Nam greybeards

[AnonymousIV]

Should I have trusted them?

 

[Trajan]

Noam Chomskey is not a person I would look to for support in your efforts. He was, and still is, an ardent supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You need to get your head on a little straighter before engaging in a discussion like this.

Read what I wrote a bit more closely, please. I recommended reading Robert McNamara's book as a primary source of information and Chomsky's on-line compendium as a secondary source for those who reading a whole book is too daunting a task.

So read the excerpted quote again, this time being mindful that it is McNamara's quote. Not Chomsky's. The quote tells the whole tale. What Chomsky has to say is redundant. You can agree with it if you wish to or reject it if you choose. It doesn't change a thing.

and here we go-

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

do you understand the differences between "values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"?

 

[MikeK]

Noam Chomskey is not a person I would look to for support in your efforts. He was, and still is, an ardent supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You need to get your head on a little straighter before engaging in a discussion like this.

Read what I wrote a bit more closely, please. I recommended reading Robert McNamara's book as a primary source of information and Chomsky's on-line compendium as a secondary source for those who reading a whole book is too daunting a task.

So read the excerpted quote again, this time being mindful that it is McNamara's quote. Not Chomsky's. The quote tells the whole tale. What Chomsky has to say is redundant. You can agree with it if you wish to or reject it if you choose. It doesn't change a thing.

and here we go-

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

do you understand the differences between "values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"?

I don't care what McNamara ascribes his monumental error to. The fact remains he was absoluely and consistently wrong in his decisions to continuously maintain and escalate the fighting in Vietnam. And it isn't as if he weren't challenged about it by many voices in the protest movement, which he arrogantly, often contemptuously, dismissed -- and by doing so cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans, not to mention the tens of thousands who were maimed and/or disfigured, captured and tortured, and the fortune in treasure he imperiously wasted.

Who cares why he was wrong? The fact is Vietnam was an unnecessary mistake. That is the only point I wished to make here but you and a few others here seem determined to disagree in the face of historical evidence.

 

[Trajan]

Read what I wrote a bit more closely, please. I recommended reading Robert McNamara's book as a primary source of information and Chomsky's on-line compendium as a secondary source for those who reading a whole book is too daunting a task.

So read the excerpted quote again, this time being mindful that it is McNamara's quote. Not Chomsky's. The quote tells the whole tale. What Chomsky has to say is redundant. You can agree with it if you wish to or reject it if you choose. It doesn't change a thing.

and here we go-

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

do you understand the differences between "values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"?

I don't care what McNamara ascribes his monumental error to. The fact remains he was absoluely and consistently wrong in his decisions to continuously maintain and escalate the fighting in Vietnam. And it isn't as if he weren't challenged about it by many voices in the protest movement, which he arrogantly, often contemptuously, dismissed -- and by doing so cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans, not to mention the tens of thousands who were maimed and/or disfigured, captured and tortured, and the fortune in treasure he imperiously wasted.

Who cares why he was wrong? The fact is Vietnam was an unnecessary mistake. That is the only point I wished to make here but you and a few others here seem determined to disagree in the face of historical evidence.

hey you brought him up, I didn't. You posted a quote of his you thought was germane, I commented.

and guess what? hindsight is 20 20.....get over it.

 

[AnonymousIV]

"values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"? ~ I understand values and intentions cause judgement to be wrong. I have to stop and honor the VietNam veteran. Thank-you for your service to our country and thanks for leading us through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and having our backs at the same time.

 

[MikeK]

"values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"? ~ I understand values and intentions cause judgement to be wrong. I have to stop and honor the VietNam veteran. Thank-you for your service to our country and thanks for leading us through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and having our backs at the same time.

What you fail to understand is your patronizing expression of gratitude tends to perpetuate the mistaken notion that the fighting in Vietnam somehow served the interests of our Nation when in fact the opposite is true. You might as well thank Robert McNamara for his "service to our country." After all, if it weren't for him we might never have had the opportunity to kill 58,000 of our young men and cripple tens of thousands more -- for no good reason.

While Vietnam veterans deserve our sympathy for being exploited by a corrupt and incompetent government the only entity who has a valid reason to express gratitude for the unnecessary ordeal our troops suffered in Vietnam is the Military Industrial Complex. The problem with assuming a subjectively grateful public posture is it enables repetitions of the same kind of unnecessary military aggressions like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Try examining the situation objectively and see it for what it is, not what you'd like it to be.

