posted on February 16, 2003 02:27:18 PM new
IN MY OPINION THESE PEOPLE PROTESTING THE WAR ARE ONLY GOING TO CAUSE MORE OF OUR YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN TO DIE. THEIR NON-SUPPORT FOR OUR MILITARY CAN BRING DOWN MORALE AND WORSE CAUSE A COMBAT SOLDIER TO HESITATE.
IN COMBAT HESITATION CAN GET YOU KILLED...
AND NO I DON'T CARE ABOUT A BUNCH OF IRAQI CIVILIANS... JUST THE OUR COALITION FIGHTERS...
OUR MOTTO LAST TIME, SEE NO HANDS IN THE AIR... SHOOT...PROBLEM SOLVED.
posted on February 16, 2003 05:44:48 PM new
Not to sound hard-hearted...but that's their business. Iraq's citizens know their ruler & what he's capable of. One of our biggest problems is that we try to dictate how other countries conduct internal business. In our own history, when folks have been unhappy about the state of things our people rose up themselves to try to change things. We didn't look to other countries to change things going on in our own. And, today, what would our reaction be if other countries began sticking their noses into our business because they didn't like the way things were being run & demanded that we change things "or else"?
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on February 16, 2003 05:56:11 PM new
The military is the messenger. It's the person that puts them to use without provacation that will cause the deaths.
posted on February 16, 2003 07:16:11 PM new
"The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy" referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement." Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin surmised that "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Mr. Tin further advised that General Vo Nguyen Giap (Commanding General of the North Vietnam Army) said the 1968 Tet Offensive was a defeat. Gen. Giap in his book, made the same statement, adding that they were surprised by the news media reporting and the demonstrations in America. Instead of seeking a conditional surrender, they would now hold out because America's resolve was weakening and victory could be theirs.
From 1969 to the end of the war over 20,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war that the United States did not have the resolve to win. If General Giap was accurate in his assessment that North Vietnam was going to seek a conditional surrender at the Paris Peace Conference, but stopped due to the sensationalism of the American news media and the anti-war protests following the 1968 Tet Offensive, it follows that those who participated in these anti-war activities have to share partial responsibility for those 20,000 + Americans deaths.
We won the war on the battlefield but lost it back home on the college campuses and in the city streets"
1stcavmedic.com
Twelvepole, I agree with the above statment. It was true then & true today!!
posted on February 16, 2003 07:36:04 PM new
What happened when we left VietNam? Not much. They are doing fine now. We should never have been there in the first place.Neither should the French.The anti-war movement didn't lose the war.It was un-winable as the French discovered after ..what was it? ...about 60 years there.
posted on February 17, 2003 09:41:18 AM new
Rawbunzel- have you never taken a modern history course ?
The collapse of South Vietnam and the takeover by the communists was an unmitigated human disater. Millions were murdered by the communists or were sent to "re-education" camps to work as slave labor in the rice fields and never heard from again.
Thosands died trying to escape the country.
The human suffering and deprivation going on in Vietnam is unheard of in the history of the country.
posted on February 17, 2003 05:58:33 PM new"The human suffering and deprivation going on in Vietnam is unheard of in the history of the country."
That doesn't matter. The South Vietnamese lost their own war because not enough of them had the will to win it. Our being there only delayed the inevitable at a high cost to us. We should not have been there, and once realized the sooner we left the better. Even though many US lives were lost and many more US casualties were suffered there only would have been more had we continued. Thank God for antiwar activities in this country during that time! The people of Vietnam decided their own fate, and so should the people of the rest of the world. Are we babysitters? Schoolyard monitors? No? Right, we are not in most of the nefarious affairs in the world, but yes, we seem to be if there's something in it for us.
posted on February 17, 2003 07:03:33 PM new
Oops! Sorry I wasn't clear in my post. Yes, I have taken modern history courses.Here is what I was getting at ~not what you took from it.
When we were young and impressionable in the 60's we were told we were fighting in Vietnam to keep the world safe from communism, that if we let them have Vietnam then the rest of asia would follow and then THE WORLD. My point is that none of that happened.The World is not communist.
We left, they fought, a lot died.They now live happily ever after.[well, at least they seem happy to the people that go there to visit, I have no personal knowledge ] A lot less people would be dead today if we had never gone there [or the French] , no Americans and a lot less Vietnamese.
That was my point.
[ edited by rawbunzel on Feb 17, 2003 08:26 PM ]
