The Vietnam War and other assorted things.

This is not exactly the correct place to put this discussion, but SUB seems to want to discuss the Vietnam war and other later developments in some depth and it is just cluttering up the thread he is posting to at the present.
This is a very lightly used forum so I do not think we will be in anyone's way here.
.
I do find discussing the Vietnam war interesting.

So I have moved SUB's last three posts here and invite anyone who is interested to join in.
Try to not get too heated up



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Posted by SUB

posted December 31, 2015 08:31 PM

France's actions in "French Indochina" as it was known were pure colonial exploitation.
It has been said that the Vietnam war was the last war waged by the USA on purely altruistic grounds: "to stop the spread of communism."
Ya right.

I believe it is our moral duty to disobey unjust laws- serving colonial exploitation, expropriation and murder is not ok.



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Posted by SUB
December 31, 2015
I know the propoganda in McCarthy era USA tried to shape American patriotism in a perverse way.

BUT the USA had no valid reasons to go into France's failing conflict:
Did you know the Gulf of Tonkin incident was bull$hit

Some veterans have a hard time telling their children what they did in wars~ especially if it involves lots of civilian deaths//


From The American Conservative.
http://www.theamericanconserva...-a-war-on-civilians/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by SUB
posted January 01

Dominoes: Vietnamese shaking off foreign exploitation obviously led to the Iranians ousting their (sic) shah -
America installed Saddam next door to stop more dominoes falling.... But then Bin Laden, Allende and the Sandanistas messed it all up.

Obviously They didn't bomb hard enough 'cause now we have ISIS.

Right.



American Chickenhawks like Dubya are amongst the vilest humans on earth.

Those who refused to take part in illegal immoral wars on ethical grounds are the heroes-

They are following the moral compass those drafting the Geneva Convention told us we must navigate by.

Following orders is NOT an excuse, Tilly.



Razzing galt about his alleged non participation in the deadliest Neo colonial apparatus is off topic.


galt's behaviour on this forum is objectionable enough- Certainly would be juicier were he a war criminal/criminal against humanity-

Carry on Smile

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tilly,

Tilly:
Many of us find j. galt to be irksome, but going on about his alleged non service with American death squads and their support apparatus clutters said thread at length.

While I find the Eskimo abduction theory to be fascinating, the star and stripe festooned balloon of militarism really needed to be popped.

Regards,
Harald.

Hi SUB

quote:

Originally posted by SUB

posted December 31, 2015 08:31 PM

I believe it is our moral duty to disobey unjust laws- serving colonial exploitation, expropriation and murder is not ok.

That is fine, but Conscription was not and is not illegal.
Which laws required people to serving colonial exploitation, expropriation and murder.
I never saw any of these laws

quote:

Some veterans have a hard time telling their children what they did in wars~ especially if it involves lots of civilian deaths

I have no doubt that a lot of people who does something that involves lots of civilian deaths would have a hard time explaining it to their children. But some wouldn't
I do not know anyone who falls into the category of killing lots of civilians but I am sure there would be some.

Tell you a true story,
I was taking my discharge at the end of my enlistment in the Air Force and there was another fellow my age in the INS shop next to ours and he was taking his discharge too.
However after being discharged from the Air Force he was going to join the Marines. When I asked him why he was joining the Marines, his answer was;
"I just have to kill someone"

The Marine Corp is certainly the right place to be if you want to kill someone- or be killed.
However, as the Marines were Using the F4 Phantom aircraft the same as the Air Force was, I would not be surprised if he ended up fixing Phantoms for the Marines instead of for the Air Force and was never able to kill someone

That American aggression in the former French colony was illegal under international law is very clear:

International law Edit
Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter prohibits war that is not to maintain or restore international peace (Article 42) or undertaken in self-defense (Article 51). According to Richard Falk, "If the US Government had abided by international law, the dreadful experience of the Vietnam War would not have occurred."

That the Vietnamese struggled for generations to free themselves of French tyranny and exploitation is also clear.
Unfortunate that the USA claiming to be the land of the free should seek to discourage others from obtaining freedom, but indeed time and again capitalism's champion sought to keep people enslaved.
Reagan's "freedom fighters" are another fine example//

Preparing the Sgrnge Utility Bus (SUB) for her cross Canada WVO mission in 2001 was quite an experience-
A junky bum was helping:
He had volunteered for service in Vietnam because the propaganda of the time made out like the Viet Cong were coming to Boston to kill his mother-
What threat the Vietnamese were to America was never properly explained however and he hated his native country so much for what it did that he left it forever-
He had two Purple Hearts and some other hardware too.
Guess the medics were quick with the morphine, and he was stuck with that habit.

