I know that Vietnam war was and remains a deeply divisive subject in American hearts and minds. As a teen sent by the Soviet powers that be to demonstrate against the "imperialist invasion", I didn't have yet any opinion of my own.
I know that many of the American youngsters sent to fight and to die in the rice fields and jungles of Vietnam also didn't have much of an opinion (or an option). However, they fought bravely and died for something that many of their countrymen scoffed at.
It took me some years to grow up and to become grateful to all the Cold war warriors and to the millions of people who worked, fought and died to rid the planet of the Soviet menace. And to understand that the soldiers who fought and died in Vietnam were a part of this chapter of our history.
And to be thankful.
1 hour ago
14 comments:
Brave young Amricans were sent to be slaughtered by evil men in the Pentagon . "Military men are just dumb ,stupid, animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy" Henry Kissinger.
American youths lost their lives on the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin.
Nothing to be proud to be duped, lied to. The Lie continues today.
Americans unwilling to wake up and therefore will die, needlessly, for their masters.
"Amricans"? Sounds familiar. Especially coming from an indoctrinated know-nothing Malaysian who sees lies abroad. Instead of looking closer to home.
Mass Murdering American justifies mass murder across the globe.
Son of Satan.
I see. First it is "brave young Amricans" and now it's a justification for muss murder. I think you have outlived your usefulness on this blog. Ciao.
Thanks for the sentiment, Snoop. I missed the "day." Or was a day of your choosing?
It was only years (decades, actually) after coming home from those SE Asian War Games that I realized that it had much of anything to do with the Cold War.
Do you know we were issued authorization for a "winning the Cold War" medal? Wasn't actually mailed to us, of course. Uncle Sugar is much too cheap for that.
Go soak your head, dumb butt.
Hey. That's Son of the Big Satan. Get it right, why don't you. Jeez.
I got it from one of the guys on the Watcher's list, took it as gospel and didn't check.
As for the medals: pity, it could have been quite an important one, in my humble.
Yes, he is probably too dumb to get the right terms in a row.
The US went into Vietnam as a part of the overall Cold War policy of containing Soviet and Chinese Communism. The overall policy of Containment was correct, but the US got far more involved in Vietnam then was worth it by any concievable measure. We refused to see that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong was the country's nationalist force. We refused to limit our involvement untill we were in there with more than a half million soldiers. We never believed that a bunch of runty-assed Asians could stand up to the might American War Machine.
Dick, one reason that you might not have felt that Vietnam was not part of overall Cold War was that it was not a necessary part of the Cold War. I.E. American sucess or failure in the Cold War did not rest on American sucess or failure in Vietnam. There were a lot more important areas of the Cold War such as Western Europe, the Middle East and Korea. American failure in any of these areas would have been far more important than the American defeat in Vietnam was.
Talleyrand, the veteran cynical French Foreign Minister, was criticized by a friend for continuing to serve Napoleon after the latter's most recent act of agression or crime as it was then called.
To which Talleyrand replied that Napoleon's agression "was worse than a Crime, it was a Mistake!"
I.E., Napoleon need not to have done it to suceed in his policy of conquering Europe.
I believe that the same can be said of the US war in Vietnam.
Dick, as someone who has worked for the US Dept of Defense since late 1985, I am eligible for the civilian version of the Cold War Victory Medal. I felt that my rather modest role in that forbide me to recieve it. Now if they were to issue a medal for being in the Pentagon on 9/11, I would be glad to recieve that one.
True as it may be, the post was about the soldiers and not about the politicians.
Snoopy, you are right, the post was about the soldiers who served in Vietnam, not the politicians who sent them there. I apologize for going off on a tangent.
Thanks for this post honoring all those who did serve in Vietnam.
No harm caused, David, and no need for apologies.
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