World Book of Facts

I like the CIA’s World Factbook website (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html), but tend to forget it’s out there. When I do remember, I usually end up spending half an hour jumping around: “oooh! What about Norway, what’s the population/climate/type of government of Norway? Hey, what about Moldova, where is Moldova, anyway?” and so on.

Right now I’m reading Dispatches by Michael Herr. It’s an excellent book, really beyond excellent; it’s a classic, it’s Important. If there’s one out there about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, please somebody let me know. But I doubt there is, unless it’s written by a soldier who happens to also be an incredibly talented writer and journalist, because the unique thing about Dispatches is the unique thing about the Vietnam war: apparently (forgive me for my non-specificity and uneducatedness, I’ll get to that in a sec) journalists were allowed to just roam around the country, talk to whomever would talk to them, see whatever they could see. Anyway. I’m just saying it’s an amazing book for someone like me who knows about Vietnam only what I’ve seen in the movies, come across here and there, and learned in school (although to be honest with you, if we had a unit or something on Vietnam, I don’t remember it). For anyone who’s not familiar (I’d only heard of it through doing a paper on New Journalism in college), I’ll give you what I would plaster on the cover if I were selling it now: “By the co-writer of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.” When I first started it, I basically had Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard’s voice reading to me in my head.

Right. This was supposed to be a short post. So. I’m reading Dispatches, I’m constantly wondering whether I should know more about the War, or at least the geography, as I read, and I’m continuing to come down on the side of no, it’s kind of written so that it doesn’t matter where is where or when is when or what the hell is going on, and this way it’s even more Grunt’s Eye View. But today I got off work early, I got the internet right there, I may as well at least see where the hell Khe San is and what the deal is with the DMZ. So I look at the CIA’s World Factbook, get the sense of the geography, and start to read the brief “background.” I had to share it.

This is what a major institution of our government, one with the word “intelligence” in its name, had to say about the Vietnam War:
“Under the Geneva Accords of 1954, Vietnam was divided into the Communist North and anti-Communist South. US economic and military aid to South Vietnam grew through the 1960s in an attempt to bolster the government, but US armed forces were withdrawn following a cease-fire agreement in 1973.”
I included the first sentence for context. It’s really all about the second one.
Now, I’m not laying down a judgment here. That actually sounds like an extremely well-put, unbiased sentence. I am just thoroughly tickled by how it is smoother than a sculpture, how it shines like the bronze Terrapin in College Park, having been touched by so many different hands.

Again, my disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the Vietnam War. Michael Herr’s book is giving me an amazing sense of what it was like to be there, though. Check with me later, after I’ve satiated my curiosity for that part of history, after I’ve (hopefully) moved on to the copy of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American that’s in the stack in the back room.