Little Hawk, in order to live long and prosper you have to be able to live with yourself. "To thine own self be true."

Excellent post Old Guy. FYI I was an USAF noncom '69 thru '73 and while I was never directly involved in combat I met plenty who were.

I want to pick on Guest hugo's post for a minute. It is most illustrative of what passes for logical thought by many on the far left. (All emphasis will be mine) "...the reason the left across the world was opposed to the American attack ( note singularity ) on Vietnam ( no distinction between North or South) was because it led to the killing of some one million Vietnamese people, many of them were civilians (run-on sentence)." This lack of logical reasoning doesn't even have a classification in the informal fallacies. What you have said is that the left opposed America because of something it would do in the future. That's a neat trick if you can do. The seeds of our involvement in that unfortunate land date back to WWII and earlier. France was heavily involved there and nealy went bankrupt trying to prevent the Northern communist regime from taking over the South. Our involvement was NOT an attack. It was a slow escalation of hostilities. Our initial aim (with which I personally disagree ) was to leave the country divided and let the two co-exist peacefully. But there is no peaceful co-existence with repression. The North wanted the wealth of the South, especially Saigon which had a world trade economy and a culture that reflected the same. When Russia decided to keep uping the ante with arms, munitions, aircraft, training and advisors, our leadership felt that it had to match the bet to stay in the game because the jackpot was all of Southeast Asia. Reference the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, etc. There's a lot of history there you need to know about.

"...some one million Vietnamese people, many of them were civilians (were killed). Many others were maimed or suffered in other ways.
South Vietnamese were suffering the onslaught of the so-called insurgency. As an illustration of their tactics the Viet Cong would enter a village and machete open a pregnant woman's stomach and butcher her unborn child then let her die slowly. Guns were leveled at the other villagers. Resistance was futile. This served as a threat to cooperate with the VC or else. Terrorism was their stock and trade. Talk about massacres. The VC and the Northern Regulars made no pretext of following Geneva Covention. American combatants had their heads cut off and stuck on a pole in the middle of a jungle trail with their gentalia stuff in their mouths. I saw the photos. In the meantime idotic President Johnson let the UN dictate the manner in which we "fought" the war. We could bomb here but not there (where we knew the enemy was). Our fleshettes had to be sterilized (little darts that flew out of certain anti-personnel ordinance) because if the soldier survived the attack he should'nt die of a secondary infection. Tell that to a GI who has just stepped of a pungi stick soaked in month old urine and feces. I could fill a book but YOU aren't listening. You are too busy thinking up your next argument. There was'nt just My Lai. There were other incidents that you will never hear about because the troops kept solidarity. They fought fire with fire when and where they could. Yes. People were maimed and killed. There was enough pain and death to go around. Such is the nature of war. Go and see the Black Wall in DC. Agent Orange. Yup, that was a big costly mistake. Why did it happen? Because our hands were tied by the UN, courtesy of that bastard LBJ and his ilk and our military was casting about for any loophole they could find to prosecute this ridiculous war and not run afoul of the Commander-in-Chief and his kiss-ass stance with the UN. The CIA? Well they happen to be our spy guys. What they do, they do. Every country has them and they do what they do. What can I say? It is apparently a necessary evil in an evil world playing an evil game with national survival at stake, not to mention racial, ethnic and religious survival. Abu Grab is such small potatos by contrast that it seems tame and yet wrong was done. It happens. Get out your mental scale and see how humiliating a POW stacks up to IEDs or beheadings and worse. The difference is that when our officialdom was made aware of the problem punishment was meted out and corrections were made. Have the terrorists done the same? I think not.

"Vietnam was a racist war." That is probably the most idotic statement you have made. But I understand. You on the far left love to throw that word out any chance you get because it sets all the parrots to squawking. "Racism, Racism, WaaK, Racism, Racism!" Wern't the South Vietnamese also Vietnamese??? If not what are they? Were'nt these the people we sought to defend? There are thousands of them here today. I personally help to get some of them settled into our country at the close of the war. I'm sure there are some racists some where that are against them. There always are. there always will be. Was that, is that our offical policy? Get real. It was NOT a racist war. Is any of this getting through to you? Or are YOU so full of hatred for your own that you can't see the illogicality of your statements. You need to learn how to think before you touch the keyboard.

Your last two sentences are fallacious generalizations and are obviously intended to be inflammatory. There was Imperialism in Viet Nam but it wasn't US imperialism. It was Russian. Nor do we have designs on territory in the Middle East. Re the "bosses" children; that's just plain false in all but a very few and glaring instances. This is the fallacy of the hasty generalization.

This is like explaining simple truths to, well, fill in the blank. Actually it's worse because someone who is so steeped in their ideology is never going to "GET" it. You will not listen and you do not think. Hopefully the fair minded will see the truth in what I say or at least give it honest consideration.