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

[MOBIUS]

Re: Re: "I am behind the troops, but.." = "I am not racist, but...&qu

As usual on Poly, everyone seems to have got sidetracked by insulting each other, so I will say that the one person who seems to have summed this up neatly for me is Rufus...

For those of you that missed it on the front page:

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Even though this blather should not be dignified with an intelligent response, I'll offer one:

Supporting the troop is not the same as supporting the policies of the politicians who have sent them to do their duty. Many of us are critical of the action in Iraq because it seems increasingly unjustified AND very, very ill-planned. Neither the justification nor the planning has anything to do with the troops; it's the work of politicians and, in the US anyway, many of the top-ranking military leaders actually objected to the White House's specific plans for the invasion. The White House underestimated the resistance to US/UK occupation; it consequently underestimated the number of troops needed for the job. Beyond that, it is not the practice of the US military to train troops in peacekeeping/policing functions, yet those are exactly the functions the White House would have them perform. Small wonder that more have died in the "peace" than in the war.

In short: the troops are the victims of arrogant, short-sighted politicians. I think your assertion needs to be turned on its head: if anything, it seems to me impossible to support the troops and the Iraq debacle at the same time. You could support the troops -- and urge their withdrawal. You could support the troops -- and urge that adequate additional troops, properly trained for the task, be dispatched immediately. But to support the troops AND support a situation in which they're being killed because politicians have planned ineptly and refuse to admit or correct their mistakes -- well, that's just sadistic.

Consequently I have no problems condemning the utter cluster f*ck that the US led coalition has made of the war against Iraq, from the lies about WMD right through to not having the first idea what to do after conquering the nation apart from getting the oil running ASAP...

While at the same time hoping that our troops can do the best job possible now that they are there, for themselves and the Iraqi people with the minimum of casualties on both sides...

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Were you alive then? Were you here in the US then? So all you're doing is taking an unsubstantiated claim (can't prove what people didn't do, especially on a large scale) that fits what you want to believe.

Yes, I was alive then, a teenager when the war ended, too young at the time to really know what was happening, but knowledge of an issue is not confined to personal experience.

The basic problem with the spitting myth is it is built on the assumption that protesters hated individual soldiers during the draft era, but this assumption is false. The protesters hated the US military as an institution, but not individual soldiers.

The anti-war protests were anti-draft protests. People did not want to be drafted into the military, they did not want their friends and relatives drafted. The protesters wanted the war to end and American soldiers brought home.

So during the war, the protesters did not see individual soldiers as the enemy. Soldiers were seen as victims drafted into a war and forced to fight a war they didn't want fight. (Yes, this was a myth given that many soldiers were volunteers and the pity was something that angered a lot of the vets).

The anti-war protests also had high profile involvement of Vietnam vets. The message from these vets is that they were forced to fight a war they didn't want to fight and that American men were dying in a useless war. This reinforced the view that the vets were victims of the draft.

So the protesters would not have hated the individual soldiers. Instead, the protest movement tried to recruit returning soldiers and tried to welcome them. They would not have spat at them.

The anger against individual soldiers came after the war, after the draft was effectively cancelled. After the war, the vets were stigmatised and portrayed as crazed ex-killers, people to be feared.

After the war, people in the military were often seen as volunteers, warmongers who wanted to kill. People couldn't understand why someone would want to serve their country. That attitude even existed in Canada.

But during the war, when the draft existed, it was different. The anti-war/anti-draft movement did not see vets as the enemy.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Ned


It was communist, with a small "c" in the words of one of their leaders. Here is a history of the SDS.

http://barksdale.uta.edu/undergrad2a.htm

The SDS, which was the anti-war movement, believed Vietnam was wrong because we were opposing communism. They were, in fact, on the other side in that war. Their action became increasingly violent. I would not be surprised if they deliberately spit or threw eggs and the like at returning Vets.

Just a suggestion: you should read the links you post. That history suggests that (1) the SDS was broadly leftist, embracing socialists, communists, progressives, and even liberals, and (2) their opposition to the war was an opposition to what they saw as a US imperialist adventure as well as an opposition to the draft; there's nothing there about SDS support of North Vietnam's government.

Beyond that, a group can't be a communist "front" unless they're fronting for someone who's a communist. Are you suggesting that the SDS was really set up or paid for by North Vietnam? The USSR? CPUSA? Good luck backing up that theory...

2) The election of '72 was a repudiation of McGovern, not an endorsement of Nixon. This is why Nixon's people wanted McGovern to get the nomination to begin with.