The place I found to work on this project was in an old heavy duty logging shop on the west coast of Vancouver Island, leased by North Vietnamese war veteran as a salal processing facility.
The North vietnamese are wonderful people.
That Ho Chih Minh took his plight to the proceedings leading up to the treaty of Versailles in1919 illustrates how dedicated he was to freeing his people:
You owe it to yourself to read the bit I posted on that.

Hi SUB,

quote:

Originally posted by SUB:
Tilly:
Many of us find j. galt to be irksome, but going on about his alleged non service with American death squads and their support apparatus clutters said thread at length.

Non service with American Death squads you say!!
Wow, none of the people I ever talked to who had been drafted ever told me about the Death Squads.
I can assure you that I was never offered a spot in a death squad.
I think you are thinking of a different war or a different side or both

I did volunteer to run down a trail on base late one night and see if I could see mines laying along the trail in the moonlight. You do silly things when you are young sometimes. I did not see the mines. I think they were blanks because none of them blew up.

In the future I will be very brief when I chide John for not fulfilling his military obligation to his country and I will only do it at the end of relevant information I have posted to the Anthropological global warming thread.

Hi SUB,

quote:

Originally posted by SUB:
The place I found to work on this project was in an old heavy duty logging shop on the west coast of Vancouver Island, leased by North Vietnamese war veteran as a salal processing facility.
The North vietnamese are wonderful people.

I once hosted a German Girl high school exchange student from the former East Germany and she was a lovely little girl.
I told her that she was from the "EVIL Germany" and that annoyed her
I think of her as my Number 3 daughter (who is not mentioned in my will.}

I could not get over her very fluent English and yet when she got on the phone and talked to her parents it was rapid fire German. I could not understand how her tongue did not get tied in knots.
Just this week my wife visited her and her husband in Germany.

Even New Zealanders are nice people, they just talk funny

Tilly-
You worked on aircraft- you cannot be ignorant of the cargoes & weaponry delivered by air in that conflict~

Almost all the civilian deaths in the illegal American actions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were caused by the cowardly and illegal bomb/napalm/agent orange air drops.

Way to go Tilly-
How many innocent civilians did you help kill?

Why'd you do it? What did vietnam do to your country?

http://thevietnamwar.info/how-...-in-the-vietnam-war/

Cowards-
Go clean up your mess//

From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. The bombings were part of the U.S. Secret War in Laos to support the Royal Lao Government against the Pathet Lao and to interdict traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The bombings destroyed many villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao civilians during the nine-year period.

Up to a third of the bombs dropped did not explode, leaving Laos contaminated with vast quantities of unexploded ordnance (UXO). Over 20,000 people have been killed or injured by UXO in Laos since the bombing ceased. The wounds of war are not only felt in Laos. When the Americans withdrew from Laos in 1973, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the country, and many of them ultimately resettled in the United States.


Regions in Laos that were bombed are highlighted in red and yellow.

Here are some other startling facts about the U.S. bombing of Laos and its tragic aftermath:

Over 270 million cluster bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War (210 million more bombs than were dropped on Iraq in 1991, 1998 and 2006 combined); up to 80 million did not detonate.
Nearly 40 years on, less than 1% of these munitions have been destroyed.More than half of all confirmed cluster munitions casualties in the world have occurred in Laos.
Each year there continue to be over 100 new casualties in Laos. Close to 60% of the accidents result in death, and 40% of the victims are children.
Between 1995 and 2013, the U.S. contributed on average $3.2M per year for UXO clearance in Laos; the U.S. spent $13.3M per day (in 2013 dollars) for nine years bombing Laos.
The U.S. spent as much in three days bombing Laos ($51M, in 2010 dollars) than it spent for clean up over 16 years ($51M).

http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/

Hi SUB,

quote:

Originally posted by SUB:
Tilly-
You worked on aircraft- you cannot be ignorant of the cargoes & weaponry delivered by air in that conflict~

Almost all the civilian deaths in the illegal American actions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were caused by the cowardly and illegal bomb/napalm/agent orange air drops.

Way to go Tilly-
How many innocent civilians did you help kill?

