The new Vietnam war

@Confucius

thank you so very much for taking the time to clarify your position.
but i think we are in a fundamental disagreement.
and here is why:

1.manning approached wikileaks.not the other way around.
2.is manning a traitor or patriot? i guess it depends on the perspective.
but manning was quite clear his reasons behind revealing those documents and none of those reasons were of being naive' or subverted by a third party.

when you consider the oath of military responsibility,an i oath i took over 25 years ago,the line that stands out is "to protect from enemies both foreign and domestic".
could those documents be seen as subverting the american people?
and if so,would that not make revealing those documents a patriotic act?

again,perspective and i guess we disagree.

conversely, if we use your premise then we would have to view this man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
as a traitor.
now the 70,000 plus documents HE revealed exposed the gulf of tonkin AND extremely sensitive data concerning the vietnam war.i would go as far to say that without this mans courage (yes..courage) to expose the lies of our government,vietnam may have lasted for a much longer time.ellisberg fascillitated the beginning of the end of the vietnam war

the documents manning revealed just left the american government red faced and embarrassed but nothing of strategic value.ellisberg on the other hand revealed much MUCH more.

traitor or patriot? by your definition:traitor and a far worse one than manning.

and on that we disagree.

what we agree on is that governments lie.
we are in unison on this point but we diverge on how to deal with the situation.

you suggest to work within the bounds of journalism or becoming a politician.
now who is being the naive one?
this implies that the 4th estate is in perfect functioning order and that politicians are informed on all matters.

i submit that neither is the case.
a corporate run new media which engages mainly in sensationalism and hyperbolic opinion rhetoric and a legislature that is mostly subserviant to their financial backers( basically wall street) are not the institutions to tackle and uncover government malfeasance and outright lies.

they have been corrupted.see:iraq war

so i find it disturbing when the government hi-jacks 200 ap reporters emails and phone records.

or when a low level private reveals low level ambassador documents.

or my government's justice department prosecutes SIX people under the espionage act but not ONE indictment concerning wall street.

the message is clear:we are the US government.fuck with us and we will fuck you up.citizen or non-citizen.
there will be no journalism.
there will be no leaking of anything.
sit down and shut up.

or we will ruin you.

government by the people for the people right?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Sure , but expressing interest in something doesn't assume philosophical support. I find The Crusades, Pogroms and the Vietnam war interesting too. It's healthy to take an interest in things.

I'm even interested in self-righteous drive-by commenters who like to dissect phrases to to generate angst.

Actually, no I take that back, I'm no longer interested in that. It's a topic that's been too thoroughly explored. ;-|

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Hearts And Minds, vietnam, war, napalm, friendly fire' to 'Hearts And Minds, vietnam, war, napalm, friendly fire, yay jets, drawers' - edited by calvados

Another potential error here, is that war is typically (excluding the Barbary and Vietnam wars) declared by Congress. However, this shows which President was in office when war was declared.

I've made homemade napalm similar to this except we took a whole lot of styrofoam and dissolved it into gasoline 5 gallon bucket.

kept dissolving it until it wouldn't dissolve anymore.


Then a buddy of mine that flies a homemade ultralight loaded it up, and flew over the field, he's retired air force and has degree in electronics engineering, and built the timer device and did all the fine tuning solder work on the detonator and man it was the best 4th of july homemade napalm burn ever!

hehe, we used the napalm goop and filled small bottles that would eject from the 5 gallon bucket and it looked like a mini napalm spread just like from some vietnam war movie.

needless to say homemade explosions and pyrotechnics are fun

want to fill an entire block with thick white smoke? but it also smells like cotton candy

coke can, cut top off, mix half sugar, half potassium nitrate (aka salt peter sold over the counter at any drug store) mix or shake it together, then just light with lighter.

will fill a block with thick white smoke

>> ^oritteropo:

What do you mean by "people like you"? Who are you lumping me in with? How does it affect you, personally, if politicians in a far off land make decisions that neither of us would agree with in our homelands?
Please either mark your other profile comment as private or edit it to remove my comment or delete it, I didn't want my comment public or I would not have ticked the private box.
>> ^coolhund:
>> ^oritteropo:
Have you ever studied the French Revolution? Ron Paul's policies didn't go so well for Turgot, and haven't for anyone else who has tried them since.
I guess since neither of us are U.S. based we can always sit back and watch the spectacle from afar, eating popcorn, no matter what they try
Looks like you have studied the french revolution, but not what Ron Paul actually wants to do, or rather will be able to do.
And yes I guess its easy to sit back and eat popcorn for people like you.



