It is an LTTE in today's The Day, an Eastern CT newspaper.
Anyone care to help me respond to this whitewashing of American involvement in Vietnam? Anyone know of well documented web links about the Vietname War?
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=703C8232-175C-4FB5-A59A-501FBDFC17CF>http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx...9A-501FBDFC17CF
Now, nearly 30 years after the fall of Saigon, 7.5 million are dead. April 30 marks 30 years since the fall of Saigon. It has been three decades in which the Vietnamese communist government and proxies killed 7.5 million people.
In 1973, America turned its back on a just cause. Some thought we were the enemy, that when we left the killing would stop. But 2.5 million would die from land reforms, murder quotas ordered by the communist leaders and brutal political oppression. More than a million people would flee to the sea and thousands would drown.
The future the realists had predicted came true. After the Communist Party finished imparting its brutal oppression on the people of Vietnam, and the West remained willfully silent, it moved onto Cambodia and Laos, killing 1.5 million people. It then focused its weapons and chains on Cambodia, where 2 million to 3 million Cambodians were murdered.
On April 30, thousands will march in Washington to honor the millions of killed and subjugated people of Indochina, to thank the forgotten heroes and remind us of what could have been.
About 57,000 Americans lost their lives defending the people of South Vietnam, but history has proven the cause just. South Vietnam stood alone for two years. With minor material support it could have defended itself indefinitely, as South Korea has for nearly 50 years. Activists and protesters have been as silent as the 7.5 million murdered by the Vietnamese Communist government and its proxies.
If there is a lesson from the Vietnam War, it is to not abandon a people in their darkest hour. Visit www.april30.org for information.
My 2 older brothers were coming of age during the Vietnam War era. My eldest enlisted in the Air Force to greatly decrease his odds of being sent to Vietnam, and my 2nd eldest brother got lucky that by the time of his 18th birthday the Draft had ended.
This letter writer completely ignores the fact that 1) Vietnam had originally fought to free itself from French colonial rule and that 2) the US came in on the side of the French, which the Vietnamese saw as US wanting to continue imperial rule. Also, the escalation of US involvment in the Vietnam conflict was based upon a lie. Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin resolution was all based upon a lie. This was one of the darkest moments in Democratic Party and American history. This lie set a precedent that was mimic'd by George Bush to justify the 2003 Iraq War.
The letter writer also merges Cambodian Communism with Vietnam's, which is not true. They were seperate and the brutality of the Cambodians was more on par with the Nazis and Stalinists than what the Vietnamese Communists did within their own borders. In fact Vietnam's self-purging was on par with what Americans did to the Tories or those American colonists who still supported the British Crown during and after the American Revolution, and what Americans did to African and African-American slaves.
Also, the "great fear" of Cold War warriors -- that if Vietnam fell to the Communists it would start a domino affect across Southeast Asia -- did not come true.
Contrary to this letter writer, fascist dictator Suharto of Indonesia was far worse than the Vietnamese Communists.
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