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New Now you're on My Home-ground..
(Will peruse links later; I vas dere, among the many who Saw the horror of our actions there and: then.)
Believe that: this topic will Not 'go away': indefinitely. It-all has yet to be Faced, by other than tiny minorities amidst this dysfunctional tribe.

But that level of horror is today transmuted to the larger-HORROR:
That Murican Jingoism has attenuated not-a-Whit since those 58,000 (of merely Our sacrificial-lambs) were slaughtered
--I expect the Viet number-estimates should be in one of your links.

It is not just that Muricans are willfully-ignorant of our/others'/..world! histories, but that they determinedly
WILL NOT (dare not??) LOOK AT themselves and their ludicrously-lauded VALUEZ. Ever!
(I haven't the basis for any guess about, whether or not such a plurality of the willfully ignorant have ever been 'cured' in history.)
Even when "they had lots of time ... to ponder.." As we do not. Guess we'll see. Eh?

Re. links:

1)

What’s remarkable is how little discussion there is of this. Turse has uncovered emphatic and undeniable evidence, much of it from the US military’s own archives, that US war crimes in the Vietnam war were not only endemic but systematic. If you were unfamiliar with US politics, you’d expect this to cause a major public scandal, soul searching and all of that.



2)

"We won the war after we left, in effect," he told the New York Times in 1991. "One of our great strategic aims was to stop the Communist advance in Southeast Asia, and when you look at Southeast Asia today, the Communists have made no gains. Today, Vietnam is a basket case run by a bunch of old men and is a threat to no one but itself."



3) Bad addy: http://crookedtimber.org/ happens to feature this on Home. No way to find your intended #
But Ken L's early response seems both adequate and sufficient:


Ken_L 08.16.13 at 11:33 am
The absence of discussion is remarkable but neither surprising nor hard to understand. The implications of the information are so incompatible with Americans’ self-image that the information is either rejected as too obviously untrue to warrant serious consideration, or ridiculed as liberal lies intended to weaken The Homeland.

One sees the same thing with regard to the invasion of Iraq – even the slightest suggestion that this was abominable behaviour that placed the USA on the same level as other nations that have waged aggressive war over the years was violently rejected as unthinkable. There is no need to make a reasoned rebuttal because the accusation is so self-evidently false. People Like Us just don’t do that sort of thing.

The frenzied reaction to Obama’s acknowledgement that America might have actually made some mistakes in its past foreign policy (“Apology tour!”) is a symptom of the same mindset, as is the refusal to concede that Islamic terrorism is anything but the irrational lashing out of a crazed religion hell-bent on murder and mayhem because jihad. When your sense of identity depends utterly on a sense of moral superiority – American exceptionalism! the last best hope of mankind! – any suggestion that really you are just like everyone else has to be met with either a furious response or ignored completely. Trying to engage with the threat in a reasoned way admits the possibility that there is some truth in it, and that opens such unthinkable consequences that it cannot be entertained.



Surprised at your final comment re. ..much good coming from it ... [??]
Since these failures within the zeitgeist or, say, Die schlimmer zeit: ensuing as direct result of The Cheney Shogunate and its clear responsibility for
--not mere spiritual bankruptcy but actual Financial bankruptcy too:
What could be more relevant Now? than to follow the chain of evidence from Vietnam through 'Grenada' and all the other little wars-of-convenience,
culminating in the remaining Invasion-caused one, adjacent to the Other/optional Invadee--as today also seems nowhere-near 'stable'. (Both shall be Failed Nations, de facto.)

Why do that?
What, because this recent evidence must be 'processed' within Our Own dysfunctional warring-tribes, busily dismantling about every single 'thing'
(within a previous America: perhaps Worth fighting-for?) there's no point in even trying to mention/then Face ... Root Causes of our self-inflicted utter-incompetence to Self-rule?
I believe it is impossible to over-state the direness of 'Our' current predicament, wherein virtually every facet of living/governing/thinking! is afloat
in a miasma of Intentional-lies, crass manipulation by the Ruling-plutocracy, while now >Half are said to be living 'at poverty level'.

Simple KISS, really: IF Muricans can be neither cajoled NOR bludgeoned into Facing -->| just a few root-Causes of their ongoing discontent with Rule-by-plutocrats, (say)
then none-of-the-above is conceivably reversible.
Are you then ready to cease efforts merely because the odds Are so pathetic?

(Hey! I'm almost there; should there ever Be a Tea-Senate [..a distinct possibility, say several], I'll peddle my cottage-on-land: quite attractive to a current crop of Gentry)
and decide: where next to hang-out until the people start disrobing at bus stops (they appear too-Chicken/befuddled to actually Do Anything, yet.)
IF: Tea-Senate THEN: might as well call 'US' Egypt-West? as, total-gridlock next --> we Shall sink-past several tipping-points, irrevocably.
Sane, creeping -gradualism/patience? at all these inflection points, what's that called.