Why does it have to affect me personally? I mean it affects me, but not directly (thankfully I dont live in one of those countries where it would), though there is no denying that the US has a huge influence on my country aswell. I can think around the next corner. I know how decisions in foreign policy of a superpower affect people on the whole world. You can see it every day. You want to tell me that it doesnt affect the whole world how the US has treated the middle east for the last 5+ decades? Do you really think they hate the US and their supporters because they are "free"? Do you think they wont forget that the US and other western countries supported the "Israelis" all the way where they are today? What would you do if someone took a good chunk of your property and just give it someone else? And a few decades later all you have left is only a spot for you to sleep and defecate on, because everything else has been taken by those, and you are treated like criminals by them and the majority of the world, because they control media in said superpower and you dont. Who would you blame for that? Only the one taking your land or also the one who allowed them to take it and continue to support them?
Or are you hiding behind your hypocrite ethics and moral by saying "thats not an excuse"?

The Vietnam war, based on lies, the attack on Iraq 2003, based on lies, etc, etc, etc, didnt affect the world??? It didnt affect me? How can you think that? Do you really think other regimes dont look at the USA and think to themselves, if they are the biggest hypocrites on this earth, why cant we be? There are enough examples for that, even in Europe. European governments suddenly made as bad and audacious decisions in foreign and internal policies and were inspired by the sudden and open showing of totalitarianism. Some even follow the US like they are their lapdogs. That doesnt affect me or anyone in the world?

Sorry, but if you dont realize how a superpower like the US acting with such massive and audacious hypocrisy, for every human on this earth with an IQ higher than 50 to see, then I have nothing else to say.

"Their drills were bloodless battles, their battles were bloody drills"

What raised a smile from me about this video was the "checkerboard" formation, all I can say is that it speaks volumes from a bird's eye viewpoint in that Rome learned it's lesson from Hannibal Barca on August 2nd, 216 BC

Trivial fact:- More Roman soldiers died in one day at Cannae than American soldiers in the ENTIRE Vietnam war.

^Upvoted^

According to his biography by Michael Eric Dyson, ML King considered himself a Marxist, but not a Communist. He is usually described as a democratic socialist. He believed the US was on the wrong side of the Vietnam war and that the US should've been on the side of the North Vietnamese. He did think there should be radical wealth distribution in the US.

>> ^vaire2ube:

murray rothbard wrote those parts of the newsletters, or someone who thought like him.
In a 1963 article, Rothbard wrote that "the Negro Revolution has some elements that a libertarian must favor, others that he must oppose. Thus, the libertarian opposes compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also opposes compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs. According to Rothbard biographer Justin Raimondo, Rothbard considered Malcolm X to be a "great black leader” and Martin Luther King to be favored by whites because he “was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution." Rothbard also compared Lyndon B. Johnson's use of troops to crush urban rioters in 1968 after King's assassination to Johnson's use of American troops in the Vietnam War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

now, who does that sound like? The newsletter or ron paul? and was murray convinced enough of his own rightness that he used paul to get his true feelings out...
and rothbard dies in 1995, just in time for ron paul to be harassed non-stop about these things with no real recourse...


If I understand you--you are saying the Dr. Paul didn't know that these things were being said in a newsletter that had his name on it.
Okay.
Then he wasn't paying attention to something that he really should have been paying attention to. Not a glowing endorsement of his leadership abilities.

murray rothbard wrote those parts of the newsletters, or someone who thought like him.

