Revision

Via Yglesias, I see that Perlstein has a good review of revisionist books on Vietnam.  Not that it will matter to Perlstein, who cannot recognise a basically sympathetic, if perhaps poorly phrased, argument when he sees one, but I happen to find the nationalist habit of revisionism in support of policies of ever-greater militarism and slaughter to be as abhorrent as he does.  His review also succeeds in drawing attention to the revisionists’ comfort with mass killing when it is being done by the ‘right’ people for the ‘right’ reasons, which should help put the crocodile tears many of the same people conveniently shed over the victims of the Cambodian genocide in perspective.