The Wisconsin School

From: Juvat

Mark Clodfelter's book, "The Limits of Air Power," wouldn't put the
blame on the "New Left."

Some of his peers have problems with Clodfelter's rundown of the air war. He
teaches at the AF academy and is a graduate of the School for Advanced
Airpower Studies, so he is no tyro. I don't know enough about the air war to
have a useful opinion. It is certainly an interesting book.
What the Wisconsin School did was not direct but insidious-- to sow moral
doubt, sap political will. Loss of the will to win led to defeat, whatever the
tactical military details.
(Incidentally, I don't mind "revisionist" historians; there is no one truth
about history, and it behooves new generations to take a fresh look at things.
What the Wisconsin School did was take the State Department "received" version
of the origins of the Cold War and its development and giving it a good, hard
cross-examination. However, they did not admit their own biases, some of which
were quite extreme. This led them, among other sins, to a quite selective use
of sources and to assume that their beliefs and points of view were equivalent
to facts. Robert J. Maddox's "The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War,"
Princeton, 1972, gives an excellent rundown.)

A good column revealing the lasting influence of the Wisconsin School
(although the author makes no reference to it) on American political will when
it comes to fighting a war to win is in a column published Sunday in the LA
Times by David Gelernter, the Yale computer scientist (and victim of the
Unabomber...lost most of one of his arms in the blast). About the current
controversy over Iraq, it is titled, "Don't Quit as We Did in Vietnam." You can
read it he

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Pu...3/369kgcua.asp

Gelernter mentions a book review without naming the book. That book is "A
Better War : The Unexamined Victories and the Final Tragedy of America's Last
Years in Vietnam" by Lewis Sorely. An excellent review of the book (with links
to many other reviews of it) is at:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cf...ail/book_id/82
9/Better%20War.htm

BTW this is among the best books on the Vietnam War. Sorely, West Point grad,
tank battalion commander, Johns Hopkins Ph.D, CIA Chief of Policy and Plans
Div., does a very thorough job of sifting through the whole sorry mess,
political and military, US and Vietnamese.


Chris Mark