Hearts and minds

Posted by Steve Garrison on April 14, 2003

In Reply to: Hearts and minds posted by ESC on April 12, 2003

: : \('Hearts and minds' later became a slogan of sorts, as what had to be won in Vietnam." From a section on slogans in Safire's New Political Dictionary by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).

As an 50 year old American it distresses me that phrases like "winning their hearts and minds" and "best and brightest" are used without any sense of the bitter irony that attached to them during the Vietnam war. This could only happen to as ahistorical a people as we Americans.

For what it's worth, most American soldiers were inclined to the "grunt's eye view" that "when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." Rather apropos in the current historical context.