Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Jun 12 - 05:12 PM

"Do you think the Vietnam veterans have gotten screwed?" Lloyd asked me.

"Fuckin' aye!" I replied.

"Yeah, I think so too," he replied.

Lloyd, a sailor on Yankee Station, now lives in South Africa. When he was on "Kitty Hawk" he watched as the prop of an Orion patrol plane turned a friend's head into a red mist. And there were other things.

When he returned he married his girlfriend. They're still together, although it's been hard, very hard at times.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 02 Jun 12 - 03:57 PM

But Rap, that would imply that peace is unusual and needs special recognition "lest we forget."

Of course, widespread peace *is* unusual, but that realization may be too frightening to be generally admitted.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: catspaw49
Date: 02 Jun 12 - 02:11 PM

A good start might be the story of the "Napalm Girl," Kim Phuc, and the story of her life. The photo changed history and her life since has been one of grat determination, courage, and now philanthropy. The photo turns 40 years old next week and this AP story is well worth the read..........

TRANG BANG, Vietnam (AP) — In the picture, the girl will always be 9 years old and wailing "Too hot! Too hot!" as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village.

She will always be naked after blobs of sticky napalm melted through her clothes and layers of skin like jellied lava.

She will always be a victim without a name.

It only took a second for Associated Press photographer Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut to snap the iconic black-and-white image 40 years ago. It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history.

But beneath the photo lies a lesser-known story. It's the tale of a dying child brought together by chance with a young photographer. A moment captured in the chaos of war that would be both her savior and her curse on a journey to understand life's plan for her.

"I really wanted to escape from that little girl," says Kim Phuc, now 49. "But it seems to me that the picture didn't let me go."

____

It was June 8, 1972, when Phuc heard the soldier's scream: "We have to run out of this place! They will bomb here, and we will be dead!"

Seconds later, she saw the tails of yellow and purple smoke bombs curling around the Cao Dai temple where her family had sheltered for three days, as north and south Vietnamese forces fought for control of their village.

The little girl heard a roar overhead and twisted her neck to look up. As the South Vietnamese Skyraider plane grew fatter and louder, it swooped down toward her, dropping canisters like tumbling eggs flipping end over end.

"Ba-boom! Ba-boom!"

The ground rocked. Then the heat of a hundred furnaces exploded as orange flames spit in all directions.

Fire danced up Phuc's left arm. The threads of her cotton clothes evaporated on contact. Trees became angry torches. Searing pain bit through skin and muscle.

"I will be ugly, and I'm not normal anymore," she thought, as her right hand brushed furiously across her blistering arm. "People will see me in a different way."

In shock, she sprinted down Highway 1 behind her older brother. She didn't see the foreign journalists gathered as she ran toward them, screaming.

Then, she lost consciousness.

___

Ut, the 21-year-old Vietnamese photographer who took the picture, drove Phuc to a small hospital. There, he was told the child was too far gone to help. But he flashed his American press badge, demanded that doctors treat the girl and left assured that she would not be forgotten.

"I cried when I saw her running," said Ut, whose older brother was killed on assignment with the AP in the southern Mekong Delta. "If I don't help her — if something happened and she died — I think I'd kill myself after that."

Back at the office in what was then U.S.-backed Saigon, he developed his film. When the image of the naked little girl emerged, everyone feared it would be rejected because of the news agency's strict policy against nudity.

But veteran Vietnam photo editor Horst Faas took one look and knew it was a shot made to break the rules. He argued the photo's news value far outweighed any other concerns, and he won.

A couple of days after the image shocked the world, another journalist found out the little girl had somehow survived the attack. Christopher Wain, a correspondent for the British Independent Television Network who had given Phuc water from his canteen and drizzled it down her burning back at the scene, fought to have her transferred to the American-run Barsky unit. It was the only facility in Saigon equipped to deal with her severe injuries.

"I had no idea where I was or what happened to me," she said. "I woke up and I was in the hospital with so much pain, and then the nurses were around me. I woke up with a terrible fear."

Thirty percent of Phuc's tiny body was scorched raw by third-degree burns, though her face somehow remained untouched. Over time, her melted flesh began to heal.

"Every morning at 8 o'clock, the nurses put me in the burn bath to cut all my dead skin off," she said. "I just cried and when I could not stand it any longer, I just passed out."

After multiple skin grafts and surgeries, Phuc was finally allowed to leave, 13 months after the bombing. She had seen Ut's photo, which by then had won the Pulitzer Prize, but she was still unaware of its reach and power.

