That Wacky Viet Nam War...Lee, still in the 60s

[Madspirit]

"We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas."
- Ronald Reagan, 1965

"Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age."
- Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

"The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the red people."
- The musical 'Hair'

"The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation. "
- Huey P. Newton

"We bled inside each other's wounds
we had caught the same disease
we all sang the songs of peace."
Melanie - Lay Down

"Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box."
-Country Joe and the Fish

"What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?"
-Dr. Benjamin Spock, pediatrician, author, antiwar activist

"The Establishment... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster -- a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation."
-George McGovern

"North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that."
- President Nixon

[unc70]

1. I was playing a bunch of 60's stuff this weekend.

You know the scene. Drink a bit, listen to the late sixties, get depressed, consider your left hand, ...


I think that songs from Hair!, particularly some of the less-often-played ones, still resonate with today. Surprisingly, some of my younger friends have had trouble appreciating the satire of some of the racial and sexual content. They would get too shocked by the highly-charged language and miss the underlying theme.

[Madspirit]

5. I Saw Hair On Stage

The original traveling troupe came to Austin. It was shown in one of the places where they always show Broadway and off-Broadway stuff. So the audience was full of hippies and rich folks who just thought they should be seeing a famous play...<g> I saw more mouths drop open than at any time since. It had naked people and simulated sex and people of color and drugs... It was wonderful....

Lee

[TahitiNut]

2. "The spirit of liberty ... is the spirit which is not too sure it is always right." — Learned Hand

"All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it." — Michael Herr (1989)

"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now." — Richard M. Nixon (1985)

"Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America." — Myra MacPherson (1984)


http://members.aol.com/tahitinut/1969.htm

[Madspirit]

4. Those are great Tahiti!...n/t

[Madspirit]

3. The quote below is typical Republican "Think" in my opinion

"We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas."
- Ronald Reagan, 1965

[scarletwoman]

6. One my favorite Viet Nam essays ever: "Even now, we lie to ourselves about Vietnam"

Even now, we lie to ourselves about Vietnam

Robert Jensen
Department of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
[e-mail]
office: [phone]
fax: [phone]

copyright Robert Jensen 2000

Austin American-Statesman, Saturday, November 25, 2000, p. A-15; and St. Petersburg Times, December 3, 2000.

By Robert Jensen

On his way to Hanoi last week, when asked if he thought the United States owed the people of Vietnam an apology, 25 years after the end of the war, Clinton said, simply, "No, I don't."

<snip>

To apologize would be to acknowledge that while we claimed to be defending democracy, we were derailing democracy. While we claimed to be defending South Vietnam, we were attacking the people of South Vietnam.

To apologize now would be to admit that the rationalizations for post-World War II U.S. foreign policy have been, and are still today, rhetorical cover for the power politics of an empire.

The standard story in the United States about that war is that in our quest to guarantee peace and freedom for Vietnam, we misunderstood its history, politics and culture, leading to mistakes that doomed our effort. Some argue we should have gotten out sooner than we did; others suggest we should have fought harder. But the common ground in mainstream opinion is that our motives were noble.

But we never fought in Vietnam for democracy. After World War II, the United States supported and financed France's attempt to retake its former colony. After the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954, the Geneva Conference called for free elections in 1956, which the United States and its South Vietnamese client regime blocked. In his memoirs, President Eisenhower explained why: In free elections, the communists would have won by an overwhelming margin. The United States is all for elections, so long as they turn out the way we want. (my bold -- notice how this remains true to this day? Hamas, anyone?)

The central goal of U.S. policy-makers in Vietnam had nothing to do with freedom for the Vietnamese people, but instead was to make sure that an independent socialist course of development did not succeed. U.S. leaders invoked Cold War rhetoric about the threat of the communist monolith but really feared that a "virus" of independent development might infect the rest of Asia, perhaps even becoming a model for all the Third World.

To prevent the spread of the virus, we dropped 6.5 million tons of bombs and 400,000 tons of napalm on the people of Southeast Asia. Saturation bombing of civilian areas, counterterrorism programs and political assassination, routine killings of civilians and 11.2 million gallons of Agent Orange to destroy crops and ground cover -- all were part of the U.S. terror war in Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia.

This interpretation is taken as obvious in much of the world, yet it is virtually unspeakable in polite and respectable circles in this country, which says much about the moral quality of polite and respectable people here.

I've been posting this essay on DU every once in awhile throughout all the years I've been here (just about 6 years). Thanks for giving me the opening to post it again -- and plaudits to you for an excellent post! Well done!
:thumbsup:

sw

[Madspirit]

8. EXCELLENT!! Thank-you...

Shame on Clinton...
Lee

[scarletwoman]

11. I'm so glad you liked it! (nt)

[bobbolink]

12. Thanks so much!

I"m sure the Clinton apologists will be here shortly....