In a 1963 article, Rothbard wrote that "the Negro Revolution has some elements that a libertarian must favor, others that he must oppose. Thus, the libertarian opposes compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also opposes compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs. According to Rothbard biographer Justin Raimondo, Rothbard considered Malcolm X to be a "great black leader” and Martin Luther King to be favored by whites because he “was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution." Rothbard also compared Lyndon B. Johnson's use of troops to crush urban rioters in 1968 after King's assassination to Johnson's use of American troops in the Vietnam War.

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


now, who does that sound like? The newsletter or ron paul? and was murray convinced enough of his own rightness that he used paul to get his true feelings out...

and rothbard dies in 1995, just in time for ron paul to be harassed non-stop about these things with no real recourse...

*promote

MoJo: "Lennon recorded this anti-Vietnam War song with the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir in 1971. With the official end to the American war effort in Iraq, and with the holiday homecoming of servicemembers, the song takes on a whole new meaning this year."

1) I'm not going to contest that. I am not knowledgeable in the Vietnam war. It's also 8 million years ago, so it doesn't really apply anymore.
2) Yes and no. You have some 20~30k troops in europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments#Europe) They shouldn't be there. As for your socialism remark, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita the socialistic states of europe, scandinavia, are the highest gdp per capita. How do you figure that? Magic?
3) You're not free to leave if for whatever reason the department of homeland security deems you a threat, which means they can abduct you and torture you and even have you assassinated, EVEN THOUGH you're an american citizen. In the last 10 years it seems to me that the US have given up more freedoms that most countries have. As a freedom loving american, don't you hate the patriot act? I mean, really? I can't understand why americans who are otherwise so proud of their freedoms would willingly, some even lovingly, give up their freedom for a perceived sense of security.
>> ^quantumushroom:

1) The left-wing textbook on the Vietnam War always ends right before the communist genocides.
2) Europe should be paying for its own defense, except thanks to socialism it can't even pay to keep the lights on.
3) America is evil? Here you're free to leave, which in itself is more than one can say for red china, which will promptly gobble up the rest of the world as America's military mistakenly retreats under President Paul.


>> ^gwiz665:
America is a force for evil in this world.

1) The left-wing textbook on the Vietnam War always ends right before the communist genocides.

2) Europe should be paying for its own defense, except thanks to socialism it can't even pay to keep the lights on.

3) America is evil? Here you're free to leave, which in itself is more than one can say for red china, which will promptly gobble up the rest of the world as America's military mistakenly retreats under President Paul.





>> ^gwiz665:

America is a force for evil in this world.

@enoch

Whoa there partner, you might want to re-read what I posted above. Let me restate myself in more specific terms to avoid confusion.

My exact criticism is that if you're going to criticize anyone for being dishonest about history, you should do it in a very earnest way so as not to create a self defeating argument.

@quantumushroom makes a valid point. Saying that, specifically, the American military killed 4 million Southeast Asians IS an over-generalization. According to The National Archives, roughly 58,000 American military personnel died in the Vietnam War. It wouldn't be fair to say "Look through the eyes of truth. 1960-1975, South Vietnamese military kills 58,000 Americans."

On another note, here's another source that confirms the 58,000~ I quoted above. I've spent 20 minutes now trying to find any credible record of the 4 million dead (the closest I came was 3.9 million total dead but that also included the deaths of French, Australian, New Zealand, South Vietnam, Korean, and American Forces which account for roughly 410,000 of the original figure).

So the problem is tri-fold here. The American military is not solely responsible for the 3.9 million deaths that happened during the occupation of Vietnam from 1960-1975. Furthermore, 3.9 can be assumed to be an inflated figure since it's likely safe to say that American forces were not assassinating allies and their own squad members en mass. Finally, again, if you're going to attack someone (or some group) for being dishonest, you yourself had better get your facts straight and not just gloss over the unpleasant details.

p.s. Learn how to use a fucking paragraph enoch.