Vietnam: The Anniversary

Vietnam: The Anniversary

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-32343122

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/40th-anniversary-vietnam-war_n_2978032....

Your thoughts on the anniversary and What America Has Learned.

What lasting lesson has the United States learned? No draft. Only send volunteers to die in senseless economic wars.

Looking at the Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Guantanamo and other places I don't see that anything has been learned at all.

The day of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (10 August 1964) I said of President Johnson ... "He'll live to regret this". He did and we did, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution

It is still impossible to believe how poorly fabricated propaganda lies still lead young American gung-hos into war. Are they still looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Or looking for the babies torn from theit incubators in Kuwait?

The classified records were thrown in a blackhole 10-years after.

"Modern War in Theory and Practice" presented by …: https://youtu.be/w0ypxEqYl4c

The operations of unrestricted capitalism lead to perpetual peripheral war. The more the people of the world restrict the mad drive for profit by any means the fewer of these excuses to buy expensive weapons will show up. Honest! Every other means of controlling brushfire wars has been tried, it's time to consign them to the dust bin of history. Stop buying weapons no one now needs new ones!

>2 TLCrawford: That's pretty much it, as far as any learning goes.

>7 DinadansFriend: The Utility of Force makes it clear that pure military force cannot end such conflicts; the only way to resolve them is to add political measures as well. This generally requires the 'superior' force to make deals with the locals, a doctrine that currently is anathaema.

After sucking $4T out from the U.S empty cicada the Southwest Asia tarbaby has feelers on China.

I think that if everyone was roughly equal equipment one has no choice, if looking for "Victory", but to use the political dimension to reduce local conflict. But from the viewpoint of big business, the locals are seldom willing to maximize global profit taking as opposed to raising the local standard of living. Thus a tendency to come up with "Local" leaders for USA (or globalized business) to back, that really don't have much actual local backing.

The increased reliance on air power, even though it can not win any territory, has reduced the commitment needed to go to war. Before leaders had to be willing to take causalities, to see their people die in battle. Today all that is necessary is the willingness to kill the enemy. From Nato's involvement in Libya to Saudi Arabia's roll in Syria and Yemen this seems to be the way warfare is going. Being unwilling to commit the ground power necessary for victory means that these wars are going to drag on for decades.

So we will all be Winston Smith in "1984", having our personal lives controlled by nasty snoops in our neighbourhoods with the additional feature of anonymous drone-death or home-made bombs hanging over us everywhere we go. It was supposed to be better than this, but the need to sell weapons and airplanes,, which are still the USA's principal exports does have such a huge lobby....."WishI could find a good book to live in,
Wish I could find a good book..... :-(

Since NAFTA I was surprised to find we still manufacture some weapons here.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/04/21-fall-of-saigon-southeast-a...

#15 Seriously, 40 years after the fall of Saigon and 24 years after the fall of the Soviet Union the Brookings Institute is still writing about the "Threat of Communism"? Conservatives never stop beating a dead horse do they?

>13 DinadansFriend:. "It was supposed to be better than this"
Reminds of the song written by Roger Waters- The Post War Dream.

hearts and minds (1974)

https://youtu.be/1d2ml82lc7s

It's obvious that Iraq has infiltrated the American psyche more than anything since Vietnam. The news reports of the past few days have highlighted how Bush III is handcuffed by political reasoning and so unaware of the reality of the recent past. More striking is the responses from the Republican candidates all falling over themselves to label that war a mistake given the truth that was present in 2002. Not that Dems are any better at this. The bigger issue or question is, as some here have argued is the cause of wars post WWII. Some have argued all wars all economically driven, the pursuit of profit the main driver. Thus Iraq was about the oil. I wish it were so easy. Look more deeply and we find that power, ego and hatred drive so much of it. Post 9/11 it was easy and natural to lash out, thus the Senate vote in 2003. Washington did not warn us away from all war, just the entanglements of late 18c European despotic infighting. Jefferson took us to war to protect American interests in an area of the world that we have been bogged down in for 60 years. When our leaders lose sight of the national interest and react to their own human frailties , disaster ensues.

Somewhere else the argument runs that war is due to fear, honor, interests and Iraq was due to fear .

