"I am behind the troops, but.." = "I am not racist, but..."

[Whaleboy]

writes crap claiming that Liberals always use logic and reason while Conservatives use fear and hate. Sorry, but when someone writes crap like that then they can't be taken seriously.

Why not? Thats not a rhetorical question. My position is somewhat similar, see my sig, a position I have backed up numerous times (and would be happy to repeat if necessary, though I dont want to spam this to complete death so PM me), so the owness is on you to refute this position.

Besides how come ALL of the mainstream media disagrees with you?

I wasn't reading the subject so I'm only talking generally. Just because a position is popular, does not necessarily make it pseudo objectively true, nor the "correct" course of action for the given circumstances.

So far you have provided NONE

Sound familiar?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by elijah
Sound familiar?

Sure...Every time I read one of your posts.

Atleast you've finally come around and admited that I was right and that spitting upon soldiers is disgraceful. To bad you still have a hard time reading English because I've never said the whole anti-war movement was guillty of spit. In fact I've taken great pains to show that it was a minority but that it never the less did occur and on a fairly regular basis. That's when your friend Tinkai showed up and said it was a myth which NEVER occured.

I have proven my position and you have now agreed. It would be nice if Tinkai would admite to being wrong but I doubt he will. In the future it would be nice if you would respond to what other people say and not what you wish they said and maybe you could actually stop intentially lying about what they said. Misrepresenting the other side doesn't help you at all, instead, it makes you look foolish. Kind of like Fez.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by elijah
Why not? Thats not a rhetorical question. My position is somewhat similar, see my sig, a position I have backed up numerous times (and would be happy to repeat if necessary, though I dont want to spam this to complete death so PM me), so the owness is on you to refute this position.

OK, Elijah. I normally ignore you because I find your teenage rantings to be not worth my time, but, I'll tell you what I'll do. So that we don't spam up this thread I will start a new thread where you can "prove" you're claims that liberals always use logic, reason, and thought in their positions where as conservatives only use hate and fear. That was the quote you said you could back up wasn't it?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by GePap




Come on man, this is almost Fezzian in nature. Did you ever speak to any anti-war protestors? Or are your invidual prejudices the only source you have?

He was alive then, as was I. I spoke to many anti-war protestors. I even attended an anti-war protest (the incursion into Cambodia in 1970 was the reason for this protest) as an observer. It would probably be hard to overstate the virulent hatred of many of the protestors for the United States, Nixon, their parents and anyone in the U.S. Armed Forces. Imagine the most hateful fringe leftist stuff from today, double it, and you'll have a fair approximation of the quality of opinion that about 25% of the protestors had. The rest tended to be the meaker souls and attended for a much wider variety of reasons. Probably 25% or more were just there because it was interesting, or the place to be. The other 50% were genuinely interested in the cause to one degree or another, and varied considerably in their knowledge and intellectual integrity. Make no mistake, this movement was a low point in American history even as it is held up as a high point for American democracy.

I was 9 years old in 1970 and rapidly came to one conclusion. There wasn't a single person that I met who was an anti-war activist who knew the first thing about Vietnam, American Forces, Asia or really anything germain to the discussion. They hated, but they were full of "teach in" facts hung on a slumping frame of inadequate education and complete lack of experience. They were fvcking college kids with opinions where their curiosity should have been. And they were a minority of the people of their own age thank god.

People forget (or never knew if they didn't live through that time) that the country was very split about the Vietnam War. Half of the baby boomers supported the war even in hindsight. The main reason that our image of that time is of everyone being a hippy and dodging the draft is that the press focused on the protestors to such an extent that it seemed like they were far more numerous than they really were.

So take your own opinion with a large grain of rock salt. Those were North Vietnamese flags that I saw waving at the demonstration, the few American flags I saw were all ragged and being waved upside down. The level of vitriol coming from the speakers was so bad that there could never be any discussion of the issue. This was incitation of a riot with the hope that it would lead to revolution. The riot happened and thankfully the revolution did not. The people who were at the center of this thing were very unpleasant people, and I don't doubt that they did some terrible things with their hatred of those who they opposed. As for sources on the abuse of GI's and their widows, check any of the following popular histories of the Vietnam War:

Bloods

We Were Soldiers Once, and Young

The 10,000 Day War

Vietnam, A History

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Odin


Oh, so your saying it was alright to kill them because those "evil pinko Commies" did't agree with your rightist BS? how fascist of you.

