Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

[Tom Paine 1949]

Fifty three years ago Martin Luther King delivered a speech at the Riverside Cathedral in NYC. It is often ignored, but for me it constituted his real final testament. It would be one year later to the day that he was assassinated.

After his murder (and RFK’s) Nixon was elected. Most historians believe the 1974 Peace Treaty ending the U.S. presence in Vietnam could have been signed in 1969. Those 4 years of continued killing in Vietnam constituted the granite poured over the tomb of the “Great Society,” turning the “War on Poverty” into a “War on the Poor” everywhere, destroying all hope for better race relations in our country.

The clever political calculations of Kissinger and Nixon were more cynical even than the mistakes of Kennedy and Johnson and McNamara. Their prolongation of the War in Vietnam — as “Peace with Honor” was promised and troops were slowly drawn down — profoundly corrupted the nation. No later impeachment or resignation of Nixon over Watergate could cleanse the soul of our body politic, already deeply poisoned in far too many ways.

The answers were all there way back in 1967, as spelled out so clearly by MLK. His speech lucidly covered the war’s history going back to 1945. As in this short excerpt touching on the “War on Poverty,” MLK saw it all before he was cut down:

“It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor – both black and white – through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home...”

— Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

 

[Oddball]

Oh that Nixon....Totally lied to the world about the fake Golf of Tonkin incident, to escalate Vietnam into a hot war.

Oh wait.....

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The Gulf of Tonkin “false flag” excuse for escalation in Vietnam of course occurred under Lyndon Johnson, who also had earlier signed Civil Rights and War on Poverty legislation. He increased our troop presence in Vietnam to half a million. Over all many millions served, and of course the heaviest burden fell disproportionately on black and poor white draftees.

It was crowds shouting “Hey, Hey, LBJ ... How Many Kids Did You Kill Today!” that filled the streets in 1968 — and that perhaps led him not to run for a second term. The arguably hidden forces behind the assassination of JFK may also have played a role in Johnson’s decision to escalate, but of course that is only speculation. In those early days anti-war sentiment was not especially party partisan. Nor was the earlier Southern Civil Rights Movement, which was led by African-Americans themselves, but half-heartedly backed by some Republican and Democratic politicians (outside the South). There were a few prominent Republicans who also opposed the War early on. Humphrey Democrats of course were in favor of continuing the war, as were most Republicans — to the disgust of anti-war protesters.

Another interesting question is whether the Civil Rights Act would have passed at all were it not for Cold War competition with the Soviets. The Jim Crow system was very embarrassing internationally to U.S. rulers in those days. The U.S. looked pretty bad (at least to newly independent African nations) when we claimed to be fighting “for freedom” against the USSR.

 

[Rye Catcher]

Oh that Nixon....Totally lied to the world about the fake Golf of Tonkin incident, to escalate Vietnam into a hot war.

Oh wait.....

We did, we waited. I was on active duty in 1967 when Nixon was running for the Presidency. He ran on "I have a plan" to end the Vietnam War; it proved to be total bullshit. I was on leave in June of '68 and I voted for the first time in the primary election, I cast my vote for RFK. That night I went to the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco with my college girl friend and we saw Bobby announce his win in the CA Primary, and then he went to LA and the rest is history.

 

[there4eyeM]

In every election the American people voted for what appeared to be the shortest path to peace, and they were deceived every time. That war was total folly (including on the part of the Vietnamese, for that matter). It provoked unforeseen and awful consequences. That is how it is similar to the Iraq debacle. But Vietnam tore the soul of America as Iraq tore only the power and prestige. We were already too desensitized to have much human feeling for the wrong we did.

 

[gipper]

“War is the health of the state. “

“Constant war abroad leads to tyranny at home.”

Two truisms Americans have forgotten.

 

[Olde Europe]

— Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisers" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.​

Quite.

In light of the above, let's also take a closer look at the vilification of Iran, or, most prominently at the time, of China, where this malignant "malady within the American spirit" is playing out, acting up, in the most obvious and foreseeable manner. If you haven't seen it play out on here (almost through the entire political spectrum), or in the raging scorn and hatred directed at those standing up against the slanderous denunciation of "Chinatown" (or the WHO, for that matter), you've not been paying attention.

