Vietnam

America’s Toxic ‘Partnership’ With Vietnam

August 17, 2015 Finian Cunningham, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! usa, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

By Finian Cunningham in Information Clearinghouse - America’s war on Vietnam may have officially ended 40 years ago, but the Southeast Asian country is still battling with the horrific legacy that the US military bequeathed. Yet last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry, while in Hanoi, eulogised about how the two countries are «healing» and forging a new«partnership». Kerry was speaking on the 20th anniversary of «normalising ties» between the US and Vietnam that began in August 1995, more than 20 years after the war’s end. «It took us 20 more years to move from healing to building. Think of what we can accomplish in the 20 years to come», said Kerry. The American diplomat’s blithe account of «healing to building» belies the ongoing horror for some three million Vietnamese who live with the poisonous legacy of US war on that country.

Wars & Protest: Opposition Matters

May 6, 2015 Debra Sweet, , www.worldcantwait.net Resist! Imperialism, Protest, Student Protests, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

It's worth thinking about how imperialist wars start; how they can end up; how opposition develops externally and domestically. Sometimes waging wars make the aggressor less stable. Sometimes they lose legitimacy. A lot depends on what the opposition does. Nick Turse got an opinion into The New York Times last Friday, In Vietnam, Callous Use of Power Led to Years of Civilian Misery: “While to Henry Kissinger and many others, the war's lessons lay primarily in the painful realization of the limits to American power, the pain endured by millions of survivors in Vietnam who lost family, the pain of millions who were wounded, of millions who were killed, of millions driven from their homes into slums and camps reeking of squalor, seem to me to be so much greater.” How many more immoral, unjust, illegitimate wars in our name before we stop the crimes of our government?

Seeds Of Vietnam War 2.O: USAID, NED & Joint Military Exercises

March 25, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! NED, USAID, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

The use of Agent Orange constitutes a war crime with devastating effects on the people in Vietnam not only during the war but even today. The U.S. military knew that its use of Agent Orange would be damaging, but, as an Air Force scientist wrote to Congress, “because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned.” In recent years, however, the U.S. has begun to fund cleanup and treatment programs for Agent Orange victims. The timing of this change in policy comes as the U.S. military has been building a relationship with the Vietnamese military as part of the so-called “Asian Pivot.” Yet this relationship has been impaired by the United States’ failure to properly deal with Agent Orange. Funding for Agent Orange damages is being used to open the door to greater U.S. military involvement and influence in the region, but it will also allow an expansion of U.S. covert operations in Vietnam that set the stage for the U.S. to install a “friendlier” government, if necessary for U.S. hegemony in the region. This funding is coming through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has close ties to the CIA and a long history of covert intelligence and destabilization. Vietnam is experiencing a greater U.S. military presence along with USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, also known for fomenting regime change.

Sleep Well, No Oscar For American Sniper

February 24, 2015 Mike Hastie, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Movies, Propaganda, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

I slept pretty well last night when I found out that the film, "American Sniper" did not win best picture at the Academy Awards. I also believe that 58,000 American soldiers who were killed in Vietnam also slept well. "By every standard, Fallujah was a crime." Chomsky also had this to say about the Vietnam War during the same interview. "The entire Vietnam War was an atrocity. The My Lai Massacre was just an afterthought." This is the great truth that has great silence, as far as what really happened in Vietnam and Iraq. This is what the American people cannot face, because it would dismantle their belief system. Whenever the truth threatens one's core beliefs, there is an urgent instinct to deny its reality. Clint Eastwood's film, is a continuous betrayal of all I felt when I came back from Vietnam. Lying is the most powerful weapon in war. This is the internal hemorrhage that almost killed me. It so often reminds me of the words of Malcolm X: "The only thing worse than death is betrayal." More Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in Vietnam. Many of my friends did not die in Vietnam, but as a result of being there. A very close vet friend of mine hung himself in a motel room several years ago.

Letter Campaign For 50th Anniversary Of Vietnam War

February 4, 2015 Staff, www.vietnamfulldisclosure.org Organize! Propaganda, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the landing of U.S. ground troops in Da Nang, Vietnam. Many consider this to be the beginning of the American War in Vietnam. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war the Pentagon is undertaking a ten-year, $65-million campaign to rewrite and whitewash the history of the war in Southeast Asia. In response, Veterans for Peace has announced the Vietnam War Full Disclosure project to offer a more truthful history of the war. As part of the project, Veterans for Peace is asking all who were affected, directly or indirectly, by the war to write letters addressed to “The Wall” (the Vietnam War Memorial) describing their experiences and sharing their grief over its devastating consequences. The project welcomes letters from both soldiers and civilians.