Those soldiers got spit on because they where too wussie to dodge an immoral draft for an immoral war.

Honestly, when you have either spent a year in a combat zone or dodged a draft I'll take your opinion on the matter at face value. Right now I feel like spitting on it though.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by elijah

You cannot use the actions of a few thugs to tarnish an entire movement, and more importantly, the ideology behind hit, the latter being a philosophy that is applicable in more situations than that specific case, as indeed we saw this year.

Hitler eventually got tired of making arguments like this and wiped out the SA. Too bad there wasn't anyone with that sort of gravitas on the left during the sixties and seventies. It would have improved things immensely.

[st_swithin]

A Navy SEAL just popped up out of the toilet. I have him at gunpoint: should I ask him why he's breaking into my house or should I just shoot him?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by st_swithin
A Navy SEAL just popped up out of the toilet. I have him at gunpoint: should I ask him why he's breaking into my house or should I just shoot him?

Pop him once and flush. Even if you kill him Operation Poo Poo Cam will still reduce the average casualty rate for the Seals.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Odin


Oh, so your saying it was alright to kill them because those "evil pinko Commies" did't agree with your rightist BS? how fascist of you.

Those soldiers got spit on because they where too wussie to dodge an immoral draft for an immoral war.

So much for "support the troops" when the commies massively protest long needed action to protect them from cross border attacks. The truth and communism are not familiar with each other.

[Dinner]

However, lies and dictatorships are things which communists are intimately familiar with.

[Berzerker]

Ned -

We turned against the Vietnam war when it became clear that Johnson was lying to us and had no strategy for victory.

"We"? Don't you mean liberal Democrats who opposed the war? You know, many of those same people who were protesting? Johnson dropped out of the '68 primaries when an anti-war opponent garnered a large minority of the vote in early primaries, not because conservatives and Republicans opposed the war. And the Pentagon Papers which exposed some of the lying was published long after Johnson left office.

All he offered us is an endless, bloody stalemate.

What more could he offer? The other side had nukes too and neither side wanted that kind of a war and a sincere US invasion of the north would have dramatically increased the chance of such a war. Btw, the war was never sold to the American people as an attempt to invade and conquer the North, just a defense of the South. So what "promise" did Johnson violate?

Certainly, if a commander in chief so screws up, we should replace him. We replaced Johnson and Truman essentially because the people formed the considered opinion that our commander in chiefs had failed.

But that "considered opinion" begins with a much smaller group of dissenters - dissenters who are "anti-American" in your considered opinion. I want to know why you're not anti-American when you eventually decide to oppose a war but anyone who opposes wars you support is anti-American.

During our revolutionary war, many continued to want to stay with the Crown. However, to say the least, their attitude was less than helpful if not downright treasonous.

But they were loyal to their government, the "traitors" were the ones waging war against their government. The problem with your position is you lack consistency, you define "anti-American" differently depending on whether or not you support a war.

The people who were against war because they were on the other side, such as Jane Fonda, were never in the majority. However, their protests enormously influenced the North to continue the fight rather than to seriously negotiate.

So it wan't "we", just a minority? I'd think you'd applaud the protestors for being right when even you acknowledge Johnson should have been removed from office and condemn those who supported the war even after it became evident Johnson was unfit. As for Fonda inspiring the North and causing a breakdown in negotiations, according to Christopher Hitchens (I believe), it was Kissinger and the Nixonites who tried to make a deal with the N Vietnamese when Johnson was in negotiations - the deal being the N Vietnamese could get a much better deal from Nixon if he got elected. Fonda went there long after the peace negotiations broke down under Johnson. And by that time, you say people were right to oppose the war because of Johnson.