Also, it's almost - almost - funny to read about the series of semi-failed states U.S. meddling helped create in South America, some of which King pointed out, and how they are still, to this very day, part of the U.S. narrative about monsters and dragons abroad to be feared, and guarded against.

But, let's not be naive: The raging malady, with supremacy at its core both within and without, goes hand in hand with fear from those deemed inferior: Those thus mistreated sure will feel the sting, and will be out for revenge, one day - hence the fear. That fear is fungible in times of great political need, to be cooked up and played to so as to divert the nation's attention and energies away from the struggle for a more equitable future, and towards suppression, again, within and without. That's a constituent part of the American psyche, its birth defect, the rightly denoted "malady within the American spirit". Whoever thought the struggle King envisioned was too extensive, too large in scope, is patently wrong. There likely isn't a mirror big enough to fathom its daunting extent.

 

[gipper]

Getting our leaders to change their imperialistic and militaristic ways will be extremely difficult. I’m skeptical it can happen. We are well down this road and history tells us, empires generally self destruct rather than self correct.

The forces arrayed against a peaceful noninterventionist USA, are formidable. The MIC, billionaires, deep state, and MSM are all colluding to continue the warlike status quo. Money, power, and greed drive this engine of destruction.

Sadly way too many Americans think our government’s militaristic and imperialistic actions are justified. They are stuck in the belief that America is a force for good and fully accept the Oligarchy’s propaganda that massive war department budgets are necessary to protect our interests and control our enemies. They can’t see that the “interests” are the interests of the 1% and not the American people and massive war spending only leads to bankruptcy and more suffering at home. They can’t see that our enemies are made up to benefit the oligarchy.

 

[sparky]

America has an identity issue

jmho

~S~

 

[gipper]

America has an identity issue

jmho

~S~

I tend to think we’ve lost our identity.

 

[whitehall]

LBJ created the crisis that brought US Troops to Vietnam and set the rules so that Americans could win every battle and still lose the freaking war. When the V.C. was finally defeated after Tet, Walter Cronkite rushed to Vietnam, donned helmet and flak vest for show and pronounced the Tet victory to be a "stalemate". Just when the V.C. was finally defeated, LBJ quit the fight and tearfully told America he would not run for re-election. V.C. general Giap admitted after the war that he was out of soldiers and out of supplies after Tet but that LBJ's chickenshit move gave him some breathing room. Idiot amateur historians today are desperate to blame Nixon for the whole thing. No surprises here.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

@whitehall—

Well, sure. That is the right-wing retelling of the story....

But I didn’t uniquely blame Nixon, did I? Or make everything a partisan issue. Actually, if what you say were true, you should blame Nixon for not escalating further, for not staying in Vietnam until we won.

In any case, none of what you say addresses the reason we were there in the first place, or the moral issues raised by Martin Luther King, or the wars influence on American society, or on the War on Poverty and black-white relations. In short, it doesn’t have anything to do with what MLK and this post are about ... even were it true.

Another time I might be happy to write about the military aspects of the War in Vietnam or discuss the anti-war movement of which I was a part, but this is just not the place to discuss the Tet Offensive and General Giap, “body counts,” or the HoChiMinh trail.

 

[whitehall]

@whitehall—

Well, sure. That is the right-wing retelling of the story....

But I didn’t uniquely blame Nixon, did I? Or make everything a partisan issue. Actually, if what you say were true, you should blame Nixon for not escalating further, for not staying in Vietnam until we won.

In any case, none of what you say addresses the reason we were there in the first place, or the moral issues raised by Martin Luther King, or the wars influence on American society, or on the War on Poverty and black-white relations. In short, it doesn’t have anything to do with what MLK and this post are about ... even were it true.

Another time I might be happy to write about the military aspects of the War in Vietnam or discuss the anti-war movement of which I was a part, but this is just not the place to discuss the Tet Offensive and General Giap, “body counts,” or the HoChiMinh trail.

