Thursday, October 23, 2014

Pop culture is memory

Max Boot in the Wall Street Journal --

Today, no one except some veterans and military historians remembers Khe Sanh because in the end it had scant strategic significance: Even though the U.S. won the battle, it lost the war. Not long after having “liberated” Khe Sanh, the U.S. dismantled the base because it served little purpose. This history is worth mentioning because of the parallels, limited and inexact to be sure, between Khe Sanh and Kobani, a Kurdish town in northern Syria. 

Bruce Springsteen, lyrics to Born in the USA --

Had a brother at Khe Sahn fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there he's all gone