She just wanted to go home and be a child again.

___

For a while, life did go somewhat back to normal. The photo was famous, but Phuc largely remained unknown except to those living in her tiny village near the Cambodian border. Ut and a few other journalists sometimes visited her, but that stopped after northern communist forces seized control of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, ending the war.

Life under the new regime became tough. Medical treatment and painkillers were expensive and hard to find for the teenager, who still suffered extreme headaches and pain.

She worked hard and was accepted into medical school to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. But all that ended once the new communist leaders realized the propaganda value of the 'napalm girl' in the photo.

She was forced to quit college and return to her home province, where she was trotted out to meet foreign journalists. The visits were monitored and controlled, her words scripted. She smiled and played her role, but the rage inside began to build and consume her.

"I wanted to escape that picture," she said. "I got burned by napalm, and I became a victim of war ... but growing up then, I became another kind of victim."

She turned to Cao Dai, her Vietnamese religion, for answers. But they didn't come.

"My heart was exactly like a black coffee cup," she said. "I wished I died in that attack with my cousin, with my south Vietnamese soldiers. I wish I died at that time so I won't suffer like that anymore ... it was so hard for me to carry all that burden with that hatred, with that anger and bitterness."

One day, while visiting a library, Phuc found a Bible. For the first time, she started believing her life had a plan.

Then suddenly, once again, the photo that had given her unwanted fame brought opportunity.

She traveled to West Germany in 1982 for medical care with the help of a foreign journalist. Later, Vietnam's prime minister, also touched by her story, made arrangements for her to study in Cuba.

She was finally free from the minders and reporters hounding her at home, but her life was far from normal. Ut, then working at the AP in Los Angeles, traveled to meet her in 1989, but they never had a moment alone. There was no way for him to know she desperately wanted his help again.

"I knew in my dream that one day Uncle Ut could help me to have freedom," said Phuc, referring to him by an affectionate Vietnamese term. "But I was in Cuba. I was really disappointed because I couldn't contact with him. I couldn't do anything."

___

While at school, Phuc met a young Vietnamese man. She had never believed anyone would ever want her because of the ugly patchwork of scars that banded across her back and pitted her arm, but Bui Huy Toan seemed to love her more because of them.

The two decided to marry in 1992 and honeymoon in Moscow. On the flight back to Cuba, the newlyweds defected during a refueling stop in Canada. She was free.

Phuc contacted Ut to share the news, and he encouraged her to tell her story to the world. But she was done giving interviews and posing for photos.

"I have a husband and a new life and want to be normal like everyone else," she said.

The media eventually found Phuc living near Toronto, and she decided she needed to take control of her story. A book was written in 1999 and a documentary came out, at last the way she wanted it told. She was asked to become a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador to help victims of war. She and Ut have since reunited many times to tell their story, even traveling to London to meet the Queen.

"Today, I'm so happy I helped Kim," said Ut, who still works for AP and recently returned to Trang Bang village. "I call her my daughter."

After four decades, Phuc, now a mother of two sons, can finally look at the picture of herself running naked and understand why it remains so powerful. It had saved her, tested her and ultimately freed her.

"Most of the people, they know my picture but there's very few that know about my life," she said. "I'm so thankful that ... I can accept the picture as a powerful gift. Then it is my choice. Then I can work with it for peace."

___

Online:

http://www.kimfoundation.com

Spaw

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 11:06 PM

I'm with Rap... Where is the Monument to Peace???

B~

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 10:48 PM

A massive standing army needs something to do. The "Founding Fathers" saw how badly this affected Great Britain and what a drain it was so the idea was to have a very small army but a ready militia to call up which was the entire point of the second amendment, not just guns for the hell of it. This held sway until the 20th Century when a few more regulars were needed and the tecnical advances forced some more training and hence the build up and need for the Reserve and the National Guard. Then, even through Korea, after the war the military shrunk to a very small scale.

Then along came VietNam..............an entirely different kettle of fish.


Spaw

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: gnu
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 07:27 PM

"The USA were in Viet Nam to prevent a massive communist block from overtaking SE Asia."

Soooo, the phosphate mines had no bearing on the military incursion (it was NEVER a "war")? Did the west not want the phosphate VERY badly?... so much so that they were willing to wage "war" to get it? ... under false pretenses?

Ideologies? Resources?

