Another War Where We Asked "Why Are We Here?" - Vietnam in 1965
(Another in a series of painfully bad ideas)
In 1965 the "official" shooting war was less than a year old and already a growing number of people were starting to question what we were doing in Vietnam in the first place. The logic behind waging a war where there seemed to be no clear solution, other than hearing the fear card played over and over that it was part of the "domino theory" of Communist domination over the far east, that India could fall under the influence of the Kremlin and that, if India went, would Japan be far behind were the constant warnings being trotted out in order to justify escalation.
1965 was a pivotal year for the war in Vietnam because it signified a point where America would either be bogged down in a protracted war and propping up a corrupt and ineffective government or it would go in, makes it point and leave.
Unfortunately it was a situation that had a long history and one which wasn't going to be settled anywhere near 1965.
There is an eerie similarity to our current state of affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan and those in Vietnam. In 1965 the fear card was Communism and in 2002 the fear card was Terrorism. Both are situations we've found ourselves in where there was no easy way to extricate ourselves - a hopeless tumor that hemorrhages lives.
In late June 1965, ABC Radio aired a special "Dialogue And Decision". Hosted by a young Ted Koppel, the program tries to give some background (and try to make sense) out of a war that was quickly spiraling out of control with seemingly no solution at hand.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Thanks for this post. I look forward to listening to it.
By March of 2003, democratic politicians had abdicated mountain ranges worth of political and moral high ground to the GOP. One pernicious lie above all they allowed to take root, and it represents the Everest of their betrayals. That is, barring political malfeasance and the raw treason of domestic enemies, the armed forces of the United States would have otherwise prevailed in that wicked struggle. To this day, I can scarcely believe so many proved so craven as to have allowed the Iraq war to be unleashed.
The Flying Lizards - Money (Live)
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
These are not wars but invasions and subsequent occupations , they like the war word , makes it all sound legitimate doesn't it ? Call them what they are , occupations , Soviet style .
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Af...
Who got us into this mess and why? Republicans hate peace: http://thethingsrepublicanshate.com/?p=380
between vietnam and both afghanistan & iraq: the vietnam war had been going on since the end of wwII, starting with the french. we started both wars, in afghanistan & iraq, since neither country's government's attacked us, or even threatened to.
the taliban would have happily handed over osama bin laden and his crew, if the bush administration had provided them with actual evidence of their complicity in 9/11. bush either refused to, or didn't have any tangible evidence, to support his accusations. and so, we got an invasion instead.
iraq was just afghanistan, with supposed wmd's.
"the taliban would have happily handed over osama bin laden and his crew, if the bush administration had provided them with actual evidence of their complicity in 9/11."
On what planet is this true? Do you have a link to this?
You just have to bother to go google it.
Don't be lazy you can do it.
Some people don't want to see the truth, that's why they vote republitard. Repugs love these people.
[ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/... ]
[ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/a... ]
[ http://www.latimes.com/sns-worldtrade-taliban... ]
[ http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?... ]
The Bush regime could not offer the Taliban government of Afghanistan any proof that Osama bin Laden was involved in any way with the tragedy of 9/11/2001. They attacked and then invaded Afghanistan anyway, because Dubya already had his agenda laid out for the future of Afghanistan. In a bit of historic irony, Taliban leadership visited the USA to engage in negotiations with the Bush State Department mere months before 9/11/2001 -- it's about OIL, has always been about OIL ...
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37... ]
[ http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/tal... ]
[ http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a09.html ]
8^(
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
They anticipated 2003 oh so well.
(video)
tell me the future of a nation that killed one million vietnamese in their civil war.
do we really think we can conduct such wars for profits and not pay a price for these wars?
the price we are paying is all around us but we are in complete denial.
we just refer to our decline as a recession.
this is a decline of wealth and a decline of values.
materialism gone wild.
we are not the first to self destruct due to a nations imperialism.
history gives us plenty of examples.
but nations do not learn from history.
they must experience the suffering that goes along with their wars for profits.
suffering teachs compassion sometimes but not always.
we have not learned yet but we will.
but not before we are well on our way to becoming a third world nation.
there will be less suffering in the world because of our decline.
the world sees our decline but those within the nation cannot see the decline. the paradigm effect has us blind to our imperialism.
Very simple: because without all these wars most of the military contractors would have to produce other products which have to compete in a "free" market. And that is not as fun as simply having a direct access to the public tit via huge government contracts.
There is also the issue that "peace" would involve severe downsizing for the officer core and number of overall troops.
The dirty secret is that Obama can't do much to stop any of these wars. Because pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan would mean a reduction in defense expending. Which would then translate into massive layoffs in both the pentagon and private military equipment vendors.
It is really fucked up when your think about it, we're so sick and twisted that we actually made it so that peace is actually bad for our economy. What the fu....
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
That same question is still being whispered to me by my 58,000 comrades on The Vietnam Wall. But what I hear is "Why are we here, in the ground, instead of living our lives?"
It was an atrocity then and now.
Democratic Party progressive, Vietnam veteran and proud Union member for 41 years
We are in wars for corporate profits and to weed out the low and middle income citizens.
...to save the bacon, as it were, of the US rubber plantation owners/manufacturers from the dreaded red horde led by Ho Chi Minh?