>19 chagonz::
The main drive to invade Iraq, to an outsider was simple. It wasn't about the oil, it was even more trivial. Bush I had waged a very tidy destruction of the Iraqi army, and had attacked Iraq in revenge for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But he had stopped short of seizing the enemy capital. Bush II was intent on being a more obvious victor than his father, and launched the second invasion, for his ego. His set of cronies personal and financial could profit by this obvious parade of military might. The truths of 2002 were that if the USA wanted to finish with the Arab tyrant, now was the opportunity.
That invasion had no connection with the regime change in Afghanistan, which had a thin connection to the terrorist attack on the Twin towers. But the action in Afghanistan had relatively little entertainment value compared with the Iraqi war, there wasn't enough air time to be grabbed for the purpose of selling more weapons to the American army.
The concept that "It was easy and natural to lash out", isn't going to create any confidence in the USA as a country where the rules of international agreements have any weight, once the media has inflamed the public, and the Military-Industrials scent the chance to sell new gadgets to the inflamed tax-payer. All the American media, almost everyone that possessed corporate ownership, firmly believed that in 2002 that the WMS were poised ready to strike the USA unless the troops were sent in at once. Since 2002, the evidence has been produced to show that the war was a massive mistake. But no American TV news source was going to believe the reports from Al-Jazeera, or the BBC, that the Iraqis were not a credible threat, which were aired in 2002.
That 2002 stampede has made all the neighbours nervous. Will it be our turn next?
One other thing. Jefferson, president as far as I can find out, had no involvement in the Middle East. The first Barbary War of 1801 was in Algeria, Tunisia, and Western Libya. Do explain.

All correct about the rush to war and the political/media complex support of the effort. My grandson gives more thought to which flavor ice cream he wants than this country did to engaging in a land war in the "grave of civilizations". Re Jefferson, I take a broad view of the Middle East, essentially subbing an ethnic descriptor (Arab) for a geographical (middle east). Thus Jefferson did engage the Muslim pirates and potentates of greater Arabia (my definition) , successfully I might add. So much for the early Republican virtue of small and limited government that he was so much in favor of. But I digress and that is a topic for another thread.
Best wishes , cg

>21 DinadansFriend: "The main drive to invade Iraq, to an outsider was simple. It wasn't about the oil, it was even more trivial. Bush I had waged a very tidy destruction of the Iraqi army, and had attacked Iraq in revenge for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But he had stopped short of seizing the enemy capital. Bush II was intent on being a more obvious victor than his father, and launched the second invasion, for his ego. His set of cronies personal and financial could profit by this obvious parade of military might. The truths of 2002 were that if the USA wanted to finish with the Arab tyrant, now was the opportunity."

I believe Bush II's interest in getting Saddam Hussein was much more personal a matter than that of simple ego. He wanted Hussein because of the attempt to assassinate his father, Bush I, which is an act that influenced the policy of another President, too. Ever wonder why the Clintons and the Bush families are so close, despite all their differences?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/iraq/timeline/062793.htm

I have to disagree. I do not believe that Bush II has the mental stamina to stand up to his Big Oil advisers. When Hussein took power he nationalized "The Iraqi Oil Company" which was in fact owned by six western international oil companies. Almost exactly the same six that received exclusive deals for Iraq's oil as Bush's administration came to an end.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5cecd50f53804109a483f89fe2987cab/napalm-girl-phot...

Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

Kim Phuc, the girl in the photo, after being a poster child for various causes, both Vietnamese and American has been living a relatively quiet life with her husband and two children, in southern Ontario, Canada. I'm glad she's been capable of finding a life that now seems mostly OK.

>26 DinadansFriend: Seven years later:

"Phan Thi Kim Phuc, whose photograph became a symbol of the horrors of the Vietnam war, has had her final skin treatment with a burn specialist, 50 years after her village was struck by napalm."
Guardian, 2022-06-01.

How many Kim Phucs have we since created in massacres in Kigali, Groznyy, Srebrenica, Fallujah, Aleppo, Mariupol etc.? Just to pluck half a dozen cities out of recent news. How many of them will also require half a century of reconstructive and cosmetic surgery?

To specifically answer >1 Urquhart:, the OP, "What America Has Learned", Fallujah at least suggests "not a lot".

>27 Cynfelyn: The truth was laid out for us all by William Tecumseh Sherman :War is hell....And the glory of it is all moonshine." The only excuse for it is to reduce the long term misery the world will suffer. Yes, a solipsistic view, but , a well read one. As, a species, humans havwe taken up this practice, and we should view it as species centred vice, indulged in by Humans and chimpanzees.