georgephillip
Diamond Member
"It is no cliché that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. Unless we are provided an honest accounting of the disgraceful history of the US war on Vietnam, we will be ill equipped to protest the current and future wars conducted in our name."
The Pentagon is ramping up its version of the US invasion/occupation of South Vietnam of one-half-a-century ago. According to Marjorie Cohn, this $30 million program is designed to rewrite and sanitize the millions of deaths the US was directly responsible for in Southeast Asia while stimulating enlistment in and support for today's "Permanent War."
"Indeed, just as Lyndon B. Johnson used the manufactured Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to escalate the Vietnam War, George W. Bush relied on mythical weapons of mass destruction to justify his war on Iraq, and the 'war on terror' to justify his invasion of Afghanistan.
"And Obama justifies his drone wars by citing national security considerations, even though he creates more enemies of the United States as he kills thousands of civilians.
"ISIS and Khorasan (which no one in Syria heard of until about three weeks ago) are the new enemies Obama is using to justify his wars in Iraq and Syria, although he admits they pose no imminent threat to the United States.
"The Vietnam syndrome has been replaced by the 'Permanent War.'"
"Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. A veteran of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement, she is co-author (with Kathleen Gilberd) of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her latest book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues, will be published in October. She is also co-coordinator of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign."
Marjorie Cohn US Government Sanitizes Vietnam War History
The Pentagon is ramping up its version of the US invasion/occupation of South Vietnam of one-half-a-century ago. According to Marjorie Cohn, this $30 million program is designed to rewrite and sanitize the millions of deaths the US was directly responsible for in Southeast Asia while stimulating enlistment in and support for today's "Permanent War."
"Indeed, just as Lyndon B. Johnson used the manufactured Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to escalate the Vietnam War, George W. Bush relied on mythical weapons of mass destruction to justify his war on Iraq, and the 'war on terror' to justify his invasion of Afghanistan.
"And Obama justifies his drone wars by citing national security considerations, even though he creates more enemies of the United States as he kills thousands of civilians.
"ISIS and Khorasan (which no one in Syria heard of until about three weeks ago) are the new enemies Obama is using to justify his wars in Iraq and Syria, although he admits they pose no imminent threat to the United States.
"The Vietnam syndrome has been replaced by the 'Permanent War.'"
"Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. A veteran of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement, she is co-author (with Kathleen Gilberd) of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her latest book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues, will be published in October. She is also co-coordinator of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign."
Marjorie Cohn US Government Sanitizes Vietnam War History