Connecting the assassination of MLK to the Nixon administration is a bit of a stretch. Both Kennedy brothers used the FBI to try to undermine the MLK movement and LBJ was a Southern racist but as a democrat he was immune from criticism. Nixon inherited LBJ's mess with a hostile congress and an anti republican media and modern amateur historians still blame him for Vietnam.

 

[Dick Foster]

LBJ created the crisis that brought US Troops to Vietnam and set the rules so that Americans could win every battle and still lose the freaking war. When the V.C. was finally defeated after Tet, Walter Cronkite rushed to Vietnam, donned helmet and flak vest for show and pronounced the Tet victory to be a "stalemate". Just when the V.C. was finally defeated, LBJ quit the fight and tearfully told America he would not run for re-election. V.C. general Giap admitted after the war that he was out of soldiers and out of supplies after Tet but that LBJ's chickenshit move gave him some breathing room. Idiot amateur historians today are desperate to blame Nixon for the whole thing. No surprises here.

Actually it started way before LBJ but he did escalate the hell out of it and got a lot of Americans killed including some friends of mine.
Uncle Ho, a nationalist really, approached America for help as far back as Woodrow Wilson. Then he and every francophillian fuck stick president since ignored Ho because they were all too damn busy sucking up to the fucking frog oppressors. Ho went to the commies simply because he had no other choice.
It took Nixon to get us to hell out of that friggin mess and like Trump he said he would and he made good.
Until that draft dodging lying coward of an asshole POS Clinton and then Obummer came along LBJ topped my list of most hated POS excuses for a president. Somehow the democrats always find a way to reach new lows.

 

[whitehall]

LBJ created the crisis that brought US Troops to Vietnam and set the rules so that Americans could win every battle and still lose the freaking war. When the V.C. was finally defeated after Tet, Walter Cronkite rushed to Vietnam, donned helmet and flak vest for show and pronounced the Tet victory to be a "stalemate". Just when the V.C. was finally defeated, LBJ quit the fight and tearfully told America he would not run for re-election. V.C. general Giap admitted after the war that he was out of soldiers and out of supplies after Tet but that LBJ's chickenshit move gave him some breathing room. Idiot amateur historians today are desperate to blame Nixon for the whole thing. No surprises here.

Actually it started way before LBJ but he did escalate the hell out of it and got a lot of Americans killed including some friends of mine.
Uncle Ho, a nationalist really, approached America for help as far back as Woodrow Wilson. Then he and every francophillian fuck stick president since ignored Ho because they were all too damn busy sucking up to the fucking frog oppressors. Ho went to the commies simply because he had no other choice.
It took Nixon to get us to hell out of that friggin mess and like Trump he said he would and he made good.
Until that draft dodging lying coward of an asshole POS Clinton and then Obummer came along LBJ topped my list of most hated POS excuses for a president. Somehow the democrats always find a way to reach new lows.

It didn't start (in Vietnam) before LBJ's faked Tonkin Gulf Crisis.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

@whitehall—

Well, sure. That is the right-wing retelling of the story....

But I didn’t uniquely blame Nixon, did I? Or make everything a partisan issue. Actually, if what you say were true, you should blame Nixon for not escalating further, for not staying in Vietnam until we won.

In any case, none of what you say addresses the reason we were there in the first place, or the moral issues raised by Martin Luther King, or the wars influence on American society, or on the War on Poverty and black-white relations. In short, it doesn’t have anything to do with what MLK and this post are about ... even were it true.

Another time I might be happy to write about the military aspects of the War in Vietnam or discuss the anti-war movement of which I was a part, but this is just not the place to discuss the Tet Offensive and General Giap, “body counts,” or the HoChiMinh trail.

Connecting the assassination of MLK to the Nixon administration is a bit of a stretch. Both Kennedy brothers used the FBI to try to undermine the MLK movement and LBJ was a Southern racist but as a democrat he was immune from criticism. Nixon inherited LBJ's mess with a hostile congress and an anti republican media and modern amateur historians still blame him for Vietnam.