So what? The point remains. McGovern was the one who wanted to crawl on his belly to Hanoi to get peace. Nixon wanted peace on honorable terms and was willing to escallate until the communists gave it.

Of course the public wanted peace with honor. But nothing in Nixon's actions indicated that that was what we were getting; if anything, the war was becoming increasingly disgraceful and the public knew it.

3) Nixon handling of the war included the secret bombings of Cambodia and military incursions into neutral Laos, both of which reinvigorated the protests. And why shouldn't they have? In a just world, Nixon and Kissinger would have found themselves at the Hague, on trial for war crimes.

Bull. Nixon went were the enemy was. The NVA base camps were in Cambodia. The Ho Chi Minh trail was in Laos. And rather than being secret, Nixon announced the incursions on TV with charts and graphs explaining what we were doing and why.

"Going where the enemy is" isn't, of itself, a justification for or protection from anything; ask Milosovic. Nixon brazenly violated international law in both cases; the case might have been different if we had been fighting a declared war, but we weren't; we were just over there shooting up the joint. And the bombings were secret; it was a congressional investigation into them that forced him onto tv with his charts, years after they'd begun.

What you mean to say is that Watergate did not die with the election. It continued to grow as an issue primarily because Nixon chose cover up the burglaries and its directors from his campaign staff, and later chose to cover up the cover up. All of this was unravelled by "Deep Throat."

Had Nixon not had Watergate, Vietnam would not have fallen. Clearly the fall of Nixon signaled the North Vietnamese to renew the conflict.

Now that's just screwy. The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had proved themselves incredibly tenatious; the South Vietnamese had shown themselves unwilling to fight for their own country; American troop morale was probably the worst its ever been in American history; and Congress was beginning to pull the plug on funding. But **** Nixon could single-handedly have turned the tide, if only he hadn't been hampered with his third-rate burglary? Please, please tell me you're joking.

[Barley]

I support the troops end of story. Im not even going to get into discussion about that.

My thread was about the cost of the action and an attempt to inquire as to the feelings of Apolytoners about their feeling as to the continuation of the war / peace in the face of that I would call determined homeland resistance not Terrorism.

[Whaleboy]

On topic:

I was and am against the war. I support the troops. I don't support their mission(s). I don't support bloodshed on either side, and such bloodshed upsets me no more or less if it is British or Iraqi.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
We replaced Johnson and Truman essentially because the people formed the considered opinion that our commander in chiefs had failed.

We replaced Truman because he wasn't running for re-election. He'd served his two terms. Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
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.

Er wait . . . peple who wanted to stay with the legal government were traitors, while those trying to overthrow it were not?

You know that rebellion is the ultimate act of treason, right?

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.

2 things here.

#1 The sailors on a US carrier (IIRC it was the Forrestal but don't hold me to it) went on strike Jane Fonda's appearance was canceled by the Navy after she went to Hanoi. That tells you something about how the soldiers felt while they were there.

#2 The North was seriously negotiating in 1968, and a deal was almost signed, when, in Oct, just before the elections, the South pulled out. This cost Humphry the election. Four years later, the same exact deal was signed in Paris.

So the question then is, why was it the North's responsibiity to seriously negotiate when it was the South that pulled out? Given that the deal in 68 was the same in 72, how was the failure to get an earlier deal the responsibility of the North?

BTW, since you're on a treason kick, in '68 Kissinger was a negotiator in Paris. He knew what was on the table. The Nixon team, not being part of the govermnet yet, di not know what was being negotiated, yet somehow found out. Kissinger then became NS Administator under Nixon.

Nixon's campaign team, though the wife of Chennault (former head of the Flying Tigers), contacted the South Vietnamese government, and told them that they wuld get a better peace deal with a Nixon administration than what was on the table in Paris.

The South pulled out of negotiations. Kissinger and Nixon were traitors.

What did this treason get us?

Four years later, 28,000 more American kids were dead, a million more Vietnamese were dead. The government of Cambodia had been toppled and the path to the take over by the Kmher Rouge was underway, and the exact same deal was signed.

But the people opposing the war were anti-American?

[KrazyHorse]

Treason = opposing the United States

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Berzerker
What I want = America
What you want = Hated of America

This is sig-worthy.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Ned:

1) The SDS was not a communist front

Nope, it a was a communist back.