BREAKING: CODEPINK Attempts Citizen’s Arrest Of Kissinger

January 29, 2015 Medea Benjamin and Alli McCracken, www.codepink.org Resist! Chile, Vietnam, War Criminal, Wars and Militarism

Washington, DC –– On Thursday, January 29, CODEPINK protesters spoke out during Senate Armed Services Committee hearing attempting to perform a citizens’ arrest on Henry Kissinger. Holding handcuffs and large signs that read: KISSINGER: WAR CRIMINAL and ARREST KISSINGER FOR WAR CRIMES, activists read aloud a citizens’ arrest [pasted below]. In response, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Committee, called the human rights activists “lowlife scum” and said it was “the most disgraceful and despicable demonstration he had ever seen.” “CODEPINK is really proud of our action in the Senate today, speaking out on behalf of the people of Indochina, China, East Timor and peace-loving people everywhere,” said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, “Henry Kissinger is responsible for the deaths of millions. He’s a murderer, a liar, a crook, and a thug, and should be tried at the Hague.”

Selling ‘Peace Groups’ On US-Led Wars

December 27, 2014 Margaret Sarfehjooy and Coleen Rowley, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Peace, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

“War is peace” double-speak has become commonplace these days. And, the more astute foreign policy journalists and commentators are beginning to realize the extent of how “liberal interventionists” work in sync with neocon warhawks to produce and sustain a perpetual state of U.S. war. More and more “peace and social justice” groups are even being twisted into “democracy promotion,” U.S. militarism style. But rarely do we get a window to see as clearly into how this Orwellian transformation occurs as with the “Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria” (CISPOS) based in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, a spin-off of “Friends for a Nonviolent World” (FNVW), steering its Quaker-inspired founding in nonviolence to promote speakers and essayists with strong ties to the violent uprising to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in a war that has already taken some 200,000 lives.

Vietnam Veteran Explains His Conversion To ‘Peacenik’ Protester

November 29, 2014 Beth Brogan, www.bangordailynews.com Organize! Peace, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

In 1998, Hendrick returned to Vietnam, joining a bike trip with about 100 U.S. military veterans and Viet Cong guerillas who had fought on opposing sides during the war. He pedaled from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — beside a blind veteran who rode on the back of a tandem bicycle, with paraplegic and quadriplegic veterans navigating hand bicycles, and many others equally scarred from their years in battle. Every night, they gathered to share their experiences. Most night the stories brought tears. “It was an incredibly emotional experience,” Hendrick said. “A real irrefutable introduction to the humanity of it all, to the brotherhood that we all shared. I saw the damage, first-person, that had been done to so many people — Americans and Vietnamese alike. I feel like I really did find my humanity during that experience.

US Government Sanitizes Vietnam War History

October 17, 2014 Marjorie Cohn, www.truth-out.org Educate! mental health, Veterans, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

For many years after the Vietnam War, we enjoyed the "Vietnam syndrome," in which US presidents hesitated to launch substantial military attacks on other countries. They feared intense opposition akin to the powerful movement that helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. But in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush declared, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!" With George W. Bush's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama's drone wars in seven Muslim-majority countries and his escalating wars in Iraq and Syria, we have apparently moved beyond the Vietnam syndrome. By planting disinformation in the public realm, the government has built support for its recent wars, as it did with Vietnam.

Exalted War Criminal Makes The Mass Media Rounds

September 14, 2014 Peter Hart , www.fair.org Educate! Argentina, Cambodia, Chile, Media, Vietnam, War crimes, War Criminal

The former national security adviser seems to be everywhere lately. He made an appearance at an event with other former secretaries of state, leading Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (9/3/14) to call him "the most celebrated foreign-policy strategist of our time," and to note that of those gathered, "the wisest, as usual, was Kissinger." Of course, a clear vision of Kissinger would help too. The record is well-documented, from backing a coup in Chile ("We will not let Chile go down the drain") to supporting the dirty war in Argentina to Indonesia's bloody campaign in East Timor. Kissinger is most closely associated with the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. Of the latter, he famously delivered this order: "A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves." Credible estimates of the number of people killed as a result of this order range as high as 800,000.

Important Lessons From The Vietnam Anti-War Movement

August 19, 2014 Jane McAlevey, www.alternet.org Strategize! Anti-War, Protest, Vietnam

A new book examining working class opposition to the Vietnam War, Hardhats, Hippies and Hawks (Cornell University Press, 2013), by Penny Lewis, is a timely and important book filled with lessons for today’s labor, peace and especially, environmental movements. She unpacks the myth that working class Americans supported the Vietnam War. A fiction created by Nixon and the Republicans in service to the industrial military complex. The book’s subhead, "The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory," challenges the constructed narrative of the antiwar movement and focuses our attention on the motivations of those who created the false storyline. Though the research for and origins of her book were the subject of her doctoral dissertation, the book is a good read, accessible to all. She argues that in the early years of the antiwar movement, the formal organizations that opposed the war were dominated by middle class and often college students, but that shifts dramatically in the later years. And, had the early activists reached out to broader audiences, like workers, the movement could have been more successful, much sooner. She examines the many characters and films about Vietnam, from Gump to Platoon and everything in between, and compares Hollywood to reality. The book documents the particularly important contribution to end the war made by Chicano and Black movements. Lewis explains the crucial role of the active duty and Vietnam veterans during the war. Anyone who has successfully gotten Vietnam vets to open up and discuss the war will not be surprised by the stories Lewis recounts.

