Steve Sailer, the last holdout

Steve Sailer just can't seem to leave Vietnam. He is going to end up like those two Japanese holdouts in the Philipines found decades after the war if he doesn't let it go. Give it up, Steve, we need you here.

Let's look at the last paragraph of his article, What's the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy?,

The NVA tried a tentative offensive in December 1974, following the Democrats midterm election triumphs, found that the US wouldn't provide air support, so launched a massive offensive in March 1975. The South Vietnamese collapsed about as quickly as France in 1940.

Now, if a tentative offensive is begun in December and the crusher launched in March, what was the ARVN doing in between? I don't think they were starved for equipment as I remember all the stuff the NVA captured after the fall of Saigon. If the South was going to survive, it would always be as some kind of welfare case. We are better off gone.

In a prior article, Vietnam, he makes this claim,

Today, with American air power so unchallenged, it seems strange that the Democrats didn't want to allow air support of the South Vietnamese. After all, a couple of decades later, a Democrat President got involved in an internal dispute of negligible significance to America, and bombed Yugoslavia into ceding control of its internationally-recognized Kosovo province, at minimal cost in lost aircraft.

Actually, the FRY had ceded this before the bombing. what caused the war to start was their rejection of this paragraph in the Rambouillet Agreement,

NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations

The war ended when NATO (i.e. us) surrendered on this point. If anyone thinks being able to stay in occupation in the Balkans, let alone the Middle East is a victory, well, good luck with that.

Also posted at The Neutralist

FREE MICHAEL VICK! Or is this another thing I just don't get?

Okay, I'm not paying much attention to the dog bites man or dog bites dog or whatever story about this fellow. If what is said about hanging animals and all is true, then he should be subject to some punishment if there are state and local statutes. Unfortunately, for this fellow, he happens to have a talent for throwing a football. Had he been a software developer, who would have known or cared.*

But punishment at the federal level? Where in the constitution is this? What next, a federal jaywalking statute?

*the voice of humility on sports. In childhood, I was a talentless baseball fanatic. I practiced and practiced to no good purpose. I followed the Red Sox with a passion when that was really, really stupid. Then, with everybody else, watching TV in a freshman dorm common room, I saw the Sox win the 1967 pennant. It was what I had waited all my life to see and I realized how boring watching other people play a sport was for me. Maybe there is some value to others that I don't understand, but when I have had to sit through a contest, I've either just tried to stay awake out of courtesy or made jokes** out of boredom. Still have my Ted Williams baseball card though, which I'll give up when they pry my cold dead hands off of it or best offer.

**The jokes were not that good. Example, when at a Bruins game, a player went down in a heap and was taken off the ice to the hospital, my comment was, "Just shows you, hockey isn't a white man's game."