Posted on 05/10/2004 8:47:06 PM PDT by quidnunc
The baby boomers are gray and nearing retirement, the nation is involved in two conflicts abroad, the economy is moving into a new, uncertain phase, officials are worrying about terror strikes at home, there's a huge debate about civil liberties raging in the country, scientists are concerned about eroding American superiority in technology, and what are we doing in May 2004? We're fighting over Vietnam. Again.
The war ended almost three decades ago. Lyndon Johnson is dead. Richard Nixon, too. William C. Westmoreland is 90 years old, Eugene J. McCarthy is 88, Robert S. McNamara will be 88 next month, Jane Fonda is about to turn 67. The United States lifted its trade embargo with Vietnam a decade ago.
This is the war that never ends. We think it fades away, and then it comes back again. In pieces I've written over the years I've personally pronounced Vietnam over, politically and emotionally, twice — first when the United States and its allies defeated Iraq in Gulf War I and then, again, when Washington established diplomatic relations with Hanoi in 1995 — only to be proved wrong both times. So much for my powers of observation.
The war's not over. It may never be.
"We're just haunted by Vietnam," says Stanley Karnow, author of a popular history of the war. "It doesn't go away."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at omaha.com ...
I got mine.
He's drunk in Kansas again.
The poor fellow has no more money for porn so he's hanging out at FR until he can sell some more X and pay to pound his pud.
From what I gather from his private reply, he's a real peter pumper.
The poor fellow is broke and depressed.
He never has had a real job; nothing to show for his short sorry life other than huffing away nightly in his circle jerk society meeting.
It's all our fault.
''Vietnam Remains the Only War That America the Anti-American Traitorous Left-Wing Self-Indulgent Baby-Boomer Draft-Dodgers Can't Quit Fighting''
Rather too long for a proper headline, of course, but -- since they can't be bothered with fact, I suppose grammar and style have no place in their ''lives'' either.
I got mine, but there's no way I'm gonna open it.....until now, I never knew a FRail could look sticky.
I took the precaution of putting on my latex exam gloves before opening mine.
You just can't be too careful when dealing with "Gin-Xers"!
Who was "worried" about it? The Nixon haters were getting their rocks off. "Holiday." That's the word I've been trying to think of all these years. It was a holiday -- an extended holiday -- for millions. Some evening TV "news"casts were nothing but Watergate. It was like they were celebrating and reporting how we had just won the World Cup. Those people and some who I worked with were ecstatic.
RE: We haven't succeeded in doing that about Vietnam.
Vietnam was not about Vietnam. It was about the Soviet Union ("wars of liberation"). According to Kennedy friend James "Scotty" Reston it was about Kennedy needing to prove that he was not a wimp after Khrushchev humiliated him in Vienna in 1961. It was about preventing a worse confrontation. The way Washington handled it of course made it a worse confrontation. That is a lesson. That is a reason we "fight" the war over, dummy.
Confronting our enemies sparked violence against the U.S. by our "enemies within."
We are not "fighting the war" over and over, dummy. We are talking about our "enemies within."
We are trying to say look at what happened HERE in the U.S. Look how politics as usual (spying BY BOTH PARTIES on each other and covering it up) was used to destroy a wartime administration of the Party figthing our enemies. Look how it continues, dummy.
I personally post often about one battle in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive. Not to talk about the battle over there but to remind people about what happened HERE, dummy.
It's not surprising that the Civil War and the Vietnam will not "fade away," they are connected. There were two major efforts (at least) to start Civil War II (or revolutions) in those days. One was civil rights radicals and the other pro-communist.
"I don't need no lessons from history, I'm living now." Sure, dummy.
You mean "The War of Northern Agression", aka "The Late Unpleasantness"?
With comments like that, we'll surely remember you with the fondness you so richly deserve...
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