I pick resources. Ideologies are merely excuses for the extraction of resources by force.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 07:10 PM

The Domino Theory was pushed for years to do with SE Asia. Also, the person who said that thing you couldn't be arsed to look up was Clausewitz in his book 'On War'. Many of us have been in the military, and your suggestion that if people don't agree with you they should hang their heads in shame is utter bullshit. Make all the excuses you want, but a military's place is at home. And if all militaries followed that simple statement, there would be NO invading armies.

"Soldiers do not die for money - they die for you and to preserve your way of life."

They die for each other, not for God, Mother and Apple Pie. That soldiers die for money is true, at least so far as they don't get the money. But sure as hell many industries have flourished and continue to grow because they make the bucks, and there are something like 17,000 lobbyists in Washington to make sure the right contractors get the lucrative jobs. Don't say it ain't so, Joe, because it is so and has been for over a hundred years.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 06:44 PM

My wife asked today why there are no museums for peace.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Dead Horse
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 05:05 PM

The USA were in Viet Nam to prevent a massive communist block from overtaking SE Asia. They were merely moving into the vacuum created when France Britain Holland etc were kicked out of those countries.
So what? It means nothing to the USA. It will not impinge on your freedoms or your way of life will it?
And when SE Asia has become a no go zone for westerners, the effect spreads to the Pacific islands and possibly even to Australasia in one direction, to Burma, Pakistan and India in the other.
Your trade becomes blocked, your imported goods impossible to obtain, no market for your exports. But that will not effect your way of life or your freedoms will it?
Money? No it is not JUST about money. If you think you can exist without free trade then you have your head buried in something a bit more substantial than sand.
Outside your own country your civilians would not have the freedom to travel, to gain new ideas or to put forth friendship to those other countries to which you are now denied access.
Soldiers do not die for money - they die for you and to preserve your way of life.
Some idiot said that war was the last act of diplomacy or something similar (cant be bothered to look it up) but whoever said it was dead right. If you have no military, your diplomats are toothless.
And so is your country.
If you have no army then you had better learn to suck.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 10:03 AM

That post was me.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 10:03 AM

"Lovely thoughts assume that the enemy has similar non-aggressive plans. mg"

If we assume so, we have no need for a war.

#################################

However, it's really difficult for me to perceive how any thinking person could interpret the American war in Vietnam as a defensive war. The Americans were the invaders.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 05:37 AM

""What if a country is brutally oppressing and slaughtering its own citizens? Or beating up and plundering its neighbors? Or both?

Do you sit there with your hands folded and piously say, "It's not any of my business?"""

One word answer Don.......IRAQ!

Arguably Saddam Hussein would have killed fewer people than died as a result of the outside interference.

If you are going to take action, you need to think long and hard about the likely outcome, and it may well be that going in and tearing down the regime is not the best way to improve the situation.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 05:31 AM

""Oh dear Don, you have fallen into the trap of becoming one of the blinkered masses.
Isolationism can lead to far greater ills.""

What the hell are you on about, mate, and where in my last post was there any mention of isolationism?

I merely made the point that a defensive force fights only within its own territory.

What is happening in Afghanistan is not in defence of this or any other Western country. It is simple colonialism wrapped in a false veneer of national defence. It is military action to enforce a change to a form of government which our governments feel will be more amenable to their ideals, and more favourable toward their interests.

The worst thing about it is that it will inevitably fail to achieve any worthwhile result.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 12:36 AM

Military-Industrial-Complex.





It is all about money.
It is all about money.
It is all about money.




Oh...and did I mention, it is all about money.



PS - my career (such as it is/was) means I am not entirely (only partly) talking out my arse.


Gnight

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Jun 12 - 12:12 AM

pssssst! It is Libya.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 May 12 - 06:07 PM

Little Hawk, Kristallnacht, the onset of the pogrom or series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria, began on November 9, 1938.

The invasion of Poland began on September 1, 1939.

And there was plenty of warning well ahead of time that these two events were imminent.

The tenor of the countries who observed and were horrified by this was, nevertheless, "I don't want to get involved." It was not much later that they WERE involved, whether they wanted to be or not!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 May 12 - 05:55 PM

Hmmm. Okay, I had a look at a couple of reviews of "Drift". Here's one of them:

New York Times review of "Drift"

Yeah, looks like a good book to me.

Subject: RE: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment nat'l shame
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 May 12 - 05:44 PM

War with the Nazis was absolutely inevitable, Don, quite regardless of the peculiar atrocities that administration indulged in (and the actual death camps where people were being deliberately killed weren't yet running in '39...I think they got started in 1942 after the decision was made by the top Nazis to invoke a "final solution"). In any case, an emergent empire as aggressive and downright megalomaniacal as Hitler's always ends up at war with just about everyone else around it.

Napoleon was another case of that sort of thing, and it all comes down in the end to imperial checks and balances between great nations. If any one nation pushes too far and occupies too many other people's land, and becomes "too dangerous" to the old status quo, the other nations will presently join forces against it.

I fully empathize with your concerns over the Nazi atrocities and quite agree with those concerns, but that was not what the British, French, Russians, and Americans (the governments) were fighting over when they went to war (though it did serve as a very good motivator for the Allied side to enlist later in terms of believing in their cause). The primary thing they were fighting over when they went to war in '39 (British and French) or '41 (USA) was the usual imperial checks and balances, because the Germans were being way too expansionist. That always ends up triggering a war between major powers eventually. Knowledge about any Nazi death camps came much later, long after the decisions to go to war had been made. When such knowledge did come, people were very shocked by it...understandably...but it did not play a part in the initial British, French, or American decisions to go to war. As for the Russians, who had committed equally terrible atrocities against their own population in the 20s and 30s...why did we not then, by your reasoning, attack them? Why did the West not come to the aid of millions of slaughtered and innocent Russians, victims of the Stalin regime? We should have, if I follow your reasoning. Stalin killed even more civilians (his own) than Hitler did.

I'll tell you why we didn't attack Russia to save those poor people that Stalin was killing in his concentration camps. It didn't directly affect the West in terms of the overall balance of imperial power, that's why. The West didn't particularly give a damn what the Russian government was doing to Russian citizens, but they DID care about the balance of imperial power in the world. Hitler was changing the balance of imperial power in a huge way, and that's why the West fought Hitler.

It's also why the Cold War immediately followed WWII...because Russia had expanded into central Europe from 1944 on and was now a direct threat to the West in terms of the overall balance of imperial power in the world. The Cold War was an inevitable response to that, and it was fought in little proxy wars mostly, because no one was ready to face the terrible cost of an all-out war between the great powers. They went for small wars instead...and massive military spending and research.

These wars are not fought over some kind of moral issue, Don. They're fought over raw imperial power, the balance of power, and material considerations valued by imperial powers. The morality issues are raised to get the public emotionally onside to back the war and face the difficulties. Don't think the Nazis didn't have a long list of their own "morality" issues to get their people wired for war. (most of them totally bogus) That's how you get ordinary people to fight...over supposed moral issues. But if you told them it was really being done for totally pragmatic imperial interests, they wouldn't be nearly so enthusiastic about putting their lives on the line.

The USA may well end up triggering a major war eventually between themselves and Russia or China for much the same reason...an overly expansionist policy. Any nation that tries to dominate the whole world is likely to one day end up fighting most of the world. Napoleon had his comeuppance. The Germans had theirs. I expect the USA will have its too...eventually. It's been in its Napoleonic imperial phase ever since 1945, and that sort of hubris can only last so long.

****

What's "Drift" about, Spaw?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 May 12 - 04:37 PM

All of you need to read "Drift" by Rachel Maddow. An interesting premise, well researched and substantiated.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 May 12 - 04:22 PM

Naïve question:

What if a country is brutally oppressing and slaughtering its own citizens? Or beating up and plundering its neighbors? Or both?

Do you sit there with your hands folded and piously say, "It's not any of my business?"

I think Pastor Niemöller's famous quote applies here as well. If you're not familiar with it, Google it.

When the Nazis started sending their own people to death camps, and then invaded Poland, if a coalition of countries—such as the U.N. or NATO (which did not exist then, but an ad hoc coalition should have worked as well) had gone in and removed Hitler and the Nazi regime right then, history would have been a lot different and millions of lives would have been saved.

Of course, if you're worried about the earth's increasing population density, allowing the tyrants and dictators to purge the "undesirables" from their societies is one way of helping to alleviate that. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 May 12 - 03:15 PM

I fully agree, by the way, that the Vietnam vets were treated in a very shabby way. That's because the war was seen as an embarrassment and a national failure, and people wanted not to even think about it in the years closely following the final withdrawal of the American forces there. There was a lot of denial going on. That tends to happen in the wake of a lost war. People want something they can celebrate. When they don't get it, they can turn kind of nasty.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 May 12 - 03:06 PM

What enemy? There is no enemy out there that presents an actual credible threat to the existence of the USA or to our North American way of life. No one out there has the military capability to present a credible threat to the USA, with the possible exceptions of Russia and China...and what motivation would they have to do so, since the USA is capable of devastating them both with a nuclear counterattack?

The foreign countries that the USA has been militarily involving itself in recently (Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia) and has threatened to involve itself in (Iran, North Korea, Pakistan) are small powers who present no credible threat to the survival of the USA. None. They are absolutely incapable of presenting such a threat. They were never capable of presenting such a threat. To imagine they have "aggressive plans" against the USA is like imagining that a mouse is planning to take down a cat, for heaven's sake.

Nor was Vietnam ever capable of presenting such a threat, nor did they have any intention of doing so...they were simply achieving their national sovereignty and ending a colonial occupation. Empires have long justified their invasions and occupations of small countries on a supposed threat of some kind posed by those small countries. Hitler had most Germans convinced in 1939 that Poland was a threat to Germany, and was viciously persecuting German nationals on Polish territory. Utter nonsense, but most Germans, of course, believed it...at the time...because that's what their media told them to believe.

Likewise, Americans who think Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or North Korea or Lybia present any kind of actual, credible threat to the survival of the USA or the survival of our way of life are subscribing to utter, arrant nonsense.

But...it's typical propaganda. Standard stuff. So I'm not surprised it is being used to sway people's minds.

Empires CAN'T tell their public the real reasons they go to war. People wouldn't like it, and they wouldn't support the war effort. It would result in a public who utterly lost faith in their government, and that's the last thing any government wants to have to deal with....so they lie to you about why they're going to war. They make it sound noble, and they make it sound like it's self-defence. It isn't. Specially when the country you go to war with is the size of a mouse, and you're the size of a lion.

No foreign country planned 911. 911 was planned by a group of conspirators. I won't bother suggesting who they were, because there's no way I can know that for certain, but they were not representing any sovereign nation, and certainly not Iraq or Afghanistan...they were representing their own private interests. What those interests may have been is an interesting question, and there are a number of possible answers. Whatever the answers, to respond to that attack by invading any other sovereign nation was an idiotic thing to do....but I suspect it was exactly what the conspirators wanted to see happen in the wake of such an attack. And they got their wish, didn't they? And you see the disastrous results.

On the day Russia or China decide to fight a great war with the USA, mg, then you will have a real enemy. At present, there is no such real enemy....but an empire always needs some fictional enemies if it can't find real ones. What else would keep the great paranoid military-industrial game rolling?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Dead Horse
Date: 31 May 12 - 02:41 PM

Oh dear Don, you have fallen into the trap of becoming one of the blinkered masses.
Isolationism can lead to far greater ills.
The need for a military force which is capable of deterring agression ANYWHERE in the world is much needed today.
If your rationale was taken further then we would not need a police force - just build a big wall round your house and fit it with alarms and go armed when you go outside. Do away with the fire service and let combustables burn -we dont need them anymore when houses can be made fire proof. Ridiculous arguements.
As for the Viet Nam veterans, they got a raw deal and no mistake.
Nowadays military units returning after 'a challenging tour of Afghanistan' are feted in the press and in their home town, and the dead are greeted with respect and honoured.
Not so in the 60's 70's and even the 80's and 90's.
In the UK returned fallen were shipped as freight from Kenya, Malaya, Cyprus, Palestine, Aden, Dhofar & Northern Ireland. No 'Repatriation ceremonies' for them or the units involved.
It is a very emotive subject for me, so I will not say further.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 31 May 12 - 02:29 PM

Lovely thoughts assume that the enemy has similar non-aggressive plans. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: SINSULL
Date: 31 May 12 - 02:24 PM

And as this plays out the world is waiting for us to do something about Syria. What? Send in troops of course. So ten years from now we will still be putting today's teenagers thru the meat grinder of war and acting surprised when they come back suicidal, abusive, depressed and dangerous.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 May 12 - 02:15 PM

They are defending corporate and imperial interests in Afghanistan, which is the real reason why troops are sent overseas...and always has been. Not for freedom. Not for justice. Not for defence. For business reasons and protecting imperial interests. Empires, after all, survive and prosper by promoting their own economic and material interests in various ways, and their very purpose is to expand those interests...just as the very purpose of any business entity is to expand its interests, thereby enlarging its profits. War is one quick way of expanding one's interests...if it's a successful war. If not, it can lead to ruin, as many empires have discovered.

Ordinary people pay the price for that, in a great variety of ways. If they're in the way of some imperial objective, they get attacked. If they're of age, they get sent to war. They also sometimes reap the material benefits of it, if they happen to be positioned fortunately and on the winning side.

American troops in Vietnam were not positioned fortunately, and were not on the winning side (in the long run). Anyone who served there has my sympathy for having been sent on a fool's errand and for having been used. Likewise, anyone who is serving in Afghanistan. The best thing one could do for such people is bring them home to their families ASAP.

It's only aggressive empires who need to station their troops all over the world on other people's land. Such empires always believe themselves to be "the light of the world" at the time, but they are not. They're the oppressors of the world. Their troops should go home.

Note: I am not criticizing the soldiers who serve. I'm criticizing the bosses who send them out there.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 May 12 - 01:41 PM

IMO, the only justifiable, defensible, military defence force is one which is large enough to keep out those who would seek to invade, and its only justifiable, defensible, location is just within the borders of the country it defends.

Thus the British Army should not need to be outside the coast of the UK to defend it.

Any further out is aggression, not defence.

Not even the politicians who try to sell the concept to a gullible public can really believe that our boys are defending us in Afghanistan.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: gnu
Date: 31 May 12 - 10:47 AM

Well said all.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 May 12 - 10:36 AM

There's a song in that, Bruce. Several. Spot on.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: GUEST,999
Date: 31 May 12 - 10:28 AM

The real question posed by this thread, imo, is that of why we feed our kids into wars whose only purpose is the acquisition of someone else's goods and chattels. Why we feed them into flechette ordnance, grinding machines and chemical/biological environments beggars one's imagination. What kinds of fairy tales are we believing? Is this shit what we had children for? Sorry for the thread drift.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 31 May 12 - 10:04 AM

58,000 killed fighting the enemy, and over 60,000 either killed, or allowed to die, by their countrymen after the fighting was over.

Nobody volunteers to defend his/her country expecting to be driven to suicide post war.

Now Mitt Romney campaigns (at a Memorial Day service, for Christ's sake) on a platform of making that even worse.

""Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, meantime, promised to maintain a dominant American military "with no comparable power anywhere in the world."

"We have two courses we can follow: One is to follow in the pathway of Europe, to shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs," Romney said. "The other is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world."""

NEWS FLASH for MITT the MUTT: China has the USA outnumbered, in manpower alone, by almost five to one, not to mention the resources of those who would be her allies in any conflict.

So, making allowances for the fact that he is too stupid to know that China has massive military potential, he plans to divert more billions into Defence (so-called), and allow the the poor and disadvantaged to go without medical treatment while starving to death.

Of course that might be a very good way to coax more gullible people to join the US Military as cannon fodder, in order to get decent medical treatment and three squares a day.

Until, that is, the Military has no further need of their services, after which they can go off somewhere quiet and eat a bullet.

More and more I find myself rejoicing in UK citizenship.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: GUEST,999
Date: 31 May 12 - 09:12 AM

Countries are often eager to wage war but few are ever equipped or ever prepared to handle the returning wounded. This shabby treatment happens in Canada, too, and it's a national disgrace here, also.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 May 12 - 08:24 AM

Damned straight!

TIA I agree. Grossman's book should be REQUIRED reading by all parents, all children, and especially by all politicians BEFORE they run for office. The USMC, West Point, Sandhurst and other such places have made it REQUIRED reading and anyone who HASN'T read it should.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 30 May 12 - 11:18 PM

It was a damn complicated time and our government muddied things as much as they could.
Should be lots of regrets from lots of people.
Kudos to Obama for bringing it up.
And those that behaved badly surely feel badly now (I hope).
And those that behaved well (lots of definitions for, and degrees of, "well" I am sure) should be proud.
Biggest lesson is - let's not repeat okay?
Kids coming home now have exponentially more experience (possibly=damage) than those coming from Vietnam.
If anyone reads this, and has not read Col. Dave Grossman's
"On Killing"...go do it NOW.
Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 30 May 12 - 10:49 PM

It is a national shame and it killed so many people that were saved by such brave pilots and nurses and others you wouldn't know about..radio people and administrative clerks...a whole chain of bravery and skill and they make it back to America and are killed. I only ask that if you helped them die that you don't weasil out of it. Just take responsibility if you called them babykillers etc..or said they deserved to die..things like that. mg

Subject: BS: Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'nat
From: Beer
Date: 30 May 12 - 10:45 PM

Obama calls Vietnam vets' treatment 'national shame'
Right On.
Adrien

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/americas/2012/05/30/342751/Obama-calls.htm


Here is a short clip of a vet that served.    ----------------------------------------------------
http://youtu.be/Ykx9WrluQC8


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