Memorial Day: Warpigs

Forgive me if I am in breach of some kind of on-line etiquette here but this you-tube video of the Vietnam fiasco seemed profoundly appropriate...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEABsKGOCCI

Did you know that, "We were over there, to keep communism from spreading." Some even claimed, "...to keep communism from spreading over here!" Many Americans honestly felt this way. Many of them felt that the anti war protesters were communist sympathizers out to destroy America!

Instead of "Liberals" and "Conservatives", we were divided into "Hawks" and "Doves". Many Doves felt that the real reason we were over there was so those who made money off of bombs and tanks and bullets and etc. could make EVEN MORE money. Other Doves would argue that we were over there so America could test out our new hi-tech toys in battle.

I remember hearing these very debates and heated arguments... I am hearing them again it seems.

I still do not know the real reason we were over there. I do know that Ho Chi Minh wanted to re-unite Viet Nam, a notion which the French took exception to. I have heard that Ho Chi Minh tried to write a Constitution based on ours and at one point even asked for American aid. I understand that America was very reluctant to go against our old WWII chum France, so we ignored Ho Chi Minh's requests. Still, I have never understood why America needed to be there after France got evicted.

In hindsight it was a tragic waste, one which we appear to be repeating....and again I do not know the real reason. Perhaps Oil, perhaps to stop the terrorists from spreading....here, perhaps bush is an idiot. Thanks to the internet, I can easily refute the terrorists participating in a modern version of the Domino Theory but truth be told, I may never know the real reason why we are in Iraq!

At least this time around my fellow Americans are NOT spitting on the returning troops...yes, this did happen! I hope you all remember that. I urge you all to continue to do nice things for our returning troops. At the very least buy them a beer when you bump into them at a bar...perhaps mow their yard for them if they are a neighbor... use your imagination, just do SOMETHING to let them know that we care this time.

If you could, you just might think about extending this good will to ALL of our veterans. With the tragic hate and divisiveness going on in our country, these little acts of kindness can go a long way.

I have always liked that song by Black Sabbath...it came out while the fight was going on in Viet Nam
It somehow seems as appropriate today as it was back then. It reminds me to keep my anger focused: ON THE REAL WARPIGS!
:patriot:

the vietnam era. Stop the spread of communism, fight them over there so we don't fight them here. I think at the time it was pure war profiteering, now it is war profiteering with a side order of big oil.

Here’s a good article on the battle that was to lead to our involvement in Vietnam.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11/spotlight/

Shortly after the partition of Vietnam into north and south the U.S. Navy sent ships to the north to move French loyalist to the South. Dr. Tom Dooley who at the time was a Navy physician wrote of this in one of his books. It seems that the irony was that the French loyalist and Catholic population were mostly in the north. They south was mostly Buddhists who weren’t overly interested in this whole thing.

Just like Iraq the ethnic and religious mix was not considered. The mountain peoples were not particularly fond of the lowlanders and the southerners of the northerners planted in their midst. Worse the government was formed mostly out of northerners.

I think that our first involvement in Southeast Asia was humanitarian but swiftly devolved into a way for big corporations to make lots of money and to kill a lot of young people, especially minorities.

For a short bio of Dr. Tom Dooley:
http://www.dooleyintermed.org/page.cfm?page=dooley

Edited to add:
http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/book/32.htm

I had heard that he was a big fan of our own American Revolution. It appears that he was attempting his own version of kicking out the colonials. It sounds like he may have even taken a page out of General Washington's book in that battle. The defeat of an overly confident superior army sent in to suppress the locals BY those same locals is the obvious comparison here. My respect for Ho Chi Minh just went up a notch.

I am still unclear on: Why was Viet Nam divided in the first place and by who. Secondly, why did we determine that it was a good idea to defend the South from Ho Chi Minh? What real threat did he pose to us or the balance of power in S.E Asia? He HAD asked for our help to begin with, I suspect he was willing to accept aid from whoever would give it...in this case it wound up being the Chinese. I understand why we were less than fond of those guys back then, we were BOTH licking our wounds from Korea at that point.

I must be missing a key piece to this puzzle: If we turned our backs to Ho Chi Minh's requests to form a Democracy in Viet-Nam, then why set one of our own up in the South? What was the gain for the US here? We already had access to local bases both Air-force and Navy so that doesn't work out. They had no valuable resources to rob them of...and yet we helped set up and support a notoriously corrupt "Democracy" in South Viet Nam and defended the holy hell out of it while telling the sheeple that we were stopping the spread of communism. Something is not right with my thinking...we could NOT be that stupid...I must be missing a key piece here.

Thanks for the background piece. I have so far only read that link....perhaps the other two will help clear up my confusion. (I probably should have read them first before posting this...)