Why does Hollywood now eulogise the Vietnam fiasco?

[ravagon]

Re: Why does Hollywood now eulogise the Vietnam fiasco?

Hollywood? Portraying past events in an unrealistic light? Surely thou must be mistaken. After all Hollywood has an unblemished record when it comes to publishing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Don't they?

War movies are always popular. Something to do with the loud noises and bright lights methinks.
I think its more the case of the Vietnam stigmata having died away and filmakers taking advantage of the fact, as they've always done.
Of course there's the issue of normalising trade relations with Vietnam now too, whence the conspiracy theorists can come up with a lot of reasons why the "war" is now seen differently...

[TCO]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


Was it Aristotle who said "those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them"?

Hollywood is helping you forget.

Oh yeah, a second rate troll is teaching me...

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse

Was it Aristotle who said "those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them"?

Hollywood is helping you forget.

That works very well ... except when it doesn't.
Northern Ireland - case in point. If they'd all just shut up and forget their history then something good might come of it.

[Alexander's Horse]

Don't get me started on how Hollywood's division of the world into good guys/ bad guys, cowboys and Indians screws up American foreign policy.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

The reason the War is being respun is because it is nigh unto treason to criticize the US these days. Hollywood follows the mood of the times, and after 20 years of Reaganite spinning, the Vietnam war was a heroic, well-intentioned, mission whose only problem was the fifth column at home who stabbed Germany ... er, America, in the back.

So, do you expect Americans to go out with baseball bats looking for these "November Criminals" after watching a movie about a Vietnam soldier? Get real. Furthermore,anyone who insinuates that the U.S. government behaved in a manner that was even close to the Nazis is not only ignorant of their history, they are trivializing every Allied death in WW2. The U.S. did not resemble Nazi Germany in anyway. Remember the hippies? If the U.S. was fascist you wouldn't, they would have been in concentration camps and "silenced".

After all, the US waged a very powerful war against the people of South Vietnam

Thank you for showing us that the real reason that the U.S. was involved in Vietnam was to kill the South Vietnamese. I'm sure that Vietnam vets appreciate this belittling of their sacrifices.

We were propping up an illegal dictatorship which was opposed by the vast majority of it's population.

Translation: "Evil Americans! Why don't they understand that people love to live in the free, peace loving environments that are supported in Communist rule? Just look at how the Russians support he glorious Soviet Union, and you'll see how truly great it is to live in a Communist wonderland!"

Had we stayed much longer, the US military would have revolted.

Keep dreaming.

Popular unrest at home was on the verge of making the country ungovernable. Had we stayed, it would have destroyed the United States. . . . So I guess it's too bad we left.

Yeah. Too bad that any type of violent revolution in the U.S. would most likely come from the right. Remember, the left can't comprehend what the 2nd amendment is for and has long ago disarmed itself. Hippies wouldn't make good revolutionary soldiers, but I'd be willing to bet that the Michigan Freeman's Militia would. If I were you, I'd be glad that the government didn't fall. At least now you are still free to spread leftist propaganda without fear of any kind of reprisal (except for the laughter of anyone who takes their time to read a Communist pamphlet.)

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Felch X
As far as legality of governments, I'm not exactly bothered by it. I'm aware that the US and South Vietnam balked on the 1956 elections, but I seriously don't care.

So democracy is only for those who vote the way the Americans want? It doesn't matter what you think would have been better for them. What nmatters is the right of people to determine their own destiny. In this they were thwarted by the United States and the dictatorship[ of South Vietnam.

I am not a pacifist, I am a revolutionist. I am opposed to imperialist war, not wars of revolution or national liberation. We were the bad guys in Vietnam, the North and the NLF were the good guys. The North was right to invade the South, because it was the legitimate government of Vietnam. The only reason it didn't rule the whole of the country after Dien Bien Phu was because the US stepped in and decided that it knew better than the Vietnamese.