 

[SFC Ollie]

Take your sympathy and stick it where the sun don't shine. We neither want nor need it.

 

[Trajan]

"values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"? ~ I understand values and intentions cause judgement to be wrong. I have to stop and honor the VietNam veteran. Thank-you for your service to our country and thanks for leading us through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and having our backs at the same time.

What you fail to understand is your patronizing expression of gratitude tends to perpetuate the mistaken notion that the fighting in Vietnam somehow served the interests of our Nation when in fact the opposite is true. You might as well thank Robert McNamara for his "service to our country." After all, if it weren't for him we might never have had the opportunity to kill 58,000 of our young men and cripple tens of thousands more -- for no good reason.

While Vietnam veterans deserve our sympathy for being exploited by a corrupt and incompetent government the only entity who has a valid reason to express gratitude for the unnecessary ordeal our troops suffered in Vietnam is the Military Industrial Complex. The problem with assuming a subjectively grateful public posture is it enables repetitions of the same kind of unnecessary military aggressions like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Try examining the situation objectively and see it for what it is, not what you'd like it to be.

Try examining the situation objectively

take your own advice bub.

 

[Dot Com]

So the Nam vets got dealt a bad card - inept leadership in a fringe war againat not-very -good foe.

And lost in the long run.

Feel their pain - as I do for the Korea vets -but some of them got in on WW2

"A not very good foe"??? To quote two people:
McNamara admission reopens the wounds of Vietnam - Baltimore Sun

WASHINGTON -- Robert S. McNamara's confession in his recently published memoirs that the Vietnam War was "terribly wrong" has revived painful memories and shown the country to be almost as bitterly divided about the conflict now as it was a generation ago.

Mr. McNamara, defense secretary under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, has been deluged with criticism on the airwaves and in print for saying only now that the war was unwinnable, instead of saying it at a time when he could have hastened its end.

he has said that one of the chief lessons is that U.S. officials at the time "consistently underestimated the power of nationalism" to propel the Vietnamese Communists to victory and that the United States should stay out of similar conflicts, such as in Bosnia.

"You cannot confront the powers of nationalism with external military force after the state has begun to dissolve," he said on ABC's "Nightline."

Walter Sobchak:

The man in the black pajamas, Dude. Worthy fuckin' adversary.

 

[westwall]

Noam Chomskey is not a person I would look to for support in your efforts. He was, and still is, an ardent supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You need to get your head on a little straighter before engaging in a discussion like this.

Read what I wrote a bit more closely, please. I recommended reading Robert McNamara's book as a primary source of information and Chomsky's on-line compendium as a secondary source for those who reading a whole book is too daunting a task.

So read the excerpted quote again, this time being mindful that it is McNamara's quote. Not Chomsky's. The quote tells the whole tale. What Chomsky has to say is redundant. You can agree with it if you wish to or reject it if you choose. It doesn't change a thing.

I did, McNamara is a self serving prick, responsible for the needless deaths of thousands of GI's due to his incompetent micro management.

 

[Dot Com]

Noam Chomskey is not a person I would look to for support in your efforts. He was, and still is, an ardent supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You need to get your head on a little straighter before engaging in a discussion like this.

Read what I wrote a bit more closely, please. I recommended reading Robert McNamara's book as a primary source of information and Chomsky's on-line compendium as a secondary source for those who reading a whole book is too daunting a task.

So read the excerpted quote again, this time being mindful that it is McNamara's quote. Not Chomsky's. The quote tells the whole tale. What Chomsky has to say is redundant. You can agree with it if you wish to or reject it if you choose. It doesn't change a thing.

I did, McNamara is a self serving prick, responsible for the needless deaths of thousands of GI's due to his incompetent micro management.

That is not the major point of McNamara's contrition
Robert McNamara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"[h]e concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life. In 1995, he took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir that it was 'wrong, terribly wrong.'" In return, he faced a "firestorm of scorn" at that time

 

[AnonymousIV]

"values and intentions" and "judgment and capabilities"? ~ I understand values and intentions cause judgement to be wrong. I have to stop and honor the VietNam veteran. Thank-you for your service to our country and thanks for leading us through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and having our backs at the same time.

What you fail to understand is your patronizing expression of gratitude tends to perpetuate the mistaken notion that the fighting in Vietnam somehow served the interests of our Nation when in fact the opposite is true. You might as well thank Robert McNamara for his "service to our country." After all, if it weren't for him we might never have had the opportunity to kill 58,000 of our young men and cripple tens of thousands more -- for no good reason.

