"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
...
Kevin Brooks wrote:

[snip some interesting stats and possible myths of Vietnam]

old draftees killed, only *seven* were black); and Vietnam was the first
unpopular US war (false, at least in an arguable sense; he points out
that a
1937 poll indicated that fully 64% of Americans considered our entry
into
WWI as being a blunder, and two years after WWII 25% of Americans
thought
our participation in *that* war had been a misguided); and lastly (Art

One could argue on that percentage basis that the Revolution was
even more unpopular. None other than Ben Franklin put the split
between rebel/loyalist/fence sitter at about 1/3 each. The Mexican
War was rather controversial in Congress, and of course, the Civil
War had its bad days when northern opinion in support would be low.
The "sour taste" of WWI involvement after the fact in the US is well
known, and pretty much drove isolationist sentiment.

I quite frankly have a lot of trouble with the WWII "poll" but know
nothing of its wording or how the question was asked. As you know,
these things can be totally meaningless (in January, some polls said
Howard Dean could beat Bush "if the election were held today", yet it
seems this same guy couldn't be a nominee). Two years after the war
perhaps the Marshall Plan discussions were causing a backlash in
public opinion???

I'd suspect it had more to do with the usual economic slump that tends to
follow such an event. Unemployment was on the rise, estimated commerce was
flatlined. The commerce and GNP numbers would take off again a year or two
later, but the unemployment numbers continued to rise rather sharply, more
than doubling from the 1945 estimate of 1.3% to 3.8% in '47, then almost
again to 6.4% in 1949.


should really LOVE this one), contrary to popular belief, the percentage
of
draftees in the service during the Vietnam era was MUCH lower than
during
WWII (one-third versus two-thirds).

This makes sense though. WWII was a huge war compared with Vietnam.
The need for bodies was far greater by a large margin, so I'd expect
the draftee proportion to be high.

Good stuff to make one think. I've seen the book in the bookstore
but am now motivated to pick it up next visit.

It is a rather interesting read--don't take the wrong idea from the
aforementioned dry statistics. Burkett and his coauthor Whitley exposed
quite a few charlatan Vietnam vets and "heroes". I happened to be surfing
through the TV channels this weekend and watched a bit of the original
"First Blood". Burkett's book game me a new way of looking at that movie--I
had known that Stallone had neatly avoided military service during the war,
but I was surprised to learn that Brian Dennehy, who played the Sheriff,
apparently had a propensity for blowing a bit of smoke about his own
military service (he has claimed to have been a Vietnam vet, but in
actuality he served on Okinawa in the USMC *before* the US sent major ground
forces into the conflict).

Brooks


SMH