Letters to the Editor
Mister Marker
Published Letters: 197 Editor's Choice: 7
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The Truth About Vietnam
[Read the article: "Rambo"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Many say it was not our war, but it was. Clausewitz famously wrote that "war is diplomacy by other means." With that in mind, the United States blew it, and blew it badly, and it didn't blow it in 1965 and it wasn't Johnson.
We blew it in 1919, and it was Woodrow Wilson (the duplicitous bastard) who was culpable. Ho Chi Minh approached Wilson during the making of the Treaty of Versailles and asked if he would use his considerable influence with the French to allow his country (then called "Tonkin") to slip the bonds of colonialism. He showed Wilson Vietnam's (Minh used the ancient name of his homeland and people) Declaration of Independence, modeled on our own, and proudly pointed out that he wished to transform Vietnam into an American-style democracy. Wilson refused, in a blunder that would cost millions of lives over the course of the next 60 years.
And Minh? Instead of becoming the George Washington of Vietnam he was forced to become its Lenin. Only the newly emerging Soviet Union seemed to offer an alternative to Western Imperialism, so Minh went to Moscow.
The decision was made during the Eisenhower Administration to ignore the CIA's reports that Ho was a nationalist first and foremost, and to back the French's betrayal of the timeline to reunify Vietnam under independent rule. When the Viet Minh Army kicked the French Army's ass at Dien Ben Phou, the U.S. stepped in with advisors to "South Vietnam", a wholly illegitimate country. The first Marines to land in Vietnam in 1960 did so precisely as they did in Normandy, from Higgins Boats with guns fixed. It was a literal invasion.
From that point onward the die was cast. There is a chance Kennedy did see the folly and would have gotten us out, but we will of course never know. The point is that while Tonkin, and later Vietnam, was a French colony, we were most responsible for the wars there, and almost 60,000 of our young men and women made the ultimate sacrifice.
One hell of a way to pay our debt to Napoleon and Lafayette.
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Now On the Subject of Personal Responsibility In Times of War
[Read the article: "Rambo"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone who fails to defend their country when it is attacked is a coward and a shirker, unless they are physically incapable of doing so for some reason. Wars of choice - like Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I and Iraq - are another matter entirely.
I too am fed up with the "I was young and confused, I had to go, then when I got there I HAD to kill the enemy because they would kill me" excuse. When Reagan institued draft registration in the early 80s I registered, but reluctantly. I was only 17, but I knew damn well that I could not and would not kill anyone who wasn't either here or damn close (like Alaska or Hawaii). And I wasn't some paragon of virtue, either. I was a horny little fucker just like my friends, full of piss and vinegar. I was raised in a working-class, socially conservative Catholic family. There were big debates around the holiday table over this issue, and I was under a lot of pressure. But I was firm - if the draft came, I would flee. It wasn't just the possibility of killing, but the idea that the draft was essentially slavery. That really chapped my hide.
If I had been of draft age during the Vietnam era I would have thought and done no differently. So please spare me the "you weren't there" platitudes. I "wasn't there" on December 7th, 1941 either, but I know exactly what I would've done: enlisted.
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I Have No Choice But to Be "Invested" In the Struggles of the 60s
[Read the article: What do Reagan and Obama have in common?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why? Because after Jack, Malcolm, Martin and Bobby were murdered I didn't get to live in their country, but the country of their murderers. So yes, I am "invested" in the struggles of the 60s, which are clearly not over.
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@Nulla Sallus
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex: Teens who blossom and bite]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They want to piss you off. Not us, just YOU.
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Ah Yes, "Liquid Sky"
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex: Teens who blossom and bite]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I remember it well: "I'm just a chick from Connecticut, who kills with her cunt." Completely and lovably batshit movie.
Speaking of killer vaginas, there's that segment - shamefully underrated and forgotten - from "Grim Prairie Tales", in which a cowboy helps a woman who seems to be pregnant, then suddenely isn't. She seduces him, they go at it, and at the moment of climax the cowboy shrivels down and is sucked into what Dan Ackroyd once referred to as "that sexual vortex." And all at once the woman again looks like she's expecting.
The narrator intones, "And so she went on, alone again, pregnant as before."
Heh, heh, hehhhhhhh... >;-)
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@SCC
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks. You get it. Apparently, no one else does.