Quote of the day: Vietnam

This is spot on:

The Vietnam War was the greatest U.S. military catastrophe of the 20th century. A conflict begun under false pretenses, based on ignorance and hubris, it killed 58,000 Americans and as many as 3 million Vietnamese. It ended in utter failure. Never in our history have so many lives been wasted on such monumental futility.

My generation (and those a year or so older who sang peace and love) associate the disaster of Vietnam with Richard Nixon - it sort of suits the more lefty-minded for it to be a shockingly corrupt Republican President who shoulders the blame for this awful war. Truth is that the origins of the problem* - at least as far as US involvement is concerned - rests rather with the sainted John F Kennedy.

I've always taken the view that, far from being some blessed individual, Kennedy was as committed to projecting US power as any Republican. Kennedy's knack was to wrap it up in the promotion of democracy rather than the less appealing and blunted cold war rhetoric of Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon.

*Interestingly the "strategic hamlet" approach developed by the French and US advisors whereby radicalised communities were relocated into controllable locations was a straight lift from the policy used by the British in Malaya. The main difference was that the Malay insurgency was by ethnic Chinese making it far easier to isolate the community hiding guerrillas and terrorists.

Thoughts on tax from JFK...

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It's hard not to smile at the likely discomfort that this might cause for all those "progressives" who wish to tax anyone with slightly more income than average until their bones crack. Here's JFK on tax:

An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.

So there you have it "progressives", one of your saints believed that cutting taxes led to growth and higher tax revenues. And he is right. Go watch the whole speech.

If we want growth, we must cut taxes. It really is as simple as that. And not the cut taxes for one set of folk while raising them for others. Not the cut taxes and load it on to duty. Actually cut taxes - and if that means government has to do a little less, that the welfare system is simpler and targeted to the needy and that people take more responsibility for their own health, then so be it.

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