Why'd you do it? What did vietnam do to your country?

http://thevietnamwar.info/how-...-in-the-vietnam-war/

This is a thread about the Vietnam war and other associated things.
If you want to post personal attacks about me, I suggest you start another thread.

An Interesting Fact

Did you know that France used captured WWII Japanese aircraft in their attempt to maintain control of Indochina at the end of WWII.

Did you ever wonder why France was given a zone of occupation in Berlin?

Some Interesting Facts about Canada's Involvement in the Vietnam War

Canadian industry exported military supplies and raw materials useful in their manufacture, including ammunition, napalm and Agent Orange ,to the United States, as trade between the two countries carried on unhindered.

500 firms sold $2.5 billion of war materials (ammunition, napalm, aircraft engines and explosives) to the Pentagon.
Another $10 billion in food, beverages, berets and boots for the troops was exported to the U.S., as well as nickel, copper, lead, brass and oil for shell casings, wiring, plate armour and military transport. In Canada unemployment fell to record low levels of 3.9%

A good war seems to help everyone, even the countries pretending to be neutral

We know that the Vietnamese struggled for decades to free themselves of French totalitarian colonialism- and we know that Ho Chih Minh turned to the "communists" after his rejection by France and the USA at the treaty of Versailles in 1919.

So what were these Laotian "communists?" Why did Laos serve to be bombed so heavily?


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...A_activities_in_Laos

Here's what Team America was supporting in Vietnam~
Go Team! Peasants deserve to suffer!
Stop the dominoes//

According to Gabriel Kolko about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diệm were killed between 1955 and 1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed.[80] At the end of 1959, Diệm was able to entirely control each family and the communists had to suffer their "darkest period" in their history. The number of membership declined by two thirds and had almost no power in countryside of South Vietnam.[81]

Diệm 's repression extended beyond communists to anti-communist dissidents and anti-corruption whistleblowers. In 1956, after the "Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign", Diệm issued Ordinance No.6 which placed anyone who was considered threat to the state and public order in jail or house arrest.[82]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngô_Đình_Diệm

Vietnam Wars
(The prequel)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War

Canadian Political support for the Vietnam War

In Canada, Diefenbaker's Conservative Party supported the U.S. policy in Vietnam. His external affairs secretary stating in 1962 that "any action the U.S. has taken has been in a measure of defence against communist action."

In 1965, Paul Martin spoke for the Pearson (Liberal) government, stating that "the American forces were in their right in answering those attacks against them and South Vietnam as provided by section 51 of the United Nations Charter"

The Canadian ICC contingent twice offered legitimation for U.S. troop intervention and air war over North Vietnam; it furnished the U.S. with strategic intelligence about the location of enemy troop movements; and it acted as messengers by relaying threats issued from the American military.
One Canadian retired military officer once stated that he was "bloody ashamed of some of the things I was required to do."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tilly,

Canada Legitimizes the Vietnam War

Critical to validating U.S. military intervention during these years were the claims of threatened or actual military "infiltration" from the north into the south.
It was primarily the Canadian delegation that formulated the 1962 Special Report to the Co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference on Indo-China that was used to justify U.S. allegations of "internal aggression" by north Vietnam.

Canada supported the claim that Vietnam was divided into two sovereign states.
This enabled the U.S. to deny that the conflict was of a civil nature to be settled by Vietnamese and not by an American "police action".

Canada's third ICC commissioner in Vietnam, Bruce Williams, concluded from his instructions that Canada's main concern was not the "fulfillment of the Geneva Agreements per se, but the maintenance of peace in Southeast Asia as a method of thwarting Communist ascendancy in the area."

Wars help everyone who does not happen to die
Even the "noble" Canadians

The meddlesome military misadventures of the Unbridled States of Hysteria were involved in Korea and SE-Asia, and in dozens of other places since then. The reasons are well documented in the film Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki, a Canada/France/UK 2005 documentary about the military–industrial complex that runs the USSA. https://youtu.be/o-X-PEjZhus
"Fighting Communism" was a jihad with a religious excuse just as much as the ongoing muslim conquest of the world uses Islam as it's religious excuse. None of the wars they've promulgated since WW2 have been morally justified. I objected to fighting in their dirty little wars to make Saigon and Seoul safe for KFC and McDs, while wasting billions to make things explode. I agreed with Ho Chi Minh, and could see that his vision was the best path for Vietnam and all of SE-Asia. Ho was never a realistic threat to the USofA, and didn't profess any Hitler-like dreams of conquering the world. Ho wanted Vietnam to become a republican democracy patterned after the US Constitution, and asked the USofA for help to that end, but the MIC government rebuffed him and supported France in Indochina instead.