August 1964, 50 Years Ago, The Gulf Of Tonkin

August 12, 2014 Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, www.theragblog.com Educate! Gulf Of Tonkin, History, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

Fifty years ago, on August 4, 1964, an event happened that turned my life inside-out, upside down (or so I thought at the time; in retrospect it was turned right-side-up), and 180 degrees from what it had been. As I came to deal with it, I would question everything I thought I knew about the history of my country, and my relationship to that country. History knows the event as the “Tonkin Gulf Incident,” the beginning of formal American combat involvement in the war in Vietnam, that would spread to Southeast Asia, the causus belli that would send half a million of my fellow Americans into combat, leading to the death of more than 58,000 of them over the next nine years. More than a million Asians would die as a result. The United States would nearly be torn asunder, its future changed irrevocably. I was a fly on the wall at that momentous event. At the time, I was a member of the staff of Commander, Patrol Forces, U.S. 7th Fleet (COMPATFOR7FLT), the operational command under whose authority the destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy would enter the history books.

Veterans For Peace Building Right To Assembly

June 4, 2014 Staff, www,PopularResistance.org Resist! Democracy, US Constitution, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

This video by Inside Out Ptv focuses on members of VFP who have been arrested at the Vietnam War Memorial in New York City repeatedly in recent years. Their first arrest was at peacekeepers working in support of the Occupy movement when it was holding a General Assembly at the memorial to discuss political issues impacting the nation. Members have been arrested for the last two years on the anniversary of America's longest war, the War in Afghanistan, to protest that war as well as to remember the war dead -- not only US troops but people who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as native peoples killed in the war of Manifest Destiny -- the roots of US Empire. Veterans and their allies have arrested while reading the names of those who have died and prosecuted for exercising their Constitutional Right to Assemble and exercise their Freedom of Speech. Another purpose of these protests is to protect those rights for future generations.

Reflections on Vietnam: Interview With Radical Professor Strieb

May 27, 2014 Daniel Falcone, www.truth-out.org Create! Education, FBI, Student Activism, Vietnam

Bertram Strieb, LaSalle University professor emeritus in the Department of Geology, Physics and Environmental Science, and an educator for nearly 50 years, spoke to me about radicalism and campus activism during the Vietnam period. Strieb received a progressive Philadelphia Hebrew School education. His teachers were the parents of Noam Chomsky, MIT institute professor and professor of linguistics (emeritus) and Linguistic Theory. In this interview, Strieb discusses the Chomsky visit to the LaSalle Campus in 1985. Both Strieb and Chomsky attended Central High School in Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. Daniel Falcone for Truthout: What can you tell me about the Vietnam era at La Salle? Bertram Strieb: The war started in 1962. The United States had sent "advisors." The election of 1964 was when Johnson and Goldwater ran against one another. Kennedy had been assassinated. Johnson said he was not going to escalate the war. Goldwater was considered dangerous. Johnson won in a landslide and then immediately escalated the war. He sent in large numbers of troops. I was teaching here at the time. In 1965-66, a number of college teachers in the area got together and began to set up draft counseling on their campuses. I got involved in that, and I remember meeting at people's homes and things. With a number of other faculty members, I was a, sort of, a key person setting up draft counseling here, which ultimately got taken over by some students who were vets, around 1969. These guys took it over and did a much better job. A number of us got trained as draft counselors and did a bunch of draft counseling. So we were prepared to tell people about conscientious objecting. I had a lot of material in my office, to hand out stuff to students and also to inform myself about legal aspects. And, I found out, when I got my FBI files at a later date, that someone had surreptitiously entered my office and had stolen some stuff out of my office. I didn't know it was gone. I would have been happy to give it to them, if they wanted it.

War And Peace In Korea And Vietnam – A Journey Of Peace

May 18, 2014 David Hartsough, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Korea, Vietnam, Wars and Militarism

My experiences in Korea and Vietnam have only strengthened my belief that this is the path we must take if we are to survive as a species and build a world of peace and justice for our children and grandchildren and for all generations to come. I invite you to join many of us who are building a Global Movement to End All War – www.worldbeyondwar.org , to sign the Declaration of Peace, look at the ten minute video – The Two Trillion dollar question - and become active in this movement to end the insanity and addiction to violence and war which is so endemic in this country and around the world. I believe that 99% of the world’s people could benefit and feel much safer and have a much better quality of life if we were to end our addiction to war as a means of resolving conflict and devote those funds to promoting a better life for all people on the planet.

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