The Tet Offensive

[Rich]

>> Time to go away for a while it seems...<<

I suppose that's the only thing to do. I imagine they'd eventually get tired of seeing which one of them hates America the most.

[Michael Tee]

<<And it doesn't strike you as sad?>>

Horatio at the Bridge
(excerpt)

Then up spake brave Horatio
The captain at the gate:
"To every man upon this earth
"Death cometh soon or late;

"and how can man die better
"than facing fearful odds
"for the ashes of his fathers
"and the temples of  his gods?"

In answer to your question:  no, I don't think it's sad.  It's mournful, heroic and magnificent.  Their story will be told for 2,000 years.  These men and women in black pyjamas and rubber-tire sandals faced up to the best-equipped army in the world; faced torture, execution, rape, mutilation, the torture and murders of their families and the destruction of their homes by invaders with lower morals and values than the snakes of the earth; and in the end, they won an unprecedented victory.  It's one of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit ever recorded in all of history, and all you can think of is how SAD it is?  plane, I feel sorry for you.  If you can't appreciate a victory like that, what are you getting out of being born a human being?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Vietnamese were certainly persistent. What they ended up with after the war was hardly any sort of admirable government, its chief virtue being that is was 100% Vietnamese in lieu of the colonial and neocolonial governments that preceded it.

If Vietnam had become another Taiwan, Singapore, S. Korea or even Hong Kong, that would have been more deservng of the sacrifice and struggle of its people. 

[Michael Tee]

So what?  Look at the even more heroic sacrifices made by the Russian people in WWII, only to end up with a lower standard of living than the defeated Germans.

In life, and especially in war, the consequences of our actions can't be foretold.  Sometimes a situation (occupation, invasion) becomes so intolerable that people have to strike out against it, whatever the cost. The immediate goal is often simple:  Death to the Invaders! and all operations are directed to that end.  For a person to hang back from the struggle on the grounds that he or she has no guarantees of the type of society that will exist after the aggressors have been driven off is to miss the tide of history.  They will die anyway, after a lifetime of misery and humiliation, lived on their knees, but their gift of life on this earth will have been misspent or totally wasted.

I would have loved to see the Vietnamese, after driving out the French and then the Amerikkkans, develop an ideal communist society, like Cuba or at least a prosperous and dynamically growing society like China, but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way.  That's too bad, but it doesn't take away a single thing from the heroism and victory of their struggle, and it doesn't vitiate even one of their heroic deaths.

[_JS]

>> Time to go away for a while it seems...<<

I suppose that's the only thing to do. I imagine they'd eventually get tired of seeing which one of them hates America the most.

Y'all are forgetting a few things.

1. Mike is not a citizen of the United States. Why you expect him to salute everything USA is a little surprising to me.

2. Wars are rarely black and white, friend and enemy, good versus evil. We might wish that they were, but often times both sides have good cases for their struggles and poor arguments as well. Wars come with atrocities, death, loss of limbs, and often many indescribable horrors. They are often fought by a mixed bag of people, some are gung-ho, others want to be anywhere else, many are scared kids between 18 and 22.

3. Not everyone who serves is a hero or a great person. Some people just could not function anywhere else in society but the armed forces. There are wife abusers, thieves, rapists, loan sharks, and some of the worst human beings you'd never want to meet in the military. On the other hand, there are some really great people as well. The truth is that any of them may do something very heroic on the spur of the moment - not for their country, God, or the President - but typically for their fellow soldiers in the field.

I disagree with Mike. Many of the soldiers aren't gung-ho, Rambo assholes. Most are just people doing their job. They are a foreign policy tool. I had a grandfather fight on both sides of World War II. One fought the Soviets on ther Eastern Front for Germany. The other fought at Okinawa for the United States. The former was a draftee, the latter a volunteer.

I never knew my German Grandfather (Opa). He died when my mom was only eleven. He returned from the war a different man. He became an alcoholic and was abusive to his wife and children. He only talked about the war to my mom's uncle, who was in France for the war. He witnessed many horrors in Eastern Europe and took much of it to his grave - a haunted and shattered individual.

He was no Nazi. Indeed, my grandmother voted SPD her entire life (with one notable exception where she didn't vote). They were extremely poor and Nazi conscription made no room for conscientious objection (just ask the Seventh Day Adventists who went to the Death Camps).

So, I don't think most American Soldiers are fascists or anything of the sort. They are mostly young people who are used as tools to implement American foreign policy. It is that foreign policy that has been most troubling.

[Plane]

<<And it doesn't strike you as sad?>>

Horatio at the Bridge
(excerpt)

Then up spake brave Horatio
The captain at the gate:
"To every man upon this earth
"Death cometh soon or late;

"and how can man die better
"than facing fearful odds
"for the ashes of his fathers
"and the temples of  his gods?"

In answer to your question:  no, I don't think it's sad.  It's mournful, heroic and magnificent.  Their story will be told for 2,000 years.  These men and women in black pyjamas and rubber-tire sandals faced up to the best-equipped army in the world; faced torture, execution, rape, mutilation, the torture and murders of their families and the destruction of their homes by invaders with lower morals and values than the snakes of the earth; and in the end, they won an unprecedented victory.  It's one of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit ever recorded in all of history, and all you can think of is how SAD it is?  plane, I feel sorry for you.  If you can't appreciate a victory like that, what are you getting out of being born a human being?

And not a word of that fails to apply to the common soldier on both sides , the sad part is that they were betrayed into support of Communism which promises an ideal that it has no hope of approaching.
Communism has no hope because it rejects Democracy , that alone dooms it to either weakness or totalitarianism.
Rejection of capitolism on the other had is rejection of truth .

What great things could have been done with the energy of that great number of people we will never know , they were harnessed by Communism and Communism itself has come to naught.

[Michael Tee]

<<What great things could have been done with the energy of that great number of people we will never know , they were harnessed by Communism and Communism itself has come to naught.>>

Harnessed to communism.  Right there, in that one phrase, your racism and bigotry surfaces for all the world to see.  They weren't draft animals, plane, and no one "harnessed" them to anything.  You'd never claim that GI's were "harnessed" to anything - - they're mostly white, obviously capable of exercising free will and choose to fight for their country.  The Vietnamese, dumb peasants and farmers that they are, are "harnessed" to communism.  What a fucking crock; your whole outlook is poisoned by sour grapes and racism.  You'll never admit that a tremendous victory was won - - the victors weren't victors, they were draft animals "harnessed" to communism, not victors in the sense that white people are victors.

Communism has come to naught?  Tell that to the Chinese - - they will be ruling the world in this century, and it was communism that freed them from the bonds of European and American colonialism.  Tell it to the Russians, who were dragged out of the Middle Ages by Communism.  Tell it to the Cubans, who today live in an egalitarian society with decent housing, education and medical care available to all citizens, thanks to communism.

[_JS]

<<And it doesn't strike you as sad?>>

Horatio at the Bridge
(excerpt)

Then up spake brave Horatio
The captain at the gate:
"To every man upon this earth
"Death cometh soon or late;

"and how can man die better
"than facing fearful odds
"for the ashes of his fathers
"and the temples of  his gods?"

In answer to your question:  no, I don't think it's sad.  It's mournful, heroic and magnificent.  Their story will be told for 2,000 years.  These men and women in black pyjamas and rubber-tire sandals faced up to the best-equipped army in the world; faced torture, execution, rape, mutilation, the torture and murders of their families and the destruction of their homes by invaders with lower morals and values than the snakes of the earth; and in the end, they won an unprecedented victory.  It's one of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit ever recorded in all of history, and all you can think of is how SAD it is?  plane, I feel sorry for you.  If you can't appreciate a victory like that, what are you getting out of being born a human being?

And not a word of that fails to apply to the common soldier on both sides , the sad part is that they were betrayed into support of Communism which promises an ideal that it has no hope of approaching.
Communism has no hope because it rejects Democracy , that alone dooms it to either weakness or totalitarianism.
Rejection of capitolism on the other had is rejection of truth .

What great things could have been done with the energy of that great number of people we will never know , they were harnessed by Communism and Communism itself has come to naught.

But in fairness Plane, what was the other side offering?

Were we offering democracy?

We didn't in South Korea. We hadn't in South Vietnam. Taiwan was a dictatorship. Even today Japan's elections on a national level are a bit of a joke. The local elections were always known to be the ones that weren't rigged. Indonesia was our puppet tyrant known for his horrors.

It was a battle between two totalitarian regimes. The people respected Ho Chi Minh but they held folks like Diem in complete contempt. We didn't think enough of democracy to allow the Vietnamese to vote. So I wouldn't pin all the anti-democracy on the communists. We were no better in that regard.

Seriously, was it really a choice of authoritarianism versus democracy? It sure doesn't look like it.

[Michael Tee]

<<I disagree with Mike. Many of the soldiers aren't gung-ho, Rambo assholes. Most are just people doing their job. They are a foreign policy tool. . . . So, I don't think most American Soldiers are fascists or anything of the sort. They are mostly young people who are used as tools to implement American foreign policy.>>

To me, if they're instruments or agents of an aggressive foreign policy made by ass-holes, then they're aggressors and ass-holes too.  They can't divorce themselves that neatly from what they're doing.  They have some limited measure of free will and they're not totally unconscious.  They know right from wrong.

[yellow_crane]

>> Time to go away for a while it seems...<<

I suppose that's the only thing to do. I imagine they'd eventually get tired of seeing which one of them hates America the most.

]


I see the both of you taking great umbrage with others, inferring that a lack of patriotism on the part of others is to blame for your impossilbe gasping.

The reason you both are frustrated and exasperated is that you have no wiring for dissention in questions of the military, and by extension, the nation the military defends.

It makes a good military that they are all one-minded.

The Professor is US military, and Rich is a wind-up Fox News blitzkreiger.

You would both gain in perspective by going civilian, and live in a land where thinking without cue cards is actually permitted and is acceptable.

Greatly lowers the blood pressure to have options.

[The_Professor]

>> Time to go away for a while it seems...<<

I suppose that's the only thing to do. I imagine they'd eventually get tired of seeing which one of them hates America the most.

]


I see the both of you taking great umbrage with others, inferring that a lack of patriotism on the part of others is to blame for your impossilbe gasping.

The reason you both are frustrated and exasperated is that you have no wiring for dissention in questions of the military, and by extension, the nation the military defends.

It makes a good military that they are all one-minded.

The Professor is US military, and Rich is a wind-up Fox News blitzkreiger.

You would both gain in perspective by going civilian, and live in a land where thinking without cue cards is actually permitted and is acceptable.

Greatly lowers the blood pressure to have options.

Actually, I lived in the civilian sector for many years as a programmer and systems analyst and now I am a tenured professor at the University of Georgia. Are not those civilian? Only one of my colleagues at work is ex-military and he was here briefly as Mr Perceptive, I believe (or something to that effect). In fact, quite surprisingly, many at my institution are very liberal. Surprising because we are in the Bible Belt.

However, you ARE correct that I shouldn't let it get to me. Non-patriots are filth and so why should it bother me? I will endeavor to do so.

As far as cue cards, I am known locally as a rebel rouser and maverick. I rarely suck up to my superiors or play "games". After all, if you're good, really good, you can get away with it. As only one example, I wear sport shirts and slacks to work and see no reason to dress up. I don't at church; why should it do it at work? I'm the guy who tapes down people's phone receivers. Cue cards? Ha?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I'm the guy who tapes down people's phone receivers.

Hunh? what does that mean?

====================================
I rather resent the fact that you think that anyone that doesn't follow Juniorbush lock-step into his misbegotten war, and anyone who saw that Vietnam was the wrong war, in the wrong place, for the wrong reasons, was somehow "filth" for his sense of vision. I don't thnk that nuking the North Vietnamese would have been an example of all that is good and noble about my country, but the opposite.

[Plane]

<<What great things could have been done with the energy of that great number of people we will never know , they were harnessed by Communism and Communism itself has come to naught.>>

Harnessed to communism.  Right there, in that one phrase, your racism and bigotry surfaces for all the world to see.  They weren't draft animals, plane, and no one "harnessed" them to anything.  You'd never claim that GI's were "harnessed" to anything - - they're mostly white, obviously capable of exercising free will and choose to fight for their country.  The Vietnamese, dumb peasants and farmers that they are, are "harnessed" to communism.  What a fucking crock; your whole outlook is poisoned by sour grapes and racism.  You'll never admit that a tremendous victory was won - - the victors weren't victors, they were draft animals "harnessed" to communism, not victors in the sense that white people are victors.

Communism has come to naught?  Tell that to the Chinese - - they will be ruling the world in this century, and it was communism that freed them from the bonds of European and American colonialism.  Tell it to the Russians, who were dragged out of the Middle Ages by Communism.  Tell it to the Cubans, who today live in an egalitarian society with decent housing, education and medical care available to all citizens, thanks to communism.

They may have been noble people MT , but they were chained to their trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Was a choice given?
Was there a Canada for Vietnam pacifists to get to?
What Pyrric victory has ever been worse?
After nearly thirty years of fighting ,
http://www.vietnamtourism.com/
What do they have with all that fighting that they couldn't have had without it?
In what way are they better off than Tahiti?

China has begun to abandon communism and has for just that reason begun to cease starving , North Korea has achevied the apex of Communistic society , if you don't think so ask any one of them , theyalternate starvation with living on our charity .

Communism does not work it is a cruel lie , it was good to fight it in Vietnam , it was good to fight it all around the world and prevent its growth to engulf us all. If that had happened there would be many unmentionable famines in places that no have a serious obesity problem.

[Michael Tee]

<<They may have been noble people MT , but they were chained to their trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail.>>

I never heard that before, plane, but it's just more of your sour grapes and racism showing through.  First of all, I don't believe it.  Secondly, if it ever happened, it had to have been infrequently.  Maybe it happened to a few deserters or a penal battalion and suddenly it's ""They were chained to their trucks."  Those trucks took weeks to negotiate the Ho Chi Minh trail, you really think every driver was chained to his truck?  Get real.  What's your rationalization for the millions of VC fighters that weren't chained to anything?  I guess they were "high on drugs" or some other bullshit.

<<Was there a Canada for Vietnam pacifists to get to?>>

Yes, there was a Cambodia and a Laos and a Thailand.  There was a population of 80 million Vietnamese they could have tried to blend into and disappear.  They could have joined the puppet army, stood a much better chance of survival, protected by air-power, something the Vietnamese people themselves never had.

<<What do they have with all that fighting that they couldn't have had without it?>>

They have their independence and their pride.  "We took on the mightiest power on the face of the earth and we whipped their ass.  They couldn't break us.  We totally humiliated them for all the world to see."
If you think of the human condition as a struggle for freedom, as the perpetual fight for man's freedom  against the forces of evil, this was the struggle that defines us all - - they took on the powers of Lucifer and they prevailed.  They're the real deal, plane - - they're everything  that phony Amerikkka pretends to be and isn't.

<<China has begun to abandon communism and has for just that reason begun to cease starving . . . >>

China could never be what it is today without communism.  Communism and communists liberated China from Amerikkka and Amerikkka's puppet rulers.   The extent to which communism still runs the state, and the extent to which communism may run the future state remains to be seen.

<<Communism does not work it is a cruel lie , it was good to fight it in Vietnam , it was good to fight it all around the world and prevent its growth to engulf us all. If that had happened there would be many unmentionable famines in places that no have a serious obesity problem.>>

You are very seriously deluded about famine - - there was famine in China for thousands of years before Communism and there is famine all over the world in many places, which is not due to communism at all but to global capitalism and Amerikkkan business interests. 

<<North Korea has achevied the apex of Communistic society , if you don't think so ask any one of them , theyalternate starvation with living on our charity .>>

North Korea has atomic weapons and when they turn their mind to more practical goals they will achieve those too.  North Korea may not be communism but the cult of personality.  Nobody knows much about North Korea and I'm not going to get into it.  It's whatever you want to make of it right now and the fascists and their propaganda machine sure want to make it a disaster area.  Who knows?

[Michael Tee]

<<I rather resent the fact that you think that anyone that doesn't follow Juniorbush lock-step into his misbegotten war, and anyone who saw that Vietnam was the wrong war, in the wrong place, for the wrong reasons, was somehow "filth" for his sense of vision.>>

I made one of my fastest hires ever in the early 70s - - a young lady from California who had worked in a big university there.  I asked her how come she'd moved up here and she said it was because her boy-friend was escaping from the draft.  I hired her on the spot and it worked out pretty well.  I knew I was dealing with intelligent and highly principled people.