You know, maybe if our government stopped deciding for other people what would be best, people wouldn't be flying planes into our buildings.

And Joeseph1944's comment is an excellent example of the fifth columnist belief that we were sabotaged in our war effort, rather than: we were worn down by an enemy who would never quit, got tired of fighting for a government that could not and would not defend itself, got tired of fighting a war the majority of our population was against, got tired of fighting a war that ended the post-war boom, were scared that the growing unrest and mutinies in the US service personal in Vietnam would pose a serious problem. In the end, Nixon negotiated the same agreement that Johnson had on the table in '68 (the same one that Nixon sabotaged in order to ensure his election). So what were those extra five years of war for, other than to kill another 30,000 Americans and million+ Vietnamese.

No, the Vietnamese weren't a lot better, but then they inherited a country destroyed by the United States, and had a lot of pay back to do for the 18 years of corrupt, repressive rule of the Southern dictatorship. I may not like the way they handled it, but maybe if the US hadn't renegged on their treaty obligations to Vietnam, and paid them the ten billion, they could have done a lot better.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Don't get me started on how Hollywood's division of the world into good guys/ bad guys, cowboys and Indians screws up American foreign policy.

Oh go manage your own affairs, West Islander.

[KrazyHorse]

Anyone who insinuates that the U.S. government behaved in a manner that was even close to the Nazis is not only ignorant of their history, they are trivializing every Allied death in WW2. The U.S. did not resemble Nazi Germany in anyway. Remember the hippies? If the U.S. was fascist you wouldn't, they would have been in concentration camps and "silenced"

Get your historical analogies straight. He's insinuating that the US is behaving like Germany did after WWI, not during WWII.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

Anyone who insinuates that the U.S. government behaved in a manner that was even close to the Nazis is not only ignorant of their history, they are trivializing every Allied death in WW2. The U.S. did not resemble Nazi Germany in anyway. Remember the hippies? If the U.S. was fascist you wouldn't, they would have been in concentration camps and "silenced"

Get your historical analogies straight. He's insinuating that the US is behaving like Germany did after WWI, not during WWII.

I know. He was making a referrence to the so called "November Criminals", a collection of socialist and Jews who supposedly stabbed Germany in the back and cost them a war that Germany was winning. I assumed that people knew what he was talking about. I was making a larger point regarding the often used analogy between U.S. soldiers and government and the Nazis. After all, anyone who knows anything about modern German history knows that the Nazis used this November Criminal propaganda to help propel them in to power. I edit my post to make it more clear.

[KrazyHorse]

Nice edit. He wasn't, nor was anybody else that I noticed, insinuating any connection between the US in Viet Nam and the Nazis; the analogy points to a dim future for democracy in America.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Nice edit. He wasn't, nor was anybody else that I noticed, insinuating any connection between the US in Viet Nam and the Nazis; the analogy points to a dim future for democracy in America.

No, there are none in this thread, but it is a wide spread analogy that I wanted to address. I go to college at William & Mary. Our Chancellor is Henry Kissinger. Believe me, I hear the comparison between Nazis and U.S. soldiers and the U.S. government in Vietnam (and for that matter Afghanistan) on a regular basis.

I agree that Che's November Criminal analogy is projecting a dim future, but I just don't think tha its a very good analogy. After all, the November Criminal theory was only one of many severe economic and social problems facing Weimar Germany, foremost probably being hyper-inflation. Those problems just don't exist the U.S. We're not going to be voting Nazis into anything. I saw it as an exaggeration that had to be answered in some way.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by nationalist
I know. He was making a referrence to the so called "November Criminals", a collection of socialist and Jews who supposedly stabbed Germany in the back and cost them a war that Germany was winning.

Despite the lack of a search of "November criminals," there is a widespread belief in America today that the politicians tied the military's hands in the Vietnam war. The fifth column are either bureaucrats in Washington or Congress (the direct representitives of the people of the United States) itself.

