The Incredibly Stupid One
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The Incredibly Stupid One
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Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#2For TLDR:
>Rather than give up information to his captors, Douglas pretended to be an illiterate fool.
> Using the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm” as a mnemonic device, he memorized over 250 prisoners’ names.
> His global impact came when he confronted the Vietnamese at the Paris Peace Talks in 1970. The information Douglas provided, including the locations and horrible conditions of the prison camps, as well as the torture practices used by the Vietnamese
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#3For TLDR: >Rather than give up information to his captors, Douglas pretended to be an illiterate fool. > Using the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm” as a mnemonic device, he memorized over 250 prisoners’ names. > His global impact came when he confronted the Vietnamese at the Paris Peace Talks in 1970. The information Douglas provided, including the locations and horrible conditions of the prison camps, as well…
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Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#4A brave soldier, doing right by his country, which was led into fighting villagers half way around the world in incredibly tough scenarios by asshole politicians.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#5A brave soldier, doing right by his country, which was led into fighting villagers half way around the world in incredibly tough scenarios by asshole politicians.
The Vietnam war (or the American war as I was corrected in a bar in Hanoi) was the epitome of unintended escalation. One of the early escalators was JFK, who was simultaneously extremely wary of escalation, and is not someone who most people think of as an asshole politician. Your point has some heft but it's a simplistic take.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#6A brave soldier, doing right by his country, which was led into fighting villagers half way around the world in incredibly tough scenarios by asshole politicians.
You should also include high ranking military officers, many with political ambitions, who put their own aggrandizement or telling their civilian superiors what they wanted to hear ahead of their military duties. I recommend H. R. McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty, which goes into this in great detail.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#7Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#8For TLDR: >Rather than give up information to his captors, Douglas pretended to be an illiterate fool. > Using the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm” as a mnemonic device, he memorized over 250 prisoners’ names. > His global impact came when he confronted the Vietnamese at the Paris Peace Talks in 1970. The information Douglas provided, including the locations and horrible conditions of the prison camps, as well…
It would be worth including the final line
>Exposing the Vietnamese this way led them to keep POWs alive until the war was over, saving hundreds of prisoners.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#9How would the Vietnamese' face be at Paris Peace Conference? After knowing he gave all the information.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#10A brave soldier, doing right by his country, which was led into fighting villagers half way around the world in incredibly tough scenarios by asshole politicians.
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