[scarletwoman]

14. You're very welcome! I'm so glad you liked it! (nt)

[eridani]

30. The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence

Its resemblance to a similar document is entirely intentional--

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow­citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center, and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practised obscurantism against our people.

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank­notes and the export trade.

etc.----

[scarletwoman]

32. Thank you for posting this! I would encourage everyone to go to the link & read the whole thing.

The West refuses to recognize the right of other countries to self-determination -- the very same right we proclaim for ourselves.

It's heartbreaking to read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence and think about how different it all would have been if their utterly reasonable and just bid for freedom had simply been honored.

sw

[scarletwoman]

7. Oh, yeah. k & r, too! (nt)

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

9. War Is Over (If You Want It)

[Madspirit]

10. ...and you have a Dylan quote...n/t

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

23. Absolutely. Big Beatles and Dylan fan here.

[Madspirit]

26. Dylan and J. Lennon...two of my Gods...n/t

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

28. You have good taste, my friend.

[MindPilot]

13. I'm giving it number rec number five

And this from a new film called "This Film Not Yet Rated" about the formation of the MPAA and how they systematically suppress indy filmmakers.

In the movie, 1950's archival newsreel footage, the "Black List" hearings are underway and some congresscritter is on the floor bellowing about the dangers of Communists under every rock and around every corner "...they hate our art; they hate our movies; they HATE US FOR OUR FREEDOM!!"

I guess not much has changed.

[hvn_nbr_2]

15. Nixon was right.

But it wasn't the Americans he was thinking of that defeated and humiliated the U.S. It was the warmongers and domino theorists like him that did it.

[bobbolink]

17. Interesting juxaposition of perspectives, eh?

Stuff like this makes me so sad.

I never thought, 40 years ago, we'd be replaying this shit!

[bobbolink]

16. From "Hair"

"The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the red people."
- The musical 'Hair'

While I really like this quote, and it has some fine elements of truth to it... it's more true today than it was then.

It's still more about being poor than being of color. There were many POOR white boys who were drafted and injured and killed.

Can we ever stop pitting one group against another????

sigh....

I don't think the human race is grown up enough to really want peace.

John and Yoko aside....

:cry:

[scarletwoman]

18. "I don't think the human race is grown up enough to really want peace." True, that.

But *some* of us are. And we have to do whatever we can to infect the group mind with our forbidden views.

sw

[bobbolink]

19. I hope I'm monkey #99!

Get ready.

Get set.

INFECT!

:) :hi:

[scarletwoman]

21. "Get ready. Get set. INFECT!" -- YES!!!! That's the work we have to do --

infecting the minds of those around us, as many as we can before we die.

:loveya:
sw

[bobbolink]

22. Hah! A Peace Virus!

OK, I'm getting the picture...

pardon me... I have lots of people I need to go bite now....

:)

:hug:

[Elwood P Dowd]

20. You're right about the poor white boys. They drafted my ass

and about 90% of my basic training unit was white. I never met a rich kid during my two years in the Army. They were all in the NG, Reserve, or had suspicious health problems and classified 4-F.

[Madspirit]

25. Hi Elwood!

You were drafted? Drag. I remember what it was like for guys back then. It was an awful thing. ...and people who talk about bringing back the draft for fairness because the rich don't volunteer...as you point out, they didn't get drafted either. They did other stuff.

I had friends in Nam and friends in Canada. We also worked with active duty soldiers who were against the war and had to be SUPER secretive about it.

The times....they're NOT a changing....

Lee

[Elwood P Dowd]

29. I was active duty US Army and took part on the 1971 spring demonstrations

in Washington. Stuck out like a sore thumb since I had no hair and was wearing my Army field jacket, but there were several of us over there that weekend. The crowd must have been close to 300,000 on Saturday and Sunday.

Yes, the rich kids always find a way out. Rich Mommy and Rich Daddy are always very patriotic except when it comes to their son doing his part. Not much has changed.

[Madspirit]

27. "I don't think the human race is grown up enough to really want peace."

I know bobbolink... :cry:

We're going backward in fact. It seems to me.
Lee

[bobbolink]

31. I wish we'd go backward faster, and bring the whole damned thing to a boil!

I'm sick of frog soup, and unless it BOILS QUICKLY, that's all we're gonna get.

I no longer see any other way.

Boil, dammit!

[scarletwoman]

24. *kick* (nt)

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Madspirit]

34. Grovelbot kicked my thread....cool...n/t