161–170 of 183 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s almost like the veterans have a difficult time being objective. I’ll wait for your dad’s review before getting too critical though.
Are you sure? I've watched a bit of it and it seems to approach the war with 20/20 hindsight. "Oh of course it was wrong to be there". It ignores some of the mindset that got us there in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry but the actions of the Viet Cong do not excuse the crimes committed the US, and neither does the nationality of your parents. To this day, many are maimed and killed by US land mines in the region, and the US does not give a shit.
You're setting up a straw man to an argument I never made. All I'm telling you is how my dad, his brothers, and the vast majority of his first generation Vietnamese friends (who arrived as refugees) feel about America and the Vietnam War. Despite what you may think, they wholeheartedly support America. If you don't believe me, you should try visiting Little Saigon on Bolsa Avenue in Orange Country and ask them what t…
It doesn't lessen the horror of atrocities if the other side did it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ken Burn's recent series on Vietnam is very well made and speaks with participants and stakeholders from across the ideological spectrum. Highly recommended: https://www.netflix.com/title/70202579
I know it's a popular series, and I haven't gotten my dad's response to it because he hasn't watched it, but many war veterans and South Vietnamese military members say it's not a very balanced documentary. https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/29/veterans-angry-disapp... https://www.military.com/off-duty/television/2017/10/02/vete...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're setting up a straw man to an argument I never made. All I'm telling you is how my dad, his brothers, and the vast majority of his first generation Vietnamese friends (who arrived as refugees) feel about America and the Vietnam War. Despite what you may think, they wholeheartedly support America. If you don't believe me, you should try visiting Little Saigon on Bolsa Avenue in Orange Country and ask them what t…
> try visiting Little Saigon on Bolsa Avenue in Orange Country > If you want to get assaulted [..] try bringing Vietnam's current flag and parade it around What a bizarre argument. Of course you're going to find pro-USA sentiment in the very people who decided to move to the USA. I hope you realise that the opinions of a few immigrants in the states are going to be pretty unrepresentative of those who actually live i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're setting up a straw man to an argument I never made. All I'm telling you is how my dad, his brothers, and the vast majority of his first generation Vietnamese friends (who arrived as refugees) feel about America and the Vietnam War. Despite what you may think, they wholeheartedly support America. If you don't believe me, you should try visiting Little Saigon on Bolsa Avenue in Orange Country and ask them what t…
I think you didn't mean it, from your later comments, but you came across as saying we shouldn't only talk about My Lai because the other side did bad things too. Yes, they did bad things, but it doesn't excuse us. We claim we are better. Just like in the Iraq War 2 and our prisons where we treated people horribly, it doesn't excuse it just because someone else also did bad things. I think that's a core principal. It…
That's exactly the point made. The US IS better. Better than the Nazis, better than North Vietnam/Vietnam, better than China (and frankly better than all European states during and immediately after WWI/II at least). Better than North Korea. Better than South Africa.
With better I mean "how people are treated", in the human rights, in general, and only as part of government policy.
And yes, I agree. The US has it's downsides. The US has made mistakes. The difference between a mistake and a government policy is the number of times and the scale at which it happens, and the intent. The US has made mistakes, some of which lead to the death of hundreds, even thousands of people. Some of those mistakes involved the military. It was NOT the intent of any significant fraction of the US to make these events happen.
China, Vietnam, and Germany had a widely supported-by-the-people government policy of massacre. Every organisation in those countries is focused and involved in oppressing and massacring people for some reason. Vietnam's CURRENT government made children watch their own parents getting raped, slowly, and killed, then used them as insane soldier-killers sending them into defenseless villages where they brutally murdered everyone they could. This is NOT a one-off. They did this to children for decades.
The difference is indescribable and it is absurd to even compare the two. They are not on the same moral level, they just aren't. We are better than that, it's just that simple.
That's objectively so, and for some reason a lot of people feel the need to destroy historical views like this.
It may not lessen atrocities on the other side, but we should acknowledge the difference between mistakes and popular government-supported genocide.
Equating them does nothing, other than provide cover for these massacres. Hell, the amount of people talking up Chinese policy seems to be mounting every day. And, of course, the situation of people in China gets worse everytime some high up in the Chinese government thinks censorship is good enough that they can get away with something more.
It pains me to point out the obvious: "anti-racism" has become the leading excuse for racism, inequality and state-based massacres.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know it's a popular series, and I haven't gotten my dad's response to it because he hasn't watched it, but many war veterans and South Vietnamese military members say it's not a very balanced documentary. https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/29/veterans-angry-disapp... https://www.military.com/off-duty/television/2017/10/02/vete...
You have a lot of informed opinions because of course you were close to the war and your family was. I hope to see you continue to share your ideas, even if you are suffering some criticism.
Sadly, similar massacres are happening almost daily in this world. One day you see someone start a twitter campaing like #iamstillalive, the other you see a reports of him being killed in an airstrike with countless other people. People are daily begging on twitter for their lives, to be spared, to someone help them. You can easily find similar images from what you see in this article, from yesterday, day prior, almo…
Link: https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/974073948299284481 Weird to say but now you know why people in China treasures peace a little bit more than freedom. Massacres are common during Japanese invasion[0], and nobody stood up for civilians. The result of that was people got murdered village after village and then burned or lefted there for animals. That collective experience in some degree shaped the political…
That's the narrative of the Chinese authoritarian dictatorship, a convenient one for them, but I've never seen data to back it up, there's plenty of evