Why are we re-writing Vietnam history?

[Robin Hood]

I understand that this whole issue regarding Vietnam points to Bush's hypocrisy, lack of credibility, special favors etc... That's all fine and dandy...BUT.

I feel that we are taking a wrong turn into sugar coating and glorifying the horror known as Vietnam. We murdered 3 million Vietnamese people there, and sacrificed 58,000 of our own. Soldiers were spat upon and treated like dirt by some because of reports coming out of Vietnam of brutal torture, rape and crimes against humanity that OUR soldiers were committing in the privacy of the jungle. My Lai is an example, 250 innocent villagers were murdered in one big freak out.

Everything about it was wrong and it's a scar of shame on this country that has never been really dealt with. George Bush would have been honorable if he had gotten out of serving in Vietnam and protested the war. He did not.

John Kerry served, killed people, saved his and his friends butts and came back to help stop the war through protest and grass roots efforts. Again, the comparison between the two is striking.

But I want to caution against forgetting the hell on earth that was Vietnam, many honorable acts may have occurred there, but there was nothing honorable about that war. And now, because of our failure to learn from Vietnam, we are repeating it all over again.

The things that our government learned from Vietnam is not to televise the truth on the ground, where the hummer meets the road. What do you think Bush's approval ratings would be if CNN televised the gory truth of blood and death out of Iraq. Or if the caskets being delivered back home were allowed to be viewed and honored by the nation instead of this false patriot lip service and hollow flag waving. His approval ratings would be in the 20's if the truth in Iraq was broadcast.

[anarchy1999]

1. Whoa, Take it down a notch.

It's tough. We are all having a really rough time going through all this again. We can't get our heads around it, we can't believe we are being forced to live through it again.

Those of us that were right behind, and in the streets then, know something is very wrong. It is incredibly frustating. Beyound belief. We will never Learn? We know they are lying about everything and no one will listen to us again. WTF?

I don't think any of us will ever forget, we were the ones on the street.

Hang in there, please.

PS/

My dearest is a graduate of Kent State and was there to hear Abbie Hoffman speak at an anniversary of the massacre at Kent.

[izzie]

2. I would say it is this.

We do not like the truth. we do not like we did not win. We had come out of Korea at a stand still, where we started and that is not how we came out of WW2.It is hard to face the fact that you are not saving the world when you have been told you did, once. The Nationalist movement is moving around the world and we are also doing it. "My country right or wrong"It is like the people always saying we have the best education and health care when other countries score better on education tests and live longer and have better live birth records. We just will not face this and if you say a thing should be fixed you are called anti-American.

[DODI]

3. I would like to send the RNC a bunch of copies of "A Rumor of War"

Phil Caputo's book. We had to read it for our Vietnamese history class. I don't understand how they RNC types deny what happened there when it is all well documented. I highly recommend that everyone reads "A Rumor of War". Mr. Caputo went over as a volunteer in the mid-60's and then returned at the end of the war a a journalist.

[NJCher]

4. learning from Vietnam

Do you really think we failed to learn from Vietnam? I don't. I think we did learn but that it didn't matter. Our system was taken over by sophisticated criminals who have the art of funneling our tax dollars into their pockets down to a science. Through the effective use of propaganda and hardball techniques with the House and the Senate, they rammed this war down our throats and all this despite the fact that the Internet allowed us to form huge protests in record time.


Cher

[G_j]

5. uhh..do we have to go over this one more time?

.."Soldiers were spat upon..."

there is very little (if any) evidence of this, and if there were isolated cases, it would be FAR more accurate to say Veterans were treated like dirt by their own government!

Since we are talking about rewriting history... :think:

[blondeatlast]

6. Good points all. When Vietnam ended, I was barely in my teens

but I still vividly remember the battlefields being broadcast, the caskets being sent home, and the protestors.

Before I continue, I have to say this: the person depicted in your avatar was no Mother Theresa--he used violence to achieve his ends, rightly or wrongly.

Sadly, the political machines on both sides are going to spin Vietnam into something it wasn't. A great many people on DU did not actually experience it, either in battle or at home, so both the war and the protests are being sugar-coated, or facts completely obliviated.

I think Vietnam was probably the first war that we truly witnessed from our living rooms. WW2 was on the radio, but we didn't have the visuals, and few would consider our involvement in it unjustified. The press had a spine then and no government chaperones.

OTOH, I think for most of us it isn't that Kerry served, it is that *43* used his power and privilege to hide under mom and dad's coats. It points to a larger issue that we don't seem to want to address, which is the original "affirmative action."

[Moderator]

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