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Message: [QUOTE="connie, post: 2349640, member: 7882"] The important thing to consider here is what is meant by "U.S." (or "us" or "we" or "our" or "America", etc., as used here and in other posts). Neither the Vietnamese nor Vietnam were or are [I]my[/I] enemy. It was not and is not [I]my [/I]war or even "our" war. Rather, U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia (taking 1945 as a somewhat arbitrary starting point) was instituted by high-level government officials, without the slightest knowledge or consent of the general population (nothing unique about that). Those officials certainly [I]knew [/I]the policies they devised, and more importantly [I]why [/I]they were instituted. The now-declassified archive reveals extensive, careful and thoughtful planning, with an eye toward cementing U.S. post-war economic hegemony, to be achieved by establishing U.S. client states in the third-world. This meant undermining and attacking political movements that threatened to constrain U.S. access to third-world markets and resources (including but not limited to cheap labor and raw materials). It also meant installing and/or backing authoritarian regimes, with heavy U.S. economic, military, and diplomatic aid. Again, this is all pretty standard stuff. Should not be surprising. But you would not need to read the documentary record to know that. It is manifested in the historical record. Naturally, given the relations of power the execution of the planning and policy was largely though not entirely successful on a global scale, at least for a time. A case in point is Latin American, where from the 1940s through the 1980s the U.S. government repeatedly intervened--militarily, economically, politically--to thwart movements that posed the threat of independence from the U.S. sphere of influence (I won't review the record, which is readily available.) Those interventions were highly though not completely successful. As for Southeast Asia, the U.S. certainly did not achieve all of its objectives. But it did tend to stem the tide of radical nationalism in that region, albeit at consider, largely unanticipated costs. Naturally, many failed military interventions can be attributable to ignorance or arrogance. But that is merely an instrumental observation. The point is that all this focus on how and why the U.S. government failed to achieve its objectives distracts us from a far more fundamental issue: was the over-arching objective [I]justifiable [/I](regardless of whether its manner of implementation was ill-conceived and ill-advised)? One rarely finds that issue expressly addressed in mainstream discourse addressing "the Vietnam war", largely because it is assumed that U.S. policymakers were selflessly committed to spreading democracy and stopping the spread of communism (which they were, but not for the reasons assumed). Instead, we are invited to honor the dead and shake our heads over the loss of so many of our fine young men, who were lead to their deaths by incompetent and even corrupt politicians "bumbling to do good" (to quote Scotty Reston). Finally, I knew several people (including close family members) whose lives were ruined by the war. But that does not necessarily mean I honor the American dead any more or any less than I would honor the dead from any war. Wars are generally fought by poor sons-of-bitches who get pushed onto a battlefield by rich men and politicians. [/QUOTE]

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