Vietnam is a ghost that should not be reawakened!

[IndianaGreen]

The Democrats will be making a BIG mistake if they reopen the Vietnam debate.

Any discussion of service, or lack of service, in Vietnam will open the Pandora's box about the Vietnam war.

If you want to talk about Kerry being a hero in Vietnam, I will be happy to talk about the Vietnamese side of the story, and some of the sordid aspects of US military operations in Vietnam, and the even sleazier history of American involvement in Vietnam since World War II.

You want to talk about 58,000 dead Americans? You will also have to talk about the 3 million dead Vietnamese.

Vietnam is a ghost that should not be reawakened!

I give you a hint: Vietnam was a Democratic war!

[fishnfla]

1. Tell that to a vet, pal.

They see that ghost everyday.You cant ignore history. You have to learn from it.

Bush learned he could duck his responsibilities and send someone else to kill and be killed. He would act differently if he had served overseas. You and I would too.

[IndianaGreen]

3. I am a vet and I am against war!

and I was against the war in Vietnam, as I am opposed to US military intervention in Latin America, the Middle East, etc.

Kerry betrayed everything that he said he stood for when he voted for the war in Iraq, essentially the same sort of resolution based in lies as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

[fishnfla]

12. thanks for your service and your devotion, IG

But your argument is a stretch. Clinton was blasted for dodging a "Dem war". Nobody kicked Gore for serving in a "Dem war". The war wasnt refought during those campaigns was it? Service was an issue then and it should be now.

[MajorFlaw]

4. Vietnam's "ghosts"

Why do you call Vietnam a Democrat war. I seem to recall our involvement in Vietnam dating to DienBienphu in 1954 when Eisenhower was Pres.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Tonkin Gulf Resolution

Gave a blank check to President Johnson to send US combat troops to Vietnam. It was the beginning of the escalation.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was based on lies, just as IWR was.

The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by large margins, and they voted for that shit.

Wayne Morse did not!

On edit:

Ho Chi Minh had fought on our side against the Japanese. The Truman Admninistration betrayed the Vietnamese when it allowed the French colonials to reclaim their plantations at the end of the war instead of granting the promised independence to Vietnam.

[xray s]

30. History is a stern taskmaster

If Americans really understood the history of Vietnam and Iraq in the 20th century their heads would explode from all the contradictions, lies and deceit that has been force fed into their minds.

[Taeger]

38. Ho Chi Min

Ho Chi Min really wanted to be an ally to the US. Even after Bien Bin Fu he sought alliance with the west.

All we needed to accept was a socialist society not much unlike those of Western Europe. The Vietnamese HELD elections. We chose to ignore those elections and INVENT South Vietnam.

The greatest tragedy of Vietnam is that it was 100% unnecessary.

Like Vietnam, Iraq AND Iran is a problem created by corporate assholes who didn't want to respect a peoples right to OWN their own nation. This crap has caused most of our cold-war problems. Nations turned to the Soviets because Communist doctrine implied that a nation BELONGED to it's inhabitants. The US was only for democracy in nations with WHITE people.

Cuba ... same thing. Batista was a US Stooge who worked for the US Sugar industry. Actually, the same thing happened in Hawaii, save that Hawaii was actually integrated into the US.

I love my country. But we have a shameful past of corporate colonization. It has manifested itself in the ultimate form of the WTO. Not only to the corpratists want to colonize the rest of the world, now they want to colonize the US itself by taking sovereign powers away from Americans.

OPPOSE NAFTA AND WTO!!!!!! Support Democracy in Venezuela. Support Hugo Chavez. We make the world safer by supporting democratic leaders who look after the needs of the poor and make the rich pay for their luxury.

[THUNDER HANDS]

2. you also called Kerry a fake liberal and Clark a real liberal

So maybe I'm just guessing your biased against Kerry and are just looking to take away any strengths he may have.

Nice try though.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IndianaGreen]

10. Army spying over civilians began in a Democratic Administration

as did the death squads and torture program the CIA ran in Vietnam.

[KC21304]

17. So we should try to rewrite history, cover it up, make believe

it didn't happen, just what are you saying ? I think Kerry did as much as anyone in real time to expose those horrors. If bringing that out embarrasses anyone, so be it.

I don't know why someone has to tear down Kerry to build up their candidate. Clark is a great American and I would never say otherwise.

[bearfartinthewoods]

6. i know the Kerry people will claim that he has bothe sides of the issue

covered since he served honorably yet came home to protest the war. i think it's a mistake to pick open that scab. i agree with you totally.

[IndianaGreen]

8. It is a scab over an open wound

I thought that the Gulf War put to rest the ghosts of Vietnam. The Iraq war has done a lot of harm to the military and to our country.

Some things should be left alone, and Vietnam is one of those things.

