An interesting comparison of how each the Vietnam years:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/upda...02/02_400.html

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

Why is it Kerry was against the Vietnam war after his service, yet he is for the Iraq and afghanistan war?

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In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-George Orwell

As I understand it, the Vietnam war was a lot like the first Iraq war: North Vietnam invades South Vietnam. The heroic United States steps in to save democracy. A noble cause, to be sure, but a lot of things went very wrong during that war.
The war in Afghanistan and, more controversially, the current Iraq invasion, are supposed to be about protecting national security and not just establishing or re-establishin democracy and/or independence in a particular country.

Nooooo!

Dave, you need to go read some history. It's scary that you might draw such a conclusion. Let me give you a brief history.

In the 30s, native Indochinese tried to gain their independence from France, which controlled the entire peninsula. France refused to grant independence to its colony. During WWII, the whole question was put aside and the Indochinese joined the Allies in the battle against Japan.

After the end of WWII, France still refused to grant independence. France was finally forced out after the battle of Dien Bien Phu in the early 50s.

Unfortunately, President Eisenhower decided to get involved on the behalf of forces in the south. The country was divided into North and South by the UN and the parties involved, but it was agreed upon that this would be a temporary division and that free elections would take place around 1956.

When it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would win the elections (in both the North and the South), we moved to suspend the elections - which were never held. Thus, we were sucked into the morass which became the Vietnamese War.

It was clearly a civil war in which we entered to "stop communism" and to contain Chinese Communism. The strange thing was that the only nation to fight and defeat the Chinese in the previous 100 years had been the Vietnamese - who were traditional enemies of the Chinese.

We backed a Roman Catholic minority which ruled in the late 50s and into the early 60s - when the president of South Vietnam was assinated, apparently with our agreement (perhaps our assistance). The morass got deeper.

In 1964, President Johnson claimed that our gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. In a fit of patriotic fervor, Congresss passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution allowing the US to go to war, which Johnson did. Only later did we find that the entire Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication made up by American inteligence and had never taken place.

Johnson fought the war for four years and Nixon for nearly four more before pulling out. More than 55,000 Americans died and hundreds of thousands more were injured.

If there ever was an invader, it was the French and then the United States.

Please Dave, go back and check some history. It was nothing like the first Iraqi War.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

I stand corrected. :oops: Although you must remember that I didn't have the benefit of one of those wonderful suburban American schools when I was growing up. I actually never learned about the Vietnam war in school, believe it or not ;-)

It's probably all for good, though, since your description might help a lot of people understand why so many people were against the Vietnam war and that it wasn't just hippies with flowers in their har.

I wish there were space to really elaborate on the whole sordid history of Vietnam and our envolvement. It was one of the real low points in American history and was brought to us by both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Here's an interesting piece written back in 1994 on the Gulf of Tonkin incident: http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html

Interestingly enough, the only two Senators to vote against it were Ernest Gruening, a liberal Democraticsenator from Alaska, and Wayne Morse, a Republican (later turned Democrat) from Oregon.

Some good books on the war:

Stanley Karnow - Vietnam - A History - this was the basis for the PBS series on Vietnam. Very evenhanded. Probably fairer than I would ever be.

Niel Sheehan - A Bright and Shining Lie
Dispatches - Michael Herr
David Halberstam - The Best and The Brightest - how we got in.
Phillip Caputo - A Rumor of War
Bernard Fall - Hell in a Very Small Place - the story of Dien Bien Phu - the roots of the war.
Francis Fitzgerald - Fire in the Lake - Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner.

there are probably some others that our more conservative friends might suggest. I've tried to give you a cross-section and those that are considered to be the best books to come out of that awful period.

I tried to find a couple on the anti-war movement but didn't find anything that I would recommend. I'll keep looking. But I recently watched the documentary on the Weather Underground (it was in theaters in 2003, I believe) and ran on POV on PBS last week. It's really a remarkable film - even though it was about a very small segment of the anti-war movement.

I guess my favorite books are:
Theodore Roszak - The Making of the Counterculture
Todd Gitlin - The Sixties - Years of Hope, Years of Rage
David Farber - The Sixties - From Memory to History

I have a hard time with all of these since much of what is being written about was part of my own personal history.

And then there is:
Tom Wolfe - Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - a great read, great fun. About Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, San Francisco and their country-wide trek to Woodstock.

Most of this is pretty political - there are some great books about the cultural stuff that went on during the sixties and early seventies.

Peace and Love

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

Well said Chris, FAIR is a great group that should definitely be supported. And Dave, the first Iraq war had nothing to do with democracy or fairness. We were just hired thugs for rich arab oil barons. Thats it. As for this current war, it has nothing to do with protection from terrorist, WMD's, Democracy, any of that crap. It's about the oil. Of course they have to try and convince the people it's for self-defense, the people are the one's paying for it. But it's not, if anything it's going to increase anti-american sentiment.
On a totally unrelated topic, Allan Greenspan just announced that high oil prices are here to stay, and Chevron/Texaco are announcing record profits.

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In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-George Orwell

Thanks Chris. Very informative article. I'll have to check the Free Library sometime to see if any of those books are in stock.

Absolutely true Dis. One thing that I find ironic is the so called "liberals" who say they want no blood for oil but drive SUVs, live in the suburbs and shop at WalMart. This war is absolutely about maintaining your ridiculous lifestyle that would collapse without the flow of cheap oil.

Instability in the middle east has never caused cheap oil prices, it always increases it. PLus the US could control every oil source in the world, OPEC still sets the price, so why bother (So US oil men could clean up, thats why).

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In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-George Orwell