This week we combine two successive episodes of the classic dissident cable show, Alternative Views. Professor William Gibson describes his 1987 book, which underscores the disastrous results which followed from the US military's enthusiastic embrace of capitalist market ideology, using now all too familiar methods to maximize the army's capacity to "produce" an enemy bodycount. Gibson provides incisive comment into the context and conduct of the Vietnam war.
Thanks to Alternative Views for making those two interviews with William Gibson and to Skipgap for pointing me in their direction.
We last heard from Alternative Views back in episode 732. This time we hear episodes 316 and 317, which together give a detailed on the ground perspective of the experience of the US army in Vietnam. Ground level "workers" (i.e. soldiers or pilots) are combined with the perspectives of their commanders, the US war "managers". While the important area of drug running is given only scant attention, Gibson skillfully analyses some of the webs of lies spun around the Vietnam war, and focuses particularly on the ideology of war as big bu$ine$$. While doctrines such as "The Domino Theory" or "containment" are familiar, Professor Gibson explains how they relate to other, larger ideas such as the idea of the military as being a machine to produce a product (enemy bodycount), the superiority of urban over rural life or the supposed impossibility of losing a war given hugely superior US military hardware.
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