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| Apocalypse then ... |
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
-- George Bernard Shaw
That's not entirely true about the Vietnam War.
After our defeat, the military developed the ability to fight at night through night-vision goggles and infrared optics.
The military also dramatically improved the accuracy of its bombs through satellite-guided missiles that turn unguided bombs
into "smart" bombs.
We now have drones flying into battle.
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| ... Apocalypse now |
We now have drones flying into battle.
In other words, we learned to kill much more efficiently and effectively.
Also, the advances in battlefield medical care during the Vietnam conflict substantially improved the rate of survival in subsequent conflicts. Granted, many of those lives are seriously compromised today.
After watching much of the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick 10-day, 18-hour documentary, "The Vietnam War," it's clear that we learned little else from Vietnam.
In fact, we duplicated the fraudulent start of the Vietnam War in the Iraq War.
The Tonkin Gulf "attacks" gave President Johnson the pretext to dramatically escalate our involvement in Vietnam even though he and his advisers knew there were slim chances of ever winning the war. Our bombing in neighboring Cambodia helped destabilize the region and led to the murderous Khmer Rouge.
Likewise, George W. Bush used the mythical "weapons of mass destruction" to invade Iraq that ushered in unending war and destabilized the region further than it has been since World War II.
More importantly, we didn't care about the Vietnamese people then and we don't care about foreigners today.
Also, this country is as divided today as it was during the Vietnam War.
And, the Sixties were a tumultuous decade.
Predictably, the documentary has its detractors on the left and the right, from Americans and South Vietnamese.
This is what happens when you lose a war, particularly one where you won all the major battles.
The Vietnam War, though, was the culmination of our terribly misguided reaction to communism.
In the 1940s and '50s, Americans turned on each other over communism. We had so little faith in our own institutions that we jailed or ostracized people for having different points of view.
Now, communism needs no defense. It has failed as often as any corrupt, oppressive form of government.
The Korean War, the first test of the "domino theory," never truly ended and we're living with the consequences today. We had a chance to liberate the north, but we went too far and antagonized the Chinese who joined the conflict and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel.
When Cuba, 90 miles from the USA, went communist, Americans started freaking out. Communism was going to take over the world!
Communism would take over in places that had no viable alternative.
North Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh embraced communism because the U.S. didn't side with them in their war of independence from the French.
We picked the wrong side. We backed a corrupt regime in South Vietnam that did not have the full support of its people.
Vietnam War apologists claim that the military could have won if the politicians had let them.
Not exactly. Even the U.S. military has concluded that the defeat in Vietnam was substantially due to our military's mistakes. Add in the atrocities committed by American forces in My Lai and elsewhere, and you have the recipe for disaster.
The American military record speaks for itself. Since World War II, the U.S. military, in spite of the trillions spent and thousands of lives lost, has not had a clear-cut victory in any major conflict.
Some still maintain that the Vietnam War was a worthy cause.
No, it wasn't.
Vietnam, like Korea, was a proxy war that pitted the U.S. against the Soviets at first.
We fought in these far-flung places so that we, rather than the Soviets, could exploit these countries.
At the same time we were fighting totalitarian communism in Asia, we were supporting totalitarian dictatorships throughout the world.
The hypocrisy did not go unnoticed by many in this country or others abroad.
In the end, the dreaded communists won.
Did they treat the South Vietnamese people well? No, they didn't.
But, when two million people died in Cambodia under Pol Pot, it wasn't the Americans who came to their rescue, but the communist Vietnamese army that saved the day.
And, how do we treat Vietnam today? We get a lot of our clothes and shoes from there that are produced by their exploited workforce.
After the USSR imploded in 1989, China became the last major communist country. Naturally, we get most of our goods from China that are manufactured by ridiculously cheap labor.
If we truly detested communists, why do we import so much from them, which ends up supporting their regimes?
Since at least the 1940s, the GOP has been the most strident anti-communist political party.
Ironically, due to the interference of the Russians and their despotic leader, Vladimir Putin,
we have the former KGB operative's hand-picked president, a Republican, in the White House today.
Rank-and-file Republicans do not care that former Soviets rigged our election. In fact, they are grateful to Putin that Hillary Clinton lost.
That's how far we have fallen from the days of the Vietnam War.
More importantly, we didn't care about the Vietnamese people then and we don't care about foreigners today.
Also, this country is as divided today as it was during the Vietnam War.
And, the Sixties were a tumultuous decade.
Predictably, the documentary has its detractors on the left and the right, from Americans and South Vietnamese.
This is what happens when you lose a war, particularly one where you won all the major battles.
The Vietnam War, though, was the culmination of our terribly misguided reaction to communism.
In the 1940s and '50s, Americans turned on each other over communism. We had so little faith in our own institutions that we jailed or ostracized people for having different points of view.
Now, communism needs no defense. It has failed as often as any corrupt, oppressive form of government.
The Korean War, the first test of the "domino theory," never truly ended and we're living with the consequences today. We had a chance to liberate the north, but we went too far and antagonized the Chinese who joined the conflict and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel.
When Cuba, 90 miles from the USA, went communist, Americans started freaking out. Communism was going to take over the world!
Communism would take over in places that had no viable alternative.
North Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh embraced communism because the U.S. didn't side with them in their war of independence from the French.
We picked the wrong side. We backed a corrupt regime in South Vietnam that did not have the full support of its people.
Vietnam War apologists claim that the military could have won if the politicians had let them.
Not exactly. Even the U.S. military has concluded that the defeat in Vietnam was substantially due to our military's mistakes. Add in the atrocities committed by American forces in My Lai and elsewhere, and you have the recipe for disaster.
The American military record speaks for itself. Since World War II, the U.S. military, in spite of the trillions spent and thousands of lives lost, has not had a clear-cut victory in any major conflict.
Some still maintain that the Vietnam War was a worthy cause.
No, it wasn't.
Vietnam, like Korea, was a proxy war that pitted the U.S. against the Soviets at first.
We fought in these far-flung places so that we, rather than the Soviets, could exploit these countries.
At the same time we were fighting totalitarian communism in Asia, we were supporting totalitarian dictatorships throughout the world.
The hypocrisy did not go unnoticed by many in this country or others abroad.
In the end, the dreaded communists won.
Did they treat the South Vietnamese people well? No, they didn't.
But, when two million people died in Cambodia under Pol Pot, it wasn't the Americans who came to their rescue, but the communist Vietnamese army that saved the day.
After the USSR imploded in 1989, China became the last major communist country. Naturally, we get most of our goods from China that are manufactured by ridiculously cheap labor.
If we truly detested communists, why do we import so much from them, which ends up supporting their regimes?
Since at least the 1940s, the GOP has been the most strident anti-communist political party.
Ironically, due to the interference of the Russians and their despotic leader, Vladimir Putin,
we have the former KGB operative's hand-picked president, a Republican, in the White House today.
Rank-and-file Republicans do not care that former Soviets rigged our election. In fact, they are grateful to Putin that Hillary Clinton lost.
That's how far we have fallen from the days of the Vietnam War.
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