Et tu, Brute--already? :-0
New cmon ash old news
if you cant find the indians you want to kill, kill the indians you can find. US military 101
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
New I was too terse again.
Please understand that I agree that the war wasn't "winnable" and that too many agendas were wrapped up in a perfect storm that managed to ramp it up to an obscene degree. I've mentioned earlier watching TV news in the late '60s and wondering why we couldn't "win" and come home, and wondering if I was going to be drafted, too...

It was a tragedy for too many people and had ramifications far beyond what too many Americans think they know (Khmer Rouge, especially).

While we as a country do need to understand that war, its causes, our actions, and the aftermath much better than we do, my comment was to try to express my feeling that it would be pointless to try to have a national conversation about it now. The Republicans can't agree that we need to fund the government and protect its "full faith and credit". They have spent 5+ years trying to convince people that the president is a foriegner who wants to throw them in internment camps. There is no conceivable way that I can see that a rational discussion can be had with them when it comes to what Vietnam means and what happened there. Something that we don't need now is yet more screaming from the Teabaggers and the crazies. :-(

When's the right time? Unfortunately, like some of the CrookedTimber comments say, its probably after that generation has passed. Kerry and others tried during the "Winter Soldier" meetings. And yes, it would have helped to have that conversation before we invaded Iraq, and millions of people in the streets tried to make that happen, but it didn't work. :-( We're a stubborn bunch...

You may be right that we need to fight them now, or fight them later. I dunno. I've got too many memories of voters being swayed by crap like flag burning amendments and "traditional marriage" to think that rationality would finally win out this time. As "fuckwit" said in an earlier comment from B-J, you don't want to get people angry - you want to get them determined to make things right. Change doesn't come unless some large fraction of the middle can be persuaded to join you - and they don't do that if they're thinking with their vestigial lizard brain...

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New I do see these logical points;
yet they miss the nature of the Problem, IMO. I've come to the conclusion that, when people are THIS muddled, something.. Something!.. ...
(Which some call, a Conscious or Consciousness-Shock!) seems necessary for any next Big Picture to emerge, At. All.

Now.. 'delivering' such a Thing, if a one/or many imagine to attempt that? is by no means via some 'algorithm' or other formulaic ritual (as I hope is obvious.)
Past events as fit the concept have been of the horrific kind: remember *Kitty Genovese? (..stories heard about the event, for most here. I recall it LIve.)
http://en.wikipedia....of_Kitty_Genovese
* Note that the conflicting early reports, later clarifications are irrelevant to the theme thus the immediately evoked SHAME everywhere.
(Today with instant-Everything: no words needed re any comparable event.)

(Event occurred in the neighborhood where I spent two summers as a tyke: Kew Gardens, LI, NYC.)
This execrable example of peoples' ennui.. to an. inhuman. degree. prompted Lots of soul-searching. SHAME did that.
In today's morass, amidst an unprecedented environment of such deadly composition that, Lying is so expected that ... it's Not Even Noticed [anyone want to debate that assertion?]
methinks that SHAME--or an equivalently-Visceral emotion--must Needs be galvanized via some event aka Wake-UP! Call

You can't just choreograph such an event, of course. But for any who verify the psychological soundness of the 'process':
I do hope that a massive-SHOCK >IS< delivered to the cadaverous psyches of.. just too-bloody-Many people, seen to be somnambulists/sleep-walkers du jour.

With Language-murder now an hourly occurrence already: no amount/quality of more-Rhetoric or Doom-filled (or Unicorn-filled) verbal images: will come close, IMhO.
(OT?/Precisely relevant?) Obama is a Master at 'inspirational messages'
--and That ability/confounded by his other quirks, weaknesses, and propensity for re-hiring perps who Caused Finance to implode, Etc. and too-many Etcs.
--maybe adequately limns today's weariness with [Rhetoric]: however slick.

I have some ideas, know I'm not alone re this trajectory; realize also that--we are never taught 'How-to' actualize a psychological effect towards some specificity, like:
(say) WAKE UP! Mofos!--gehabt kindern--'these guys hate your guts and just want your assets: All of them'. ..well, any that survived '08.




Luck to us all on the Zyklon B Project.



Law above fear, justice above law, mercy above justice, love above all.
     Farrell at WaMo: Vietnam and Historical Forgetting. - (Another Scott) - (10)
         Winter Soldiers - (dmcarls) - (3)
             Thanks for the well-organized Source. - (Ashton) - (2)
                 The video from ITN. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                     That would be why a lot of us non-USers - (jake123)
         Now you're on My Home-ground.. - (Ashton) - (3)
             cmon ash old news - (boxley)
             I was too terse again. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                 I do see these logical points; - (Ashton)
         It might be a nice gesture - (rcareaga) - (1)
             Boxley... Pay Attention!!! - (folkert)

Build a 10-mile high titanium wall around the whole shebang.
46 ms