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Comment by nandemo | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why this is downvoted.

The article starts with this quote:

    We Sleep Peaceably In Our Beds At Night Only Because
    Rough Men Stand Ready To Do Violence On Our Behalf

so it's really odd to find that a Vietnam War story follows. Of course this is orthogonal to the main point of the article (cf. the title), but it's still odd.

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I would downvote it, not only for the historical egocentrism of claiming that somehow those fighting the Vietnam War were protecting united-statesian lives (as if the conflict ever was anything other than wrestling for political influence), but because it's inflammatory. What does the GP propose, that every single person of every country should go and fight a stupid war on another country? Or else what, be shameful of not being on the glorious warrior caste?

There are several memes in the United States psyche that are quite puzzling for the rest of us (non USans), military fetichism being one of the weirdest.

That said, turning the experience of making sure bombers can safely carpet bomb Vietnam into a coming-of-age story yielding uplifting thoughts about entrepreneurship steps into bizarre territory. Like an Ayn Randesque version of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

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