Vietnam
"We should have seen it as
the end of the colonial era in Southeast Asia, which it really was.
But instead, we saw it in Cold War terms, and we saw it as a defeat
for the free world that was related to the rise of China.
And that was a total misreading of a pivotal event,
which cost us very dearly." Donald P Gregg letter to the New York Times 9/24/2017
"The point is that Vietnam wasn’t an aberration. It was simply the most violent case
of the norm when countries refused to submit to U.S. domination. That is what the overthrow of Mossadegh
in Iran was about in 1953. It’s what the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala was about in 1954.
It’s what the assassination of Lumumba in Congo was about in 1961.
It’s what the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba was about in 1961.
It’s what the invasion of the Dominican Republic was about in 1965.
It’s what the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile was about in 1973.
Can you see the advantage that context conveys for understanding? That’s precisely what Burns will not do."
Robert Freeman.
(about the Pentagon Papers) " To Summarize seven
thousand pages in a few words, the United States controlled and
incited the war in Vietnam - and it was a single war, not a series
of wars against different regimes -- for nearly twenty-five years.
And its motives had always been those of geopolitical empire, never
the democratic well-being of Vietnamese citizens." from
This Machine Kills Secrets by Andy Greenberg
[The secret memos in the Pentagon Papers] " were saying again and again,
when talking about why we were in Vietnam, and why we were interested in Southeast
Asia -- they were talking about tin, rubber, and oil ... about the resources of
Southeast Asia." Howard Zinn
Is Democracy Melting ?
Having learned nothing from the various wars based on ideology or lies such as Vietnam, Iraq, and too many others to list, we are
now, after 18 years, still in Afghanistan and practically every other countries.
The forever war is necessary to keep the American war economy functioning, so with the collapse of the Soviet Union we needed to
find another enemy. Now it is an abstraction: terrorism which tends to be associated with Muslims, but that doesn't matter so long as
there is justification for the forever war.
There should be a lesson from the total destruction of Nazi Germany. Fascism will not be tolerated by the rest of the world, and
continuing on this path, the US population may find it is in a similar condition to that of Syria, with a government that has
absolutely no concern for its citizens, militarizes the police, and is prepared to use weapons of mass destruction here at home. Our
leadership seemingly knows only military solutions to solve problems.
The rest of the world is now sufficiently nuclear armed that we too can be obliterated along with everyone else.
If that doesn't happen, there is also climate destruction that can do us in.
LInks
Douglas Valentine
Pentagon Papers
George C. Herring
Bibliography
To Start a War, How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq by Robert Draper
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers - Daniel Ellsberg (youtube video - about an hour.)
The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam: Douglas Valentine
Vietnam : the history of an unwinnable war, 1945-1975 by John Prados
Peace in Vietnam: A New Approach in Southeast Asia (AFSC)
Kill anything that Moves, the real war in Vietnam: Nick Turse
Pentagon Papers
The Best and the Brightest: David Halberstam
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