VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[pynchonoid]

RJ:
>And I think the most likely possibility is
> that it was in the
> "interest" of the Vietcong to tell Blood when they
> were going to attack "the
> base" and so ensure Blood's safety 

It is true that a small number of US soldiers wound up
fighting with the Vietnamese against their former
fellow soldiers. I consider that an extreme response
to the criminal war the US was conducting, but an
understandable one.  In the case of soldiers of color,
it seems they found the racial solidarity against the
white invaders a more powerful motivation to fight
than US propaganda. 

RJ:
 >It
> was an actual war between North Vietnam and South
> Vietnam, which were
> sovereign states until 1975, 

Only because the US sabotaged efforts for the two
sides to reunite in the wake of the French defeat, in
the '50s.  Had the US not intervened, Ho Chi Minh
would have united the country, which is precisely what
the US wouldn't permit.

RJ:
>when the North
> Vietnamese army finally ousted
> the South Vietnamese government.

That's not accurate. North Vietnamese regulars
together with the Vietcong guerillas fought for their
victory.

RJ:
> Mobilisation of US troops occurred after LBJ's
> Tonkin Gulf Resolution in
> 1964. Like the recent invasion of Iraq, the
> justification for deploying
> American military forces was based on wrong
> information. 

The better term to describe  what Pres. Johnson and
Bush the Butcher offered as justification, is "lies",
not the euphemized "wrong information". 

>And, as it seems
> might be happening in Iraq now, the American
> military intervention actually
> did more harm than good to the people they were
> supposedly trying to assist.

"Seems"?  No question about it. Begin with little Ali
and his lost arms and the rest of the Iraqi
casualities the US has pointedly refused to count.
It's also true that US commanders have been required
to estimate how many civilian casualties are to be
expected in each air strike against Iraq (a fact that
can be known in advance because of the known margins
of error or failure for weapons "smart" or otherwise)
-- which means they approve in advance these civilian
casualties, a despicable practice that makes it very
difficult to distinguish the US from the terrorist or
terrorist-sponsor enemies it claims to be fighting in
Iraq.  



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