What often goes unmentioned is that with the exception of a ten mile strip of land south of the Chinese border, everything in North Vietnam was bombed. As in the recent war in Afganistan, the military was actually running out of sites to bomb, and kept expanding their list of targets which had to be destroyed in order to win the war. 2.2 million Vietnamese, North and South lost their lives, millions more in Laos and Camboida. Short of trying to repeat the disaster of the French, I don't see what else the US could possibly have done within reason to escalate the war.

I was making a larger point regarding the often used analogy between U.S. soldiers and government and the Nazis.

How long have you lurked? I'm not one to make such comparisons lightly. It diminishes the special evil that the Nazis were, and it tends to get your entire argument dismissed as hyperbole. In this particular case, I was poking fun at the belief I outlined in the first paragraph above. When I'm pointing out real comparisons between Nazis and Americans, the facts are so bloody obvious that I don't need to say it. The bodies speak for themselves.


Jeez, Henry Kissinger. You got yourself a bonefide war criminal there, a traitor, a mass murderer, and an enemy of democracy all wrapped up in one person.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Jeez, Henry Kissinger. You got yourself a bonefide war criminal there, a traitor, a mass murderer, and an enemy of democracy all wrapped up in one person.

Hey, do you go to school here or something? Thats exactly the same rhetoric that the handful of protesters use when he comes to visit the college. Since you've read the Kissinger post, I guess you have the answers to most of the points that you brought up in your last post.

[chequita guevara]

Grab yourself a copy of Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. It's a good read, concise, and you'll hate your chancellor after that, if for no other reason that the fact that he committed treason to keep the US in the Vietnam War five years longer.

I'm not totally disagreeing with your post. I doubt the Nazis will ever come to power in the US. The US doesn't need fascism. It crushed labor without its help. Maybe if labor had actually fought baack in the '80s and early '90s, we'd be seeing something different. But since it rolled over and played dead, big capital got what it wanted without handing the US over to a dicatorship. (If you remember the Iran-Contra hearings, you should remember that they were making plans to suspend the Constitution and round up all the lefties.)

Just cuz it hasn't happened here doesn't mean it can't. What most people forget is that despite a rather athoritarian government, Germany had had almost as much experience with parlimentarism as France. And that the Nazis didn't win power, they just came close enough that they were able to easily make a coup.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Grab yourself a copy of Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. It's a good read, concise, and you'll hate your chancellor after that, if for no other reason that the fact that he committed treason to keep the US in the Vietnam War five years longer.

Its on my summer reading list. There is so much of that kind of stuff floating around here. I've been to many pro and anti-Kissenger speakers, and I'm still not convinced that he is any more evil than other politicians be they American, European, Asian, or African.

The US doesn't need fascism. It crushed labor without its help. Maybe if labor had actually fought baack in the '80s and early '90s, we'd be seeing something different.

I know about the labor situation in the U.S. My dad is a steel worker, and he's been laid off for the past 6 months despite having 22 years seniority. However, alot of labor is conservative here. No socialist uprisings in sight. Besides, industry here was killed by globalization. The answer to that: nationalism. I think that our labor problems will be fixed by the right, not by the left. The last thing that our workers want is unity with the Asian laborers who are slitting our throats. Don't get me started on this.

I disagree with your point about fascism crushing labor. I have read too many things to the contrary in both my modern Fascism seminar and my German history classes to buy that argument.

Just cuz it hasn't happened here doesn't mean it can't. What most people forget is that despite a rather athoritarian government, Germany had had almost as much experience with parlimentarism as France. And that the Nazis didn't win power, they just came close enough that they were able to easily make a coup.

Its not impossible, but extremely unlikely. The U.S. political culture is based on republican beliefs (the philosophical republicans, not the G.O.P.) Way more so than France and Germany's political cultures were. Plus, Germany was facing a crises of unimaginable proportions, a crises that overpowered Germany's rather weak commitment to constitutional democracy. My German history prof. would disagree with your legality comment.