Ned is right and wrong about SDS, at least after 1965. It was overwhelmingly communist, but it was not a front. A front is a fake organization which is controlled by another organization, say like, the Contras and the CIA. SDS, was different, in that there were (roughly) three different flavors of communism within SDS, all of whom, while allied in attempting to stop US imperialism, were also bitterly opposed to each other.

I wouldn't say the protestors hated America. Mostly there were very, very angry at America, at what they say as a betrayal by their government to the ideals upon which it was founded. Too very many, anger seems like hatred, and so angry people were caled America-haters. Certainly for many came to hate America through their anger, but most did not.

Even many who became communists did not hate America. I became a commie because I love America.

[chequita guevara]

Another point that needs to be made is that the war had an extremely radicalizing effect on people. I wasn't as if this giant hidden commnuist undreground created the anti-war movement. After 1956, the Communist Party was more or less finished in this country. It has never recovered from the revelations about Stalin.

The communists of the 1960s were largely new commies, people who saw the war as evil, racism as evil, and by extension, the US as evil, and saw all these communsts around the world leading the strugles for independence and freedom in the 3rd world (regardless of how their successes may have later turned out). It was a natural progression then.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Just a suggestion: you should read the links you post. That history suggests that (1) the SDS was broadly leftist, embracing socialists, communists, progressives, and even liberals, and (2) their opposition to the war was an opposition to what they saw as a US imperialist adventure as well as an opposition to the draft; there's nothing there about SDS support of North Vietnam's government.

I would be happy to give you exact quotes. The SDS opposed the war because they favored the communist side in Vietnam. They definitely were pro-communist. It is not a co-incidence that the girlfriend of Tom Hayden, SDS president, went to North Vietnam and said she was on their side. So much for "supporting the troops."

As to the composition of the SDS, it was originally open to all, but developed a small c communist ideology. This ideology was not welcomed by the real communists who became the majority faction after the march on Washington because the real communists only wanted to liberate the workers and they wanted to overthrow the government of the US. The SDS originally simply wanted to impose small-c communism democratically.

From what I can tell, today's communists, like Che, are actually SDS'ers.

"Beyond that, a group can't be a communist "front" unless they're fronting for someone who's a communist. Are you suggesting that the SDS was really set up or paid for by North Vietnam? The USSR? CPUSA? Good luck backing up that theory..."

Well, the largest group in the SDS was a communist front. That group eventually took over when the more radical non communists left to form the Weathermen, who soon began an armed revolt.

Of course the public wanted peace with honor. But nothing in Nixon's actions indicated that that was what we were getting; if anything, the war was becoming increasingly disgraceful and the public knew it.

Which, of course, explains the overwhelming landslide Nixon received when McGovern said exactly what you just said in '72.

"Going where the enemy is" isn't, of itself, a justification for or protection from anything; ask Milosovic. Nixon brazenly violated international law in both cases; the case might have been different if we had been fighting a declared war, but we weren't; we were just over there shooting up the joint. And the bombings were secret; it was a congressional investigation into them that forced him onto tv with his charts, years after they'd begun.

IIRC, Nixon got into office in Jan. '69 and the TV announcement was in early '70.

As to "international law," what Nixon did was fully in accord with international law. The enemy went into Laos and Cambodia and we pursued them there.

Now that's just screwy. The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had proved themselves incredibly tenatious; the South Vietnamese had shown themselves unwilling to fight for their own country; American troop morale was probably the worst its ever been in American history; and Congress was beginning to pull the plug on funding. But **** Nixon could single-handedly have turned the tide, if only he hadn't been hampered with his third-rate burglary? Please, please tell me you're joking.

You really do not know what you are talkin about do you?

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Another point that needs to be made is that the war had an extremely radicalizing effect on people. I wasn't as if this giant hidden commnuist undreground created the anti-war movement. After 1956, the Communist Party was more or less finished in this country. It has never recovered from the revelations about Stalin.

The communists of the 1960s were largely new commies, people who saw the war as evil, racism as evil, and by extension, the US as evil, and saw all these communsts around the world leading the strugles for independence and freedom in the 3rd world (regardless of how their successes may have later turned out). It was a natural progression then.

As I read that piece on the SDS, I began to realize that you, Che, are really more of an SDS'er than a communist. The communists are solely concerned with the working class and with armed revolution. SDSism, on the other hand, is more interested in "democracy" in the form I have heard you discuss here many times and believe they can prevail democratically.

[Ned]

Che, on the issue of the failed negotiations in '68, I have several time asked you to tell us what the NV offer was that SV did not accept. I am still waiting.