Aren't we in Eye-rack and Afghanistan to save the Eye-racki oil for ourselves and pay for the "war"/invasion/occupation pludering and pillaging, and to save the "newly-found" (within the last 2000 years) ultra rich mineral deposits in Afghanistan? Ain't that why we're really there? There is NO other good reason, strategic, humanitarian, or whatever. We need to be out now, and not wait for July next year. It's too late already!!!
Afghanistan and Iraq are not (exactly) like Vietnam.
Like your Real Estate Agent will always repeat "Location, location, location." The false rationale given by our MIC for Vietnam was "falling dominoes" and "holding back the tide of communism". while the real Vietnam conflict was a war against colonialism and a civil war. There was always the presumption, however, that untapped energy resources in the Vietnam theatre of operations (Jenkins Island ??) was a longer term inducement for war.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq represented governments that, while we would hold our collective noses doing so, we were perfectly willing to deal with regarding access to energy resources, just so long as we could obtain the most advantageous contract terms for profit levels. The MIC has served in the role of "enforcers" for the crony capitalist Wall Street Mobsters for many decades.
[ http://www.industrysearch.com.au/News/Santos-... ]
[ http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Asia-and-O... ]
[ http://www.breakingnewsvn.com/news-new-oil-st... ]
It would seem that some things never change since World War II ended, like why the USA goes to war ... and it has everything to do with who, exactly, will control the world's energy resources ...
8^(
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
we all know why we are in these wars, the maintenance of empire, and all that entails.
And repeats again. This is something I found in letters my father wrote from KOREA in 1950; the fifth paragraph could've applied equally to Vietnam or our current quagmire-
Mom: Please read, then edit, and perhaps straighten out any of my grammatical errors, then type it up in 3 copies and send me one.
Love,
I don't know why I wrote it, but perhaps it could be used.
THE KILLER
Who is the Killer in Korea?
The would be answers range from inferior equipment, to poor training. Neither is right. The equipment on the whole has proven in many instances superior. The very poor tanks our tankers were forced to face the enemy in turned out to be as good or better than the enemy. A front-line analysis must show that our equipment in all instances was good enough. The failure of equipment can only be laid upon the manipulator, the man in, or behind the weapon.
His training, physically, was not at fault. Soft, perhaps, but still the GI was a physically healthy specimen, who looked the part of the good fighter from the very start. The manuals, the TM's and FM's expostulate outdated tactics and methods, it is true. To attempt to embody TM tactics on the battlefront is dangerous, and impractical. Still, the Killer lurks not here. Where, then, is the Killer? Who then must shoulder the blame?
Our men went into the fight without full strength equipment it is true, but that cannot account for the primary dismal failure. The fault for the early, tremendous setbacks is a psychological one. Americans are not good soldiers! Perhaps the American way of life is to blame. Perhaps the "rose- colored-glass'd" are to blame. At any rate, psychologically, we are failures, dismal failures as fighters.
For the past four months I have been a front-line Combat Medic, and my observations have had a profound effect on my ideas of this whole thing. Somewhere, someone has failed. The men 'on-line' aren't ready to fight. All but an excepted few few are not a credit to their training, however poor, however good. In his training, the American 'dough' did not receive the correct psychological readying for combat. Who is to blame, I don't know. It is true that we have never been a warlike people, but neither are we backwards enough to allow such a thing to happen. But we did!
After 4, 5 or even 6 months in action, men still ask, "Why did we come?" "Why didn't we mind our own business?" One assumes that after 4 to 6 months, a combat man knows exactly what he's doing and why. It is a gross mistake to assume thusly. From the very onset, the American fighter has been at a psychological dis-advantage. The enemy was under-estimated, and he was led to believe that the fight would end soon. When the fight didn't end soon, to each man, the position of US forces in Korea was still unjustified. He didn't know why he was there. And the worst crime of any was that no one, to my knowledge, has tried to explain to him why he had to come. Progressively, he became 'hard', a better fighter, but still the grave dis-advantage burdened him. He griped about the shortness of men, he folded up in the attack. He turned tail at times, misbehaving in the face of the enemy.
Though lately hardened, the average GI had no will to fight. His fighting prowess was based on a fear of what might happen if he didn't. He only realized that he must follow orders, regardless of outcome. He was the embodiment of the unwilling fighter. I have seen cowards, too, men who cringe at the mention of 'attack'. Men who suddenly had bad pains, or other ills. Somewhere, someone had failed to give the American fighter the one attribute that made his enemy a better fighter. He did not have the Will to fight. He was not aggressive in the face of fire. He was an Automaton, following directions.
It is the will to fight or the lack of it that makes a good soldier a good fighter. The enemy had no expensive training, and was non-uniform, except in regard to his will to do battle. The first factor in making the American fighter willing was the justification, to him, of his position in Korea. This first factor was ignored. After 6 months, I have yet to see anyone try to explain to the fighters why they were here. Too many GI's think we never should have come, they resent being here, and the resentful soldier is not a good one. He thinks the American leaders have failed him. He cannot on his own justify his own position. No one has tried to help him. If the new men on their way here are not prepared psychologically, we cannot hope to hold because we are fighting, so to speak, with one hand tied behind our backs.
http://www.veekachu.com/eclectic/killer.htm
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