While Vietnam veterans deserve our sympathy for being exploited by a corrupt and incompetent government the only entity who has a valid reason to express gratitude for the unnecessary ordeal our troops suffered in Vietnam is the Military Industrial Complex. The problem with assuming a subjectively grateful public posture is it enables repetitions of the same kind of unnecessary military aggressions like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Try examining the situation objectively and see it for what it is, not what you'd like it to be.

I am a retired Marine and do see it objectively. I worked with Vietnam vets everyday I served and I know them. They were determined to lead us through the next war, they had learned and they were for passing back the knowledge. You see they were alive and kicking when war was not at hand. We had 20 years of relative peace, who did that the Vietnam vets or the government? See that objectively.

Also body count is best estimates 26,320 Iraqi insurgents. Was the American government suppose to overlook that as fantasy?

 

[High_Gravity]

asshole LOSERS IMO

Fuck you.

I stand along side my fellow Nam vets every month, and among us are Vets from the gulf, Korea, and WW2.

And even the lowest of them is miles above your ass.

Sergeant First Class
US Army Retired
1971 -1993

And in case you didn't understand the first time:

FUCK YOU!

Sarge lit Ginscps bitch ass on fire!

 

[High_Gravity]

glad I wasnt one of them

lost the war

Vietnam was not a war and we neither won nor lost.

There was no good reason for our troops being there and the compromising circumstances under which they were forced to function amounted to shameful misuse of our military resources. I was part of the protest movement which ultimately forced an end to that debacle and I am glad to have done that.

You know, I have heard quite a few Americans say Vietnam was not a war but a police action, does anyone know if the Vietnamese felt the same way about this? I am pretty damn sure they considered the American interventions in Vietnam a war.

 

[westwall]

glad I wasnt one of them

lost the war

Vietnam was not a war and we neither won nor lost.

There was no good reason for our troops being there and the compromising circumstances under which they were forced to function amounted to shameful misuse of our military resources. I was part of the protest movement which ultimately forced an end to that debacle and I am glad to have done that.

You know, I have heard quite a few Americans say Vietnam was not a war but a police action, does anyone know if the Vietnamese felt the same way about this? I am pretty damn sure they considered the American interventions in Vietnam a war.

Yep, "police action" is a legal term promulgated by the Democrats running the show. The guys fighting and dying would sure disagree with them.

 

[High_Gravity]

Vietnam was not a war and we neither won nor lost.

There was no good reason for our troops being there and the compromising circumstances under which they were forced to function amounted to shameful misuse of our military resources. I was part of the protest movement which ultimately forced an end to that debacle and I am glad to have done that.

You know, I have heard quite a few Americans say Vietnam was not a war but a police action, does anyone know if the Vietnamese felt the same way about this? I am pretty damn sure they considered the American interventions in Vietnam a war.

Yep, "police action" is a legal term promulgated by the Democrats running the show. The guys fighting and dying would sure disagree with them.

The way I see it, when you send your Military into a foreign country to exchange fire with an enemy, its a war no matter how you slice it, this whole police action thing is crazy talk, our men and women were not in Vietnam to arrest drunk drivers and jay walkers here.

 

[AnonymousIV]

Saw a Marines calling card, read wars fought, police actions too. I have a school classmate his dad was killed in VietNam, he says police action. We all know it was an inherited war from France, and supplied by communist red China.

 

[MikeK]

glad I wasnt one of them

lost the war

Vietnam was not a war and we neither won nor lost.

There was no good reason for our troops being there and the compromising circumstances under which they were forced to function amounted to shameful misuse of our military resources. I was part of the protest movement which ultimately forced an end to that debacle and I am glad to have done that.

You know, I have heard quite a few Americans say Vietnam was not a war but a police action, does anyone know if the Vietnamese felt the same way about this? I am pretty damn sure they considered the American interventions in Vietnam a war.

You can be sure they considered the American presence there to be an unwanted military aggression -- just as you would consider the presence of an invading force of Vietnamese military in your home town.

 

[MikeK]

The way I see it, when you send your Military into a foreign country to exchange fire with an enemy, its a war no matter how you slice it, this whole police action thing is crazy talk, our men and women were not in Vietnam to arrest drunk drivers and jay walkers here.

You see it this way because you are too young to remember when your country was at war, which was back in the early 1940s.