I agree about the Kennedy brothers early using the FBI to investigate MLK, that LBJ was a typical corrupt Southern Democrat and racist politician throughout his long career, yet even you should recognize the dramatic changes they underwent. LBJ knew his action pushing the Civil Rights bill forward would ruin his party in the South and went ahead anyway, while RFK understood late in life that MLK was right about Vietnam, and much else.

LBJ is hardly immune from criticism. He generally carries the main historical responsibility for the Vietnam disaster. He certainly did in my day. Nixon and Kissinger usually get a pass, or even high marks for their international policies, bringing “Peace with Honor” — or some such sh*t. Of course they also get credit for opening up to China, which you should recall in 1979 attacked VIetnam for its absolutely righteous overthrow of the genocidal Pol Pot regime. That despicable regime’s surviving army and “official government” in the jungle actually continued to be recognized by the U.S. in the councils of the U.N. for another decade. That shows how much the U.S. hated “losing” to the new Vietnamese government.

I put the whole long war together, including the period of Kissinger and Nixon, because in my opinion it was the failure of our country to take responsibility for its bloody errors, our failure to pay reparations, to reassess our wrong policies, that was most poisonous to our souls and our body politic. Just a few years later we would be supporting BinLaden and other Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan.

I don’t expect you to agree with my perspective. But I think MLK would.

 

[harmonica]

.Vietnam was undeniably ''''wrong'''' and unwinnable .....
..the US had ''just'' won the biggest war ever --and '''we'' believed we should/could '''''save'''' the world...it wasn't like we were doing it for nefarious reasons--at least not EVERY one.....plus, we wanted to help our friend France

---signing a treaty in 1969 or whenever meant NOTHING..the North was not going to stop ......as you can clearly see, the treaty meant nothing to the North--they kept going......we were not going to send troops back there and airpower was not going to save the South --as UNDENIABLY was proven

....you are saying the War significantly harmed race relations? and/or it was a primary cause? your OP has not proved that

 

[harmonica]

In every election the American people voted for what appeared to be the shortest path to peace, and they were deceived every time. That war was total folly (including on the part of the Vietnamese, for that matter). It provoked unforeseen and awful consequences. That is how it is similar to the Iraq debacle. But Vietnam tore the soul of America as Iraq tore only the power and prestige. We were already too desensitized to have much human feeling for the wrong we did.

nothing like Iraq
.....we had every reason to DEFEND Kuwait/etc like France and England went to war for Poland ---we had even MORE reason than France and England-

 

[there4eyeM]

In every election the American people voted for what appeared to be the shortest path to peace, and they were deceived every time. That war was total folly (including on the part of the Vietnamese, for that matter). It provoked unforeseen and awful consequences. That is how it is similar to the Iraq debacle. But Vietnam tore the soul of America as Iraq tore only the power and prestige. We were already too desensitized to have much human feeling for the wrong we did.

nothing like Iraq
.....we had every reason to DEFEND Kuwait/etc like France and England went to war for Poland ---we had even MORE reason than France and England-

It should be obvious that "Iraq" in the post referred to the disastrous, illegal invasion under "W".
As for "defending" Kuwait, well, that's another whole thing.

 

[harmonica]

In every election the American people voted for what appeared to be the shortest path to peace, and they were deceived every time. That war was total folly (including on the part of the Vietnamese, for that matter). It provoked unforeseen and awful consequences. That is how it is similar to the Iraq debacle. But Vietnam tore the soul of America as Iraq tore only the power and prestige. We were already too desensitized to have much human feeling for the wrong we did.

nothing like Iraq
.....we had every reason to DEFEND Kuwait/etc like France and England went to war for Poland ---we had even MORE reason than France and England-

It should be obvious that "Iraq" in the post referred to the disastrous, illegal invasion under "W".
As for "defending" Kuwait, well, that's another whole thing.

hahahhahahahah
.....PG2 was a ''continuation'' of PG1 = Iraq was not abiding by the PG1 cease fire!!!....it's not like they sign the cease fire and the NEXT day they violate it! then we find out the NEXT day after that they violated it
....if there was no PG1 there would've been no PG2 = Iraq/saddam created both