

Cara has a wonderful idea (http://caramac.umwblogs.org/), suggesting that we might be far better off conducting a cultural war rather than a shooting war.

She also points out the similarities between Korea and Vietnam; not so much the causes or fighting, but the remembrance. The tombstones of those men who died in those wars are still reporting these wars as “conflicts.”


Senior Fellow, Paul M. Edwards

Halberstam and History

There has been a lot of hype about the publication of David Halberstam’s book, published shortly after his death in an automobile accident. While I have a great deal of respect for Halberstam, both as an author and as a historian, I am hoping that the book does not, as has been suggested by those who have already seen it, fall into the trap of so many books on the Korean War.

The trap is that for them the Korean War is an afterthought. Their war, the one that concerns them, is Vietnam—and they use it to recount their concern and deliver their insights about their own experiences. Hopefully Halberstam was a good enough interpreter of history that he has not fallen into this pattern. As the book is called "The Coldest Winter", hopefully he has also not fallen into a retelling of the story of the Chosen Reservoir as if it was the whole conflict. When it is readily available we will see.

Senior Fellow, Paul M. Edwards