weepings from the Out Box
This is email. It is not the place to look for organized, formal, careful writing. Some of it may be deemed offensive. Enter at your own risk.Subject to change at any time.
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From the Internet -- no name given -- just "my grandfather in Viet Nam" --
My respects.
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To all Viet Nam veterans:
Wherever you are, whatever you've done, you have my respect.
- C.P.
VIET NAM
The War in Viet Nam was a typical guerrilla war. My Lai was typical of all guerrilla war situations. They lost half the company from booby traps and land mines, it was a Communist village, even the children knew where the land mines were, so they decided to kill the whole village. Very badly done, of course, but what were they supposed to do? Move them into a concentration camp (euphemistically called a "fortified village")? Blast them to Kingdom Come from the air? The Communists would have massacred the whole village and thought nothing of it.
I think they should have warned them, then levelled the village from the air. No fuss, no muss. Killing babies is never popular, but, let's face it, even the women and children all knew where the land mines were, they were all reporting troop movements, counting soldiers, etc.
Or put them in camps, etc.
Nobody cares how many OTHER babies we kill, just as long as nobody has to see it up close. Out of sight, out of mind.
One Vietnamese officer was asked if the people in that region would “Turn to Communism” as a result of the incident, and he said, "TURN to Communism? They ARE Communists"!
Actually, it should never have happened at all, because the Americans should never have been there. They could have bombed the docks in Haiphong at any time, but they never did. They had to fly over hundreds of tons of munitions stacked up on the docks at Haiphong, then bomb targets in the jungle that they couldn't even see! Like one guy carrying an artillery shell on his head, or on a sampan or on a bicycle.
Same thing in Korea. We never blew up the bridges over the Yalu River which allowed millions of Communists to enter the country, with tens of thousands of their tanks and trucks, then we had to fight them when they got there!
Typical self-defeating American idiocy. I say, cut off their aid and trade, and then you don't have to go to war against them. Peace and love. Just no trade.
All to distract us from Cuba. Another screw-up. All while selling the Communists everything they ever needed to destroy us and giving them 2/3 of the world over a couple of conference tables!
That's why I've never felt any loyalty to the country, that and about 98 other reasons.
If that's all we got out of it, why did we go to war against Hitler?
When I renounced my citizenship, I made up a list of reasons for myself, got up to 99 and quit counting...