Nobody really knows how many Vietnamese died. Most Americans don’t really care....

[kpete]

Nobody really knows how many Vietnamese died. Most Americans don’t really care.

But 58,000 Americans died in that jungle.

Some of them are still dying.

For nothing.

The war didn’t make America any safer. The war didn’t make Vietnam any safer. The war didn’t end the slaughter. It didn’t stop communism.

Those 58,000 Americans died for nothing.

And here we are.

We’ve been at war, again, for a decade. More. We went into Iraq because they told us we had to, because they told us Iraq had attacked us – I know, I was there. We went into Iraq because we were told that if we didn’t fight them there, we’d have to fight them here. Loud voices back home had been shouting for war and if it wasn’t 911, it would have been something else. We just needed an excuse. In the years since, hundreds of thousands have died, nobody really knows exactly how many. Most Americans don’t care. And we can’t get out. Every night for the last fourteen years, since 911 our TV screens have been filled with the dead and dying, the burning villages, the horrors, the atrocities, the machines of war. And we can’t get out. Our country continues to cut at itself, our streets are filled with protests and riots, cults and militia grow like cancers, we hate and fear our government and our own neighbors. And we can’t get out. Conservative president. Liberal president. Republicans. Democrats. And we can’t get out. Our streets are full of ragged veterans, our VA waiting rooms are filled with shattered soldiers. And we can’t get out.


.......

the rest of this xlnt rant here:
http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/09/dominos.html

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. The urge to be seen as a "Strong Leader" by killing people is bi-partisan.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people. Albert Camus

[janlyn]

2. Wow,powerful writing!

Americans were told to be afraid. And so they were.

If you had to explain the problems with our country, those two sentences would say it all!

[RufusTFirefly]

3. AU Professor Peter Kuznick often talks about our cluelessness re: Vietnamese casualties

When American University History Professor Peter Kuznick asks his students how many Americans died in Vietnam, many of them know: 58,286.
When he asks them how many Jews died in the Holocaust, nearly everyone knows: 6 million.
Yet when he asks them how many Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War, most haven't a clue. Those who take a guess usually grossly underestimate the total.

According to Kuznick, "Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense 1961-68) came into my class and said he accepted the fact that 3.8 million Vietnamese died."

3.8 million deaths.

While I'm not equating the U.S. with Nazi Germany, imagine how horrified we'd be if we learned that modern-day students in Germany had no idea how many Jews were killed by the Nazis. Or even if they guessed and grossly underestimated the total.

[gordianot]

6. For all times the Nazi's are unique in all history.

Nazi Germany instituted planned industrial operated and selected genocide. As for as American killing it is consistent with human history. As a species humans are particularly violent killers.

[RufusTFirefly]

9. I think it is extremely dangerous to consider the Nazis unique.

I'll leave it at that.

[gordianot]

23. I am speaking of industrial methodolgy not numbers.

Rendering human bodies for profit is unique.

[BlindTiresias]

15. Nazis are not unique

Even a cursory examination of history will show several actors that acted in equal scale of methodology in accordance with their own technological limitations and often equal or more zeal for the act of killing.

[Scootaloo]

17. Oh yes, when americans do it it's "just nature"

The germans comforted their consciences by telling themselves the purging of lesser races was "just nature," too.

[BlindTiresias]

22. Good point

The fascists did indeed characterize their violence as merely an extension of a natural order of the strong dominating the weak and the glorification of a strong, violent individualism.

[gordianot]

24. Infecting the native population with small pox infected blankets is no less genocide.

Murder is murder we are a violent species and most humans have the capacity to do that and rationalize after committing such acts.

[ieoeja]

27. Only if genocide was his intent.

The American Indian Agent who did that wasn't trying to kill the natives. He was trying to embezzle money. He was given money for new blankets, used it instead to buy used blankets from a sanitarium, then pocketed the difference.

And the United States put him in jail for it.

His intent towards the natives was not, so far as we know, homicidal, but rather one of depraved indifference.

[GeorgeGist]

30. That's what they all say.

[Adam051188]

4. imagine if you will

A world in which humans had ceased to see themselves as cognitive, introspective creatures and had instead turned to social stimuli and emotional reactivity as outlets for their minds wanderings. The effects of industrialization on the human mind are insidious. The effects of industrialized free market capitalism are inhuman.

[edgineered]

10. it all spins in a circle now

we tell our people they are free, they own property, they enjoy modern life. we don't tell them the brutal way each step has become. Watching Apocalypse Now last night illustrates your point well, using the plantation scenes as an example.

The owners took, bought, connived, to get the rubber plantation started 70 years ago. From the view of the owners, it is theirs and under their rule. Looking at it from the side of the vietnamese they see a foreigners getting rich of the fruits of their land, while probably exploiting local labor. The cycle begins and lives are lost and cultures destroyed and we enjoy tires and elastic and will fight to the death anyone who tries to take my land. Its sick.

[malaise]

5. Same with Iraq

Strength is killing - that is the dominant view of the warmongers and neo-cons.

[Adam051188]

7. idk

I think our owners believe strength is taking what they want much like the elementary school playground bully. The children not targeted at that moment jeer or turn the other way because they are fine for the moment. Bullies never get what they deserve because they know how to utilize social hierarchy in primitive primates and the bullied are small in number.

[malaise]

8. I almost used the same phrase

school yard bully. Remember though that today's bully is often tomorrow's wimp - ask David Cameron.