Although our government sent components of our military resources into the jungles of Vietnam without provocation to fight and die for the purpose of wrongfully interfering in that nation's civil war does not mean our Country was at war. And the main reason for the distinction is the North Vietnamese had done nothing aggressive to the U.S. nor did they represent a threat to the United States. And while this outrageous misuse of our troops was going on your life proceeded without the slightest disruption or concern. For the average American citizen the fighting in Vietnam was a curious abstraction.

I was a boy of six when Pearl Harbor was bombed. While most of my recollections of the atmosphere and events throughout the next four years are comparatively vague I do retain some vivid memories, such as the wailing of my Aunt when the Western Union lady stopped at our house that day to deliver the dreaded black-bordered telegram.

At that time our Country was in grave danger of being invaded and occupied by two very powerful military forces and our troops were dying by the dozens, hundreds or thousands almost every day of the week. We heard stories on the radio every evening about such places as Bataan, Corregidor, Saipan, The Bulge, North Africa, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Tarawa, Tinian, Guadalcanal. People had good cause to be afraid and although I was just a little boy I felt that fear very clearly.

My mother, a very religious Catholic, prayed and cried every night. My aunt worked at a night-shift job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard welding armor plate on warships. My brother and I went around with pails they gave us to collect scrap metal, nylon stockings and rubber. Every day in school the teacher collected dimes for "War Stamps" which were pasted in a booklet. When the booklet was filled we got a "War Bond."

Everything was rationed. Those who owned cars were allotted gasoline based on their need. Things like sugar, coffee, some meats, stockings, anything made of metal or rubber, etc., were either rare luxuries or were never seen. There were blackouts at least once a week and the Reserves set up anti-aircraft guns and searchlights at certain intersections in cities like Brooklyn and Manhattan.

I'll end it here with assurance to you that if our Country ever goes to war again, either we all will be vaporized or you will know what war is and is not.

 

[westwall]

The way I see it, when you send your Military into a foreign country to exchange fire with an enemy, its a war no matter how you slice it, this whole police action thing is crazy talk, our men and women were not in Vietnam to arrest drunk drivers and jay walkers here.

You see it this way because you are too young to remember when your country was at war, which was back in the early 1940s.

Although our government sent components of our military resources into the jungles of Vietnam without provocation to fight and die for the purpose of wrongfully interfering in that nation's civil war does not mean our Country was at war. And the main reason for the distinction is the North Vietnamese had done nothing aggressive to the U.S. nor did they represent a threat to the United States. And while this outrageous misuse of our troops was going on your life proceeded without the slightest disruption or concern. For the average American citizen the fighting in Vietnam was a curious abstraction.

I was a boy of six when Pearl Harbor was bombed. While most of my recollections of the atmosphere and events throughout the next four years are comparatively vague I do retain some vivid memories, such as the wailing of my Aunt when the Western Union lady stopped at our house that day to deliver the dreaded black-bordered telegram.

At that time our Country was in grave danger of being invaded and occupied by two very powerful military forces and our troops were dying by the dozens, hundreds or thousands almost every day of the week. We heard stories on the radio every evening about such places as Bataan, Corregidor, Saipan, The Bulge, North Africa, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Tarawa, Tinian, Guadalcanal. People had good cause to be afraid and although I was just a little boy I felt that fear very clearly.

My mother, a very religious Catholic, prayed and cried every night. My aunt worked at a night-shift job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard welding armor plate on warships. My brother and I went around with pails they gave us to collect scrap metal, nylon stockings and rubber. Every day in school the teacher collected dimes for "War Stamps" which were pasted in a booklet. When the booklet was filled we got a "War Bond."

Everything was rationed. Those who owned cars were allotted gasoline based on their need. Things like sugar, coffee, some meats, stockings, anything made of metal or rubber, etc., were either rare luxuries or were never seen. There were blackouts at least once a week and the Reserves set up anti-aircraft guns and searchlights at certain intersections in cities like Brooklyn and Manhattan.

I'll end it here with assurance to you that if our Country ever goes to war again, either we all will be vaporized or you will know what war is and is not.

That was "TOTAL WAR" and the rationing was useless as it turned out. However, the scale was certainly much greater. But, if you want to play a niggling little game, just calculate the number of casualties suffered during WWII based on the amount of people actually involved at the sharp end of the stick vs the same metrics in Vietnam.

You will discover something interesting.