9. Vietnam needs to be exorcised

Leslie Silko in "Ceremony"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140086838/qid=1075990595/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/002-7462178-8664833

and John Nichols in "American Blood"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345353986/002-7462178-8664833?v=glance

make an argument that Vietnam, and the way we treated the Vietnamese,
corrupted American society in a way that has bred violence since then & until we truly exorcise this demon, the United States will continue to be plagued. Perhaps that is a bit metaphoric, yet we do seem to have virtually literal demons such as Rumsfeld and Cheney prowling about at this very moment.

[IndianaGreen]

11. Vietnam was exorcised during the Gulf War

a war that was fought to free a nation that had been invaded by another in an unprovoked attack.

We now find ourselves in the role of Iraq when it invaded Kuwait.

14. It was? I wish you were correct

I really do.
I'm not sure you are though.
If it was, why worry about reawakening it?
If it was, it wouldn't have any power over us anymore.
It obviously does still have power.

[LeahMira]

29. Exorcisms...

Vietnam was exorcised during the Gulf War

I think that what was possibly exorcised was the feeling that the U.S. could no longer win wars decisively.

While we did indeed get Saddam out of Kuwait, Saddam lived to fight another day, so I guess I'd give that war a mixed review.

I'm not so sure that we exorcised the feeling that the U.S. was not always on the side of truth, justice and the "American way." Vietnam brought that concern to the consciousness of many Americans, and I think we are still debating the morality of wars for any reason.

[iowapeacechief]

42. Bush Senior: US "kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all"...

...in his dreams.

Learn from history or repeat it.

[NNN0LHI]

13. Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it n/t

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

15. It SHOULD be awakened

The Vietnamese side of the story SHOULD be told. Bring it on!

[LeahMira]

16. All of this is true...

Any discussion of service, or lack of service, in Vietnam will open the Pandora's box about the Vietnam war.

I agree. There were young men who went off to Vietnam with nostrils flaring and guns at the ready, and there were young men who went off with heavy hearts. There were some who went to Canada and others who managed to evade the draft through fair means or foul. It was a difficult time for any young man who sincerely wanted to "do the right thing" but who really wasn't sure just what was the right thing. Whatever... some have lived to regret their decisions, some staunchly affirm the choice they made, and some will never have the opportunity to reflect on the dilemmas they faced because they died in Vietnam. I think that for the most part each person did what he thought was best given the information available at the time and the personal opportunities that were available at the time. None of us can do better.

You want to talk about 58,000 dead Americans? You will also have to talk about the 3 million dead Vietnamese. Vietnam is a ghost that should not be reawakened!

And here is where we part company. Sort of.

There were wars before Vietnam and wars after. I agree that the Vietnam war should not be the sole focus, but I also think that it has its place in a pattern of wars that the U.S. has been involved in. Fairly recently I learned that there are or were oil resources in that area, and the U.S. was interested in controlling those resources even that long ago. In addition, the public was fed the "domino theory" about communist expansion, which bears some serious similarities to the "spread of Islamic fundamentalism" theories we are hearing today.

To the extent that the Vietnam war was one in a series of wars, declared or undeclared, that the U.S. has involved itself in, and to the extent that the U.S. is still pursuing the same sorts of goals in the world (the PNAC proposal American global leadership and the aggressive promotion of American principles and interests throughout the world), I think Vietnam can be mentioned. The lessons (the Americans who died, the Vietnamese who died, and the outcome) have not been learned, or at least they haven't been assimilated into the U.S. world view. We are the same cowboys who took land from the American Indians, settled it ourselves, and then went on into and across the Pacific to Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippines, bombed the Japanese into submission, and then went even further to try to extend our hegemony.

We have never had a national discussion about whether these events have profited us. We haven't even had a discussion about what other, less harmful means might accomplish the same objectives... or even if those objectives are worthy ones.

To the extent that Vietnam plays a role in that discussion, it is a ghost that haunts us. I think it should haunt us.

[KC21304]

19. I agree we need to have that national discussion.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if it could start Jan, 2005 ? I think that discussion would do more than anything to further antiterrorism in the world.

[IndianaGreen]

21. If you want to end terrorism, shut down Clinton's Plan Colombia

and disband WHISC (the old SOA).

Stop treating Latin America as America's backyard.

Stop enabling Israel's subjugation of the Palestinians.

Stop arms sales worldwide, which are used by repressive regimes against their own people, and withdraw from the Middle East.

[LeahMira]

27. From your mouth...

If you want to end terrorism, shut down Clinton's Plan Colombia...and disband WHISC (the old SOA).
Stop treating Latin America as America's backyard.
Stop enabling Israel's subjugation of the Palestinians.
Stop arms sales worldwide, which are used by repressive regimes against their own people, and withdraw from the Middle East.