Furthermore, this notion that Fonda et al inspired the North to fight is ridiculous. The N Vietnamese fought the French and booted them out after WWII, then they kicked us out, then the Russians and Chinese, and to top it all off, they went into Cambodia and ended the reign of terror perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Those aren't the actions of a people who needed Jane Fonda for inspiration...

Spiffor, you have to admit that many if not the vast majority who marched in opposition to the war were overwhelmingly anti-American. They viewed the United States as the problem, not Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

US foreign policy is a problem! The US helped Saddam in his war with Iran, the US looked the other way when he used chemical weapons on both the Iranians (who were using them too) and the Kurds. Talk about hypocrisy, where were all these Republicans when the Kurds were slaughtered? Hell, now all we hear from these people is how evil Saddam is because of what he did to the Kurds back then. And when Saddam met with Bush's ambassador just prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the message he got from the US was ambiguous to say the least if not an outright green light to do what he wanted. Don't you think it a bit ironic that Saddam met with the US ambassador to discuss his dispute with Kuwait shortly before he invades? If Bush had his ambassador explain to Saddam that the US would not tolerate an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, that invasion, Gulf War 1, Gulf War II, and 9/11 could have been avoided. We have this war on terrorism because the US - The Dems and Repubs - think they they have some kind of mandate to stick their noses into the affairs of ~half the world. And when someone strikes back, we wonder why they hate us. Now, when you claim the Vietnam War was based on lies and an unfit President, why are you being patriotic but when others effectively said the same thing back then, they were/are "anti-American"?

[Berzerker]

Sikander -

I even attended an anti-war protest (the incursion into Cambodia in 1970 was the reason for this protest) as an observer. It would probably be hard to overstate the virulent hatred of many of the protestors for the United States, Nixon, their parents and anyone in the U.S. Armed Forces.

So you heard a bunch of speeches from people explaining how they hate their parents? Like Ned, you're confusing hatred of US foreign policy with the United States. When you guys hate the policies of liberal Democrats, does that mean you hate America? It is far too convenient to equate your desires with "America" and then use that fallacious equation to attack your political opponents as "America haters". But that was the tactic used during the McCarthy era and it's still employed today.

What I want = America
What you want = Hated of America

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Berzerker
So you heard a bunch of speeches from people explaining how they hate their parents? Like Ned, you're confusing hatred of US foreign policy with the United States.

Berzerker, I would put more faith in your point of view if you had been there but since Sikander was and you weren't then it makes sense that he understood events as they happened before his eyes.

[Ned]

Bezerker, Americans as a whole turned against Johnson's handling of he war, not because it was immoral in concept. It was immoral in execution. Johnson had no strategy for victory and could only promise us more of the same. Johnson and his Kennedy administration were full of themselves in sending "messages" with bombing halts and a fresh 50,000 additional troops.

We elected Nixon to fix this. He did.

The protesters were led by and large by communists who were against the war because they were against the United States and in favor of North Vietnam. Even if they were in the right in protesting Johnson, they were in the wrong when they protested Nixon - who was getting us out. Every time Nixon did something to "protect the troops," the protesters became even more enraged. It was clear that they continued to protest because Nixon still wanted to win the war - albeit with ARVN and American airpower. Their alegiences were with communism, not with America.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Sikander -

So you heard a bunch of speeches from people explaining how they hate their parents? Like Ned, you're confusing hatred of US foreign policy with the United States. When you guys hate the policies of liberal Democrats, does that mean you hate America? It is far too convenient to equate your desires with "America" and then use that fallacious equation to attack your political opponents as "America haters". But that was the tactic used during the McCarthy era and it's still employed today.

What I want = America
What you want = Hated of America

Berzerker, the anti-war protesters were anti-American. They were largely communists.

When the protests first started, I attended and SDS meeting on campus to find out what their position was. The SDS was, I soon found out, a communist front.

Still, like Sikander said, there were a lot of ordinary Americans who joined the protests because they didn't like the idea of being drafted into a no-win war with a very good chance of being killed for nothing. As I said, Johnson's conduct of the war was plain immoral. That was clear to all.