[Bigmack]

11. Brown people....Americans don't care... nt

[Martin Eden]

12. "Those 58,000 Americans died for nothing."

I agree.

But rightwingers and hawks will continue to insist we would have "won" the Vietnam war if not for all anti-war hippies and lack of support at home.

[Mr.Bill]

13. But they can't tell you

just what it is we would have won.

[Scootaloo]

14. Which is as much nonsense as the hippies themselves claiming to have ended the war

The war ended because the United states lost, andth Vietnamese won. and i find it fascinating that both left and right in this country find it impossible to admit that.

[BlindTiresias]

16. Imperial pride

Westerners are horrified by the prospect that the eastern world may have their number and someday visit upon the west what the west visited upon them for centuries. As a result, you get heated and often vicious denial or reduction of any Asian victory be it the victory of the Vietnamese in liberating their country or the fact we got our asses beat in Korea by a Chinese peasant army. You even see similar reductions against the "less-than-Western" Russians who are characterized as having malfunctioning everything and are so stupid they would easily be beaten by any singular Western army, when history would actually show you that Russia is a graveyard of empires.

[Martin Eden]

26. The Vietnamese People had a crucial factor in their favor:

They were fighting on their home turf for their national existence, and were willing to die for it.

Soldiers in imperial armies are motivated to make it home alive, and in the long run the folks at home get fed up with a long costly war.

[FairWinds]

18. Read Nick Turse's book . .

"Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam"
and tell me that project was not pretty damn close to Nazism.
Especially in the Vietnamese countryside, it was deliberate mass killing.
I am a Vietnam veteran, and as such, must accept some responsibility.
[And actually, the Holocaust was not by any means the largest
genocide in history - that singular distinction goes to
Genghis Khan's conquests.]
There has to be a better way, and that is why I have joined
Veterans For Peace

[DustyJoe]

28. Total Bovine Excrement there

What unit were you in that you had the ROE to 'kill anything that moves' ?

I was in Vietnam Nov 67 thru May 68, fought in both TET battles Feb 68 and May 68 with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. As a Heliborne Assault Reaction force Infantryman.

Our ROE was very close to the ROE today. In any populated area city, hamlet etc. It was only fire if fired upon .. PERIOD. Only in the totally unpopulated areas in the jungle was it considered a 'free fire zone'.

Your Vietnam experience detailing your mass killing whether you were involved or just an REMF hearing scuttlebut is nothing but a propogandic lie. DU is the home to a LOT of Vietnam combat vets. I don't think any ONE of them would agree with the 'naziism' and 'mass killing' claims. Next you'll be stating that hippies spat on you when you came back and called you a baby killer.

You do a disservice to your fellow vets, especially the combat vets to disseminate the prog line of mass murdering US forces in Vietnam.

And yes the Lt. Cally of another Light Infantry Brigade dirtied the names of a lot of Veterans that never fought outside the ROE demanded. But painting them all as nazis and mass murderers is a bit broad brushed.

[chknltl]

19. KnR

This information should be taught in high school level American History classes imo. FWIW, I know Thom Hartmann ghosts through here, I hope he notices this and creates a segment on his show to discuss with his listeners. Thank you for posting this.

[Turbineguy]

20. And blaming some of this

on Ho Chi Minh is strictly forbidden.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

21. Meanwhile, back in reality

Wikipedia states the following:

A detailed demographic study calculated 791,000–1,141,000 war-related Vietnamese deaths, both soldiers and civilians, for all of Vietnam from 1965 to 1975. The study came up with a most likely Vietnamese death toll of 882,000, which included 655,000 adult males (above 15 years of age), 143,000 adult females, and 84,000 children.

So "nobody knows" except for dozens of accurate studies, which broke it down as follows:

164,000 civilians killed by the North Vietnamese. 130 US POWs and 16,000 South Vietnamese POWs executed. (But these are all good guys, according to people here on the DU)

South Vietnam caused 1,500 civilians casualties from relocations, about 30,000 casualties of suspected communists/non-uniformed fighters, 6,000 from shellings of Vietcong positions,... "This totals, from a range of between 16,000 and 167,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam (Diem-era), and 42,000 and 118,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam (post Diem-era), excluding North Vietnamese forces killed by the ARVN in combat."

Rummel estimated that American forces committed around 5,500 democidal killings between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000. (There is a strong belief that this number is much higher though, because it was easier to call a civilian a VC than to admit that they'd shot at the wrong people.)

AFTER the Vietnam war, North Vietnam killed 155,000 refugees trying to flee. Another 165,000 people died in their "reeducation" camps. While anywhere from 50,000 to 250,000 were outright executed. So tack on another 1/2 million dead due to Vietnamese atrocities - which is never spoken about by the anti-American left.


This blogger needs a basic lesson in history.


- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[FairWinds]

25. As one who soldiered in Vietnam . .

I have sought to understand it as best I can.
One thing we know for sure is that the pro-war
side lied about everything.
So why should we believe them now?
[BTW, there were also huge numbers of
war deaths in Laos and Cambodia as well.
And remember when the Khmer Rouge
were our guys?]

[pampango]

29. They were "OTHERS". Iraqis, Syrians & Kurds; Palestinians & Jews. Whether they are killed by us or

by someone else - Syria, ISIS, Nazi Germany or Israel, they don't count for as much as if they were Americans. Their deaths in large numbers hardly ever motivate the US to do something or to stop doing something.