From your mouth to G-d's ears!

I think, though, that the U.S. does these things because the powers that be, along with a lot of voters, see some advantage to continuing these policies. The trick is to convince them that comparable benefits can be realized in other, less harmful ways.

[Warren Stuart]

18. WWII was a Democratic war

You're not suggesting that we tell the Nazi's side of the story are you?

Vietnam was a mistake, I'll grant you that, but if you want to talk about deceptions, then how about Richard Nixon, and his "Peace with Honor" solution. He ran as the anti-war candidate in 1968. Then ratcheted up the troop levels to their highest point.

Johnson was lied to by his advisers, and the Pentagon. I suggest you read the "Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam to get an insight into this deception.

But the bottom line is: we are all in this together, right or wrong. Bullets in combat don't know the difference between Democrat or Republican. Vietnam is not something Democrats should run away from, unless they have something to hide.

[IndianaGreen]

20. Wrong! WWII was a global war that all Americans fought

There were no Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists, during WWII. It was a global war that was brought to our shores by the Japanese Empire.

The irony is that we fought against the racism of the Third Reich and Japan's Empire while maintaining racism at home.

[citizen snips]

44. wrong, wrong, and wrong.

We were fighting against the Nazis that killed millions of Jews. And Japan who slaughtered our soldiers at Pearl Harbor.

[IndianaGreen]

45. We wouldn't have won the war if it hadn't been for the Soviets

It was a global war, and America did not win it by itself!

[citizen snips]

48. And the Soviets would have not won without the help of the U.S.

We did in fact beat Japan by ourselves.

[LeahMira]

25. If "we" fought in it, it was an American war.

You're not suggesting that we tell the Nazi's side of the story are you?

To some extent we already are, and maybe it's not such a bad idea. People are drawing parallels between the Nazi era and the present Bush era and recalling the idea of the "Big Lie." Students are interested in learning just how things could have come to be so bad and how people were persuaded to go along with the Nazis.

I don't think you have to agree with something to understand it, and I don't think you have to agree with an individual in order to understand why s/he behaves as s/he does. I do think you need to understand why someone behaves and thinks as s/he does in order to convince them of the possibility of another, better way.

... an argument that Vietnam, and the way we treated the Vietnamese, corrupted American society in a way that has bred violence since then & until we truly exorcise this demon, the United States will continue to be plagued.

Ceremony is a fantastic book!

Robert Jay Lifton makes much the same argument, from a psychohistorical point of view, about Hiroshima (Hiroshima in America).

I don't think it benefits to label a war as a "Democratic" war or a "Republican" war. I think all the wars have been "American" wars, and I think we all need to take responsibility for what happens in order to make sure that the chances are small to none that it will happen again.

[drfemoe]

22. little to late to put this one back in the bag .. sorry .. nt

[NewYorkerfromMass]

23. much too late

I agree

[Cocoa]

24. Vietnam isn't just one thing

it's many things, and what's coming up now is who served and who didn't.

Even that isn't the issue, AWOL is not about Bush pulling strings to get into the Guard, like the flap over Dan Quayle, it's about his not even showing up.

Anyway, none of this is related to whose fault the war was, or about the Tonkin Gulf resolution, or how it relates to Iraq. It's a totally different matter.

[zwan75]

31. Our most of you from the Vietnam years?

If so did you protest the war?

[Dr Fate]

33. was not born yet- But I did protest going into Iraq...

...as did most DUers.

The media smeared us as "communists", "traitors" and "unpatriotic"- but we were RIGHT- we were standing up for truth- and nothing is more All-American than that.

43. I am

I was at the first MayDay rally that was held in San Francisco and NYC in 1967. I was at the one in San Francisco. I was only 10 but I remember it well. Coretta Scott King was one of the featured speakers.
The first poem I ever wrote was an anti-Vietnam poem and had the image of the monks setting themselves on fire in it. The draft was still drawing lottery numbers when I turned 18. My number was 78 -- emblazoned in my memory. You bet I protested the war.

[iowapeacechief]

49. Number 26 in the first draft lottery (1969)

Returned 2S (student deferment) draft card. Applied for recognition as a conscientious objector but appealed (effectively refused) when ordered to serve. Eventually notified Selective Service didn't want me anymore (1972).

Protested many times in many ways.

[IndianaGreen]

35. Will you force a young man to fight in an immoral war?

That was the issue in Vietnam as it is today in Iraq.

The children of the elites got out of Vietnam by getting in the National Guard despite the long waiting lists. This is what happened with Bush and Dan Quayle.

This would not work today! The National Guard and the Reserves are bearing the brunt of the war in Iraq, and are paying a steep price in blood.

Will you force a young man to fight in an immoral war? I wouldn't, even if they got out of it because of their families' political connections.

