Why do some still defend the Vietnam War?

[Sandpiper]

After hearing the criticism from wingnuts that Kerry should apologize for telling the truth about what was happening in SE Asia, it begs the question.

Over 30 years after the fact, why are there still some people who can't come to terms with the fact that Vietnam was the most abominable war our nation has ever fought?

Our leaders at the time had no honorable intentions whatsoever in Vietnam as MLK astutely pointed out. Vietnam was, at best, arrogant imperialism, and at worst bordering on genocidal.

We invaded a country, poisoned it with noxious chemicals, burned its villages, killed over 2 million of its citizens, and all for what? To force a way of life on them that they never asked for, the American way.

I know that as Americans we're raised to believe that our causes are always just and we're always the good guys, but I think it's time for us as a nation to accept the fact that the United States was the one wearing the black hat in Vietnam.

[Old and In the Way]

1. They hate Kerry for helping to change the public's acceptance of the

war.

So I guess, logically, they think it was a grand idea. I wonder how more more people would have had to die before they were willing to say "no mas"?

[CaTeacher]

2. Unfortunately, lots of people

have accepted the meme that fighting communism was good.

Well--we were wrong to fight against the communists. They never meant us any harm. We never should have been in Vietnam, we should not have built up arms against the Soviet Union, and we should not have helped the rebel Contras fight against the Sandinista government.

In all of those issues--our government did the WRONG thing--and in each instance Kerry was on the correct side. He knew that those good people were not our enemies. He knew that stockpiling arms is not the way to have peace. Kerry is going to be a great president.

Now--the same people that wanted to "fight the commies" are wanting to "kill the arabs". We have to fight against these people--fight for sanity.

[passthecorn]

3. Playing both sides of the issue

That's the problem for both sides on this issue. Everyone wants to have it both ways:

Repubs: We didn't commit atrocities, Vietnam was right, but Kerry is no hero, because he said he committed atrocities and didn't he say that Vietnam was wrong. How can he be a hero from an unjust war?

Dems: John Kerry is a hero and we should elect based on his noble service of volunteering to serve in an unjust war where he committed atrocities.

Passthecorn: Can we talk about taxes, health care, and ending the debacle of Iraq?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Exactly right!

America has yet to come to terms with what we did in SE Asia and are now repeating in Iraq.

[murielm99]

4. It also cuts to the core of some people's identity.

They came of age during that time, and as a soldier.

They believed in their country, and in the military. They mistake it for personal criticism.

We have to be sure they understand that we honor and respect their service.

[annabanana]

6. It'll be a really hard sell..

Many felt personally betrayed and still do.

[Inland]

5. To eliminate the concept that there could be a war

that is contrary to the national interest and shouldn't be fought--because as long as the US people accept that possibility, they will never buy Bushi's war in Iraq or tne next one.

When people say that Iraq is another Vietnam, they say--good, the only thing wrong with the Vietnam war is that we didn't keep at it longer, have more die, and kill more until we, well, whatever it was we were doing.

Or at the very least, Bush is looking to reinforce the notion that even if a war sucks, you shouldn't say so. Because that makes people feel bad and less patriotic. So the real problem with a bad war is the hippies who acknowledged the truth.

[DarkPhenyx]

7. Because some still believe it was justified.

Hell, Ann Coulter, and some of her brain dead readers, think Joe McCarthy was an American hero. GO figure.

[lottie244]

16. They don't really believe it was justified. Just can't admit it was wrong

and they were wrong for supporting it.

[DarkPhenyx]

21. Not always the case.

I'm sure there are many who are that way, but there are people who do honestly believe that we should have been there doing what we did.

[Webster Green]

8. They are arrogant, racist assholes....

Just like the folks who think we were justified to attack and invade Iraq.

The Vets who still think the Vietnam war was justified are the ones who took pleasure in killing "gooks". It was their finest hour. They regret not being able to kill more "gooks" than they did. They think the war could have been won with a little more firepower, agent orange, and napalm, maybe a couple of nukes.

They are arrogant, racist, and stupid assholes, that's all.

[Brotherjohn]

9. Recently released records (including audiotapes of LBJ and staff)...

... have made it abundantly clear that the rationale for getting us into the war (the Gulf of Tonkin incident) was knowingly fabricated. We hyped a minor attack on a ship of ours, lied about that ship being involved in offensive activity in Viet Nam, aggressively antagonized the enemy into attack again, and then lied about that attack being unprovoked (in fact, the second attack most likely did not even happen).

