The analogy between the recent violence in Iraq and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam is illustrative, but not for the reasons suggested by Thomas Friedman and the White House. Friedman’s Oct. 18 column in the New York Times suggested that, “while there may be no single hand coordinating the upsurge in violence in Iraq, enough people seem to be deliberately stoking the fires there before our election that the parallel with Tet is not inappropriate.” Friedman’s comparison between the recent violence in Iraq and the Tet Offensive is inappropriate for several reasons: First, such a comparison suggests that the violence [...]
BANGKOK, Thailand — For army conscript Pramote Wannasuk, 22, and villager Dison Mansu, 36, the military coup in Thailand and all it promises for positive change came too late. Both men, Pramote a Buddhist and Dison a Muslim, were murdered this week in the quiet terrorism that plagues this predominantly Buddhist country’s religiously and culturally divided south. They are among more than 50 people who have been killed or wounded in the past 10 days alone in an escalating conflict that has left about 1,800 dead and many more wounded over the last almost three years. Many hoped that the [...]
In late 1979 Craig Etcheson was an impressionable 23-year-old who divided his time between rock concerts and first year Ph.D. studies in mathematical models of war at the University of Southern California School for International Relations. The Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple and The Grateful Dead were his bands of choice. Then Vietnam invaded Cambodia and lifted the veil on the true scale of carnage committed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Images from the Killing Fields shocked the affable Etcheson. The slaughter of about one third of Cambodia’s population in the previous three-and-a-half years was something the young mathematician found [...]