One cannot ask questions about the draft, or service in Vietnam, without also asking about the nature of the Vietnam war.

[zwan75]

41. What was the reason for Vietnam in you view

[IndianaGreen]

46. Vietnam War was an extension of the French colonial war

The American GI was cast in the role of the French Foreign Legion.

[JI7]

26. Kerry helped in normalizing relations with Vietnam

in fact he led the fight to do it. and bill clinton especially needed kerry to back him up in doing this since the right wing was all over him for not serving. kerry understood the pain caused on both sides, the american and vietnamese and it was better for both sides to start talks again. kerry was attacked for this, called a commie sympathizer and other crap but it was the right thing to do for all. he did good on the mia/pow issue also. some are still upset at him for it, but he did all they could and there was no proof to show there were still american soldiers alive there. the evidence shown before all turned out to be just pictures of tourists visiting the country.

[DemLikr]

28. "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it."

And Kerry's service in Vietnam as a campaign issue is primarily relevant because Bus* and the repukes wrap themselves in the flag and are all Chickenhawks.

Kerry fought in the war as required by his country, then worked to oppose and end it at home.

P.S. Here we go; beating up on our own people instead of focusing our fire on the opposition.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

34. but Kerry went beyond what was expected

which is a big part of the story. And becuase of (or in spite of) all he has done since then, the bottom line is a lot of people will want to reward him for it.
In the shadow of 9/11, Bush and Kerry are a stark contrast.

[IndianaGreen]

36. kerry betrayed all of the ideals he said he had when he opposed Vietnam

Kerry is no different from those politicians that voted for the Vietnam War. Kerry is the new Nixon!

[DemLikr]

37. So, bottom line...you'd vote for Bush* against Kerry...?

...if that's what it comes to?

Kerry is Nixon? Are you mad?, mad, I tell you?!

This is the kind of suicidal in-fighting that weakens the Dem party against the Republicans who, like the Nazis, march very well in lockstep.

BTW, I'm basically a Deaniac, but since it doesn't look like I'm going to get my way I'm gearing up to support whomever is our nominee.
Please consider doing likewise and working out your Vietnam issues in some other, more constructive way.

[IndianaGreen]

40. Unlike Kerry, I won't vote with the Republicans!

The only difference between Kerry and Bush is that Kerry will use lubrication when he reams us.

I would just as soon join that 50% of Americans that are so disenchanted with the political system that they don't even bother to vote.

[DemBones DemBones]

54. Perhaps it's that no one lives up to your ideals?

What should Kerry, or any vet, have done?

I think Cleland was the only other Viet Nam vet in the Senate and voted for IWR too. Was he betraying his ideals?

[Dr Fate]

32. If Bush/media wants to play the "DEMS are unpatriotic" card...

...then DEMS should throw it right back at them.

I disagree with your strategy.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

39. Your arguments are nonsensical.

We are going to beat Bush and the ghosts AND the veterans of Vietnam will help.

[Desertrose]

50. IG's arguments are NOT nonsenscial, but I think right now

we need to not lose focus on getting the current issues made for the progressive side- and not get caught up in too much that is so complicated and so many are still entangled with that will take us from the crisis we have right now with bush.

I lived through Nam...lost friends and loved ones...protested and felt my heart break for the guys who came back so wounded and broken...and I do feel we need to truthfully (if thats possible) examine Viet Nam but that will take many years to do...right now we have to look to the future and try to change that...at this point we can do nothing about the past, other than try to understand it & not repeat it.

But we can try to make a difference for what WILL come....

we have to be realisitc about beating Bush....it won't be easy but I truly feel if there is a clear choice it will be easier and I don't see Kerry as that choice....

Peace
DR

[Faygo Kid]

47. See "The Fog of War." Vietnam must be remembered.

The neocons may have forgotten the lessons of that war. I have not.

[DemBones DemBones]

51. A Democratic war? Eisenhower (R) sent in the first

military advisors in 1956-57, when the French were leaving.

Kennedy(D) sent in more, Johnson(D) really ramped it up, but Nixon (R) continued it for years after he took office.

And it's a ghost that still haunts too many to say it should not be reawakened. Until the last Viet Nam vet dies, it will live on in nightmares based on first-hand experience. Until the last vet's widow dies, it will live on in fears based on second-hand experience.

Wars aren't easily forgotten.

[IndianaGreen]

52. Truman supported returning Indochina to the French

and in the process, he doublecrossed Ho Chi Minh who had been our ally in the war against Japan.

[DemBones DemBones]

53. Support Kucinich or Iraq will become a Democratic war

by inheritance. No one else wants to get out of Iraq ASAP.

[IowaBiker]

55. It was a lieing Texan war

A Texan, by the way, who had his own way of stealing an election.

--Brian