In light of today's WMD fiasco, you'd think that would register.

As I argued in another thread today, we should pose the following question to those who say Kerry was unpatriotic for questioning our actions in Viet Nam:
"Do you also think it is unpatriotic to call attention to our torture, rape and murder (yes, all three occurred; see the records) of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other military prisoners?"

[maxsolomon]

19. remember the 'maine'!

mexican war: rationale faked
spanish war: rationale faked
vietnam war: rationale faked
iraq 2 war: rationale faked

[silverlib]

10. It is very difficult...

for those that served in Viet Nam and risked there lives to be able to decider the difference between decenters saying their actions were a waste and that they were used as patsies for a mistaken and deranged government. Either one is difficult to swallow. Because of technology (i.e.Internet and email), the protesters of this war (unlike the protesters of Viet Nam, who also had no media support) are able to better to get the information to the soldiers that they are supporting them while, at the same time, protesting the war and the government's actions.

I wish I knew the secret of how some Viet Nam war vets can handle this so much better than others.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Ignorance, fear, and/or "Patriotism"

Americans love to believe that we are on the side of the angels. They reject any hint that things may not be as they were (are) taught.
The very idea that their fathers or grandfathers were participating in an immoral war against an enemy, described by LBJ as "yellow dwarves with switchblades", and lost is anathema to them. They would much rather write off the atrocities, the many, many, atrocities committed by our "heroic" troops as isolated incidents.

Added to that, the disbelief that the "We're Number One" country in the world could be defeated by a poorly equipped, ragtag, bunch of non-whites is terrifying to them.

It also raises questions about every aspect of our foreign policy from Vietnam to Iraq.

Better to wave the flag and sing along with boobya with a few choruses of "God Bless "Murika" and get back to NASCAR.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[skygazer]

14. I never thought Vietnam was a good idea

That said, it is very difficult for some people to accept that their service, or their relatives or friends, was for a bad cause. This is one reason why some vets still hold such bitterness against the war protesters and, especially the vets who ended up protesting the war. People want to believe that their country does the right thing - that's one reason why people keep grasping at straws to justify our presence in Iraq - because the alternative - to admit we made an error that has cost a lot of people their lives - is too difficult for them to face.

They also fear the implications inherent in accepting that our government is capable of such a glaring error.

[info being]

15. These people never met a war they didn't like

I've noticed that too...I never realized that so many people still think Vietnam was a just war that was worth the cost.

[coalition_unwilling]

17. Reagan called Vietnam "A Noble Cause"

Causes can be noble and still horribly mis-guided. In this case, the noble cause was the 'containment of Communism', the product of Truman's administration. The fact is that the Truman Doctrine, for the most part, "worked". When it didn't work, as in Vietnam, it wasn't that the Doctrine (and the Noble Cause) was wrong per se, but that it was over-applied to a situation that didn't warrant it.

That is, during the late 50's and early 60's, Vietnam was touted as the first domino in S.E. Asia that would tumble as a way of manufacturing consent by the American Public to the invasion\occupation of South Vietnam. The reality is that Vietnam was more a home-grown nationalist resistance movement that first fought the French colonialists and then the American occupiers.

If there is to be a reckoning by Americans on Vietnam, this mis-application of the policy of containment needs to be a part of it, imo.

[K-W]

18. Reagan is why, its all about the conservative movement.

Its about revising history and reality. Ignoring the facts to create a fantasy world.

[coalition_unwilling]

20. Getting into Vietnam was a bi-partisan move

There was a bi-partisan consensus on the desirability of 'containment' as a foreign policy; the mis-application of that policy to Vietnam was also bi-partisan in nature.

I won't make any apologies for Reagan, but when he called Vietnam "A Noble Cause" he should have added an ellipses after 'Cause' (as in, "A Noble Cause . . . but horribly mis-guided").

[K-W]

22. Right, but we arent talking about getting into vietnam.

We are talking about post vietnam, when it was very clearly a failure and a bad idea, how people still today defend it.

And it comes from the movement conservatives. Some people would rather pretend Vietnam wasnt a mistake than deal with the fact that the US could make such a huge mistake and what it means about our leaders and foriegn policy.

[coalition_unwilling]

23. Point well taken, but . . .

the Title of this post was "Why do some still Defend the Vietnam War?"

I'll just repeat my first post -- a cause can both be noble and still be horribly mis-guided.

(I once had a long-running argument with an engineer at McDonell Douglas who had served in the Navy in Vietnam and who insisted we could have "won" if we had just invaded North Vietnam, or bombed it more intensively. Of course, every time I would ask him what "winning" meant, he would be hard-pressed to answer. Along those line, to the best of my knowledge, no one in the media ever asked Reagan what he meant by "Noble Cause".)

[Sandpiper]

25. The fruits of the Truman Doctrine still live with us today

The Truman Doctrine, more than anything else, is what ushered in the era of perpetual war for perpetual peace.

The national security state and the military industrial complex are the two most noxious fruits of this poisonous policy.

The Truman Doctrine was also the rationale behind the U.S. propping up all sorts of ruthless, barbaric, and dictatorial regimes (Pinnochet, Batista, Duvalier, Diem, the Shah, the Taliban, Hussein) for the mere fact that they were non communist.

The Truman Doctrine was a myopic policy that cared almost entirely for stopping the spread of communism, and very little for encouraging the spread of democracy, respect for human rights, and respect for the rule of law.

[coalition_unwilling]

26. But at least, on its own terms, it worked

Its purpose was to contain the spread of communism and it worked for the most part. I'll grant you that its by-products (under the Law of Unintended Consequences, perhaps) make it something of a mixed foreign-policy blessing.

What seems more astounding to me is that the military-industrial complex survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union (and the end of the Doctrine of Containment) as a self-perpetuating beast. Where, Americans might rightly have asked following the fall of the USSR, is our "peace dividend"?

I would argue that the military-industrial complex came into existence and continues to survive not because of the Truman Doctrine but because it is Keynsian economics writ large.

[K-W]

27. I dont think it worked at all.

First off, I dont know what you are referring to by communism. It sounds to me like you are buying into the cold war myth.

[coalition_unwilling]

29. As Hamlet says, "Words, words, words"

You're right, my nomenclature was sloppy. I probably should have said, rather than 'communism', stopping the expansion of "the pro-Soviet\Chinese Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist failed workers' state model." That model established itself in Cuba and North Korea and, to a lesser extent, in China and Vietnam. But Western Europe stayed firmly in the capitalist-imperialist orbit, as did most of South America, Africa and Asia.

Make no mistake about it, I'm no unabashed supporter of the Truman Doctrine's 'containment policy'; all policies involve nasty compromises, as you have suggested in earlier posts. All I want to suggest is that, on its own terms, the Truman Doctrine succeeded, even with the nasty by-products you've noted.

[peacetalksforall]

24. It's becoming very obvious that the U.S. has been conducting

'corporate' wars whether small and without troops as in Chile instigated by IT & T to Vietnam to Iraq 1 and 2. They told the soldiers and us that we were fighting communists and dictators. Whether the acting Presidents were talked into the wars or whether they were placed there for the purpose of representing the corporations, they all have lived a lie. How could you not support the troops? But some in the military saw the light in Vietnam and some didn't whether then or later.

I don't support any of the military who doesn't see the light and especially those who know the wars are being fought for corporations.

Our past and our present is all about EARTH RESOURCES with some corporations wanting to reign and have turned against the little human ants who get in their way and who create and put on a gigantic pretend show for the human ants along with executive, state, military, and congressional help and by dictating media policy through media corporate partners, plus convincing 'christians and jews' leaders that killing is good for their gain.

[jonnyblitz]

28. I think it's one of the most admirable things Kerry has done

to testify about what was going on over there. he should NEVER shy away from that period in his life when he testified just because the right wingers choose to misrepresent what he was doing. It doesn't make sense that he would want to "give all vets a bad name". what is the point of THAT? Wingnuts don't even think about what they are saying obviously.

[Zhade]

30. Ignorance and nationalism, probably.

Being stewed in the noxious soup of America-first propaganda for one's lifetime can do that to people.

I wish we had the old Kerry now.

[genius]

31. 50,000 + Americans died there and no one wants to say they died for

nothing. In Iraq, they are dying for nothing too.