I chose a path of university study that guaranteed me a critical skills exemption from military service. Like thousands of others with critical skills, I didn't have to 'dodge the draft' to be in Canada, the US company I worked for sent me there. Nonetheless, if I hadn't been exempt from military service, I would have been a Conscientious Objector and would have 'draft dodged' to Canada, like so many other true patriot Americans who showed the courage to refuse to serve the MIC masters. I never saw a reason to go back, became a Canadian citizen, and served in the Canadian Forces with pride. Leaving the USSA was the smartest move I ever made, I'm just glad I got out when I did. The USSA has become the communist/socialist country they warned us about in school.

Lieberalism is a social disease.

quote:

“Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded,” says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.” “Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.”

Once they were warriors...

Hi John,

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
Liberalism is a social disease.

Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.

Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas and programs such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, and international cooperation"

That is an interesting viewpoint John.
You do not believe in the right of freedom of speech or freedom of the press or the free market system or Civil rights or Democracy or separation of Church and State or international cooperation.

I guess the USA is probably not the best choice of a place for you to live

Hi John,
You seem confused.
You point us to a film that you say is a good explanation of how the Military Industrial complex was responsible for the Vietnam War and then tell us how you agreed with Ho Chi Minh and then you make the incredible statement that Liberalism is a social disease.

Everything you are supporting is actually Liberal.

HINT: All you need to do is look at the leaders of the Military Industrial Complex to realize they have Nothing to do with Liberalism

EDIT
Hi John,
I see you have added a little more to your post

quote:

“Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded,” says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, “The Liberal Mind:

Hmmm... I did look up Lyle Rossiter and found this;

"Lyle Rossiter is a forensic psychiatrist who has done a great deal of work examining the liberal mind,...The presupposition for his research is: “My political views are so obviously correct that anyone who doesn’t accept them must be mentally ill;”
in other words, he presupposes a right-wing political outlook and then tries to explain why other people do not accept this truth by mental illness:"

Do you think Ho Chi Minh would be considered "right wing"

Wake Up John, You ARE A Left Wing Liberal
Welcome to the club

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tilly,

US Air Force Bases in Thailand During the Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War, about 80% of all USAF air strikes over North Vietnam originated from air bases in Thailand. At its peak in 1969 more airmen were serving in Thailand than were serving in South Vietnam.

Background History

Throughout the 1950s, Laos had been embroiled in civil war, and by the early 1960s, the conflict was threatening to spread to Thailand. Major fighting broke out in December 1960 and spread far enough to cause casualties among Thai civilians living along the Mekong River.

Thailand was a constitutional monarchy and traditionally maintained a pro-western stance in foreign affairs. The fighting in Laos was of great concern to the Thai government. The government feared that Laos would fall to the communists, the "Domino Theory" would place the entire region, including Thailand, in jeopardy.
Northeast Thailand housed a community of Vietnamese mixed with Chinese. Attempts by North Vietnamese communists to organize the Vietnamese in Thailand were dealt with strongly by the Thai government.

The official American military presence in Thailand started in April 1961 when an advance party of the USAF 6010th Tactical (TAC) Group arrived at Don Muang (Bangkok) at the request of the Royal Thai government to establish an aircraft warning system.
Also in April 1961, a small detachment of F-102 "Delta Daggers" were sent to Don Muang to bolster the defense capabilities of the Royal Thai Air Force. For the next several years, a minimum of four F-102 interceptors were kept on alert at Don Muang.

The Royal Thai Government began flying reconnaissance missions over Laos on 19 December 1960 with some RT-33 photo jets.
United States Pacific Command (CINCPAC) ordered American technicians to assist the Royal Thai Air Force in processing and analyzing the film.
On 19 January 1961, PACAF had identified 25 airfields, 49 communications routes, and 19 urban targets. A few weeks later, HQ USAF authorized the release of these photographs to the governments of Laos and Thailand.

On 23 March 1961 Pathet Lao anti-aircraft artillery opened fire on an American C-47 as it flew over the eastern portion of the Plaines des Jarres, shooting the plane down.
It was one of the first USAF aircraft shot down over Indochina, and marked the beginning of combat action by the USAF from bases in Thailand

Location of US Air Force Bases in Thailand