Treatment Of Vietnam Veterans By the Public
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linop90 — 13 years ago(November 04, 2012 02:31 AM)
Now its gone too much the other way. America has this creepy military worship.
Where people go up and thank anyone in a uniform Seems the country is one goosestep away from being a 2 bit military dictatorship, especially when the tright is in power.
Eat the Neocons. -
michaeluk26 — 13 years ago(January 09, 2013 05:17 AM)
Yeah we should have let our allies be wiped off the map and let the war progress another 4 years and have deaths in the millions. Good call
A waste is you mentioning Grenada, and Panama.
If you dont like it here then go see how free you are somewhere else. Just sayin
Yeah Vietnam was a mistake. Hindsight is 20/20. It was a different time then in the cold war and the threat to the world was nuclear war. We thought the Vietnamese were puppets of China wanting to expand communism when in fact them and China HATE each other. The Vietnamese were fighting for nationalism, not communism
Haters gonna hate -
EastCoastMariner — 12 years ago(October 05, 2013 06:59 AM)
Only the Pacific, you say?
Germany declared war on the U.S. on 11 December 1941 and was sinking American merchant ships before and especially after this declaration, let alone murdering millions in Europe. The assertion you're making that we only had business in one theater is extremely unintelligent. Wherever you got your education, you should ask for a refund. -
linop90 — 12 years ago(October 05, 2013 07:38 AM)
Yeah so?
How many innocent people has Amerika killed all over the globe?
All the right wing dictators propped up and regime changes.
Yes Hitler declared war on the us, he was an idiot, without his stupid decisions we would have won.
How many merchaant ships were sunk i wonder? they were probably supplying England, which they were warned not to do.
piss off you yid.
Eat the Neocons. -
rj-27 — 10 years ago(July 13, 2015 11:21 AM)
I'll give you my take on it, for whatever it's worth.
I turned 18 in 1971, and believe you me, I was terrified of the notion of being drafted to go fight in a theater 15,000 miles away for a reason no one in authority could make clear - other than we have to stop the communists.
The communists had already taken over the two largest countries on the planet. Why should we go die in a little place called Vietnam?
As has been noted several places elsewhere on this board, media coverage of Vietnam was far more detailed than ever before and in living color. The horrors of war became all too apparent and at what benefit? And this, just referring only to what it was doing to our young men.
Later it was revealed, this was a war by attrition. Whole villages of old men, women and children were being wiped out. If not by napalm, then up close with an M-16. Many soldiers like Kovic openly admitted their role in following orders to "when in doubt, kill.". Meaning, murder.
The public, already dubious about the merits of something our fearless leaders (who made sure none of their sons went there) continually assured us was only a temporary "conflict" to keep the "dominoes" from falling, finally had enough.
People in those times actually had a conscience about the ethics of destroying another people's whole country for a dubious cause. And so they expressed it as vociferously as they could and sometimes without complete understanding and mercy. But it got the attention, finally, of the administration. Especially when students became the targets of overzealous riot squads and the National Guard.
It was one thing to kill people and destroy villages thousands of miles away, but now students were dying by American guns.
And so, many soldiers were reviled as criminal because following orders is never an excuse for murder. If it were, that argument would have won the day at Nuremberg.
Fortunately for me, my draft status changed just prior to my birthday. While I personally never witnessed a Vietnam vet being abused, I can certainly understand the motivation behind it.
Now, people say "protest the war but support the troops". The pendulum has swung so far the other way, perhaps as an over correction to the reviling of troops 40 years ago, that every man and woman in fatigues gets congratulated and thanked for their "sacrifice" for our country, whether or not they've actually done any "sacrificing". Worship of the military is now standard procedure and anything to the contrary is grounds for suspicion of being unpatriotic at best, or treasonous at worst.
I much prefer it the way it was when this country had a conscience.
Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. H.L. Mencken -
narva24 — 10 years ago(February 08, 2016 10:38 PM)
It's funny though - in those days, we're talking draftees. In other words, plenty of people who did not want to partake in the murder schemes of the US (which was largely in competition with the USSR on who could kill off more people). Demonizing those soldiers was a horrible thing to do - considering that they were largely enslaved by the state. They should have been pitied more than anything else.
The soldiers of the today, however.. let's just say the whole 'support the troops' rhetoric should have been applied to Vietnam vets - while the spitting and swearing should have been left for today's troops - who are volunteers/professionals - who should know better than to partake in the numerous war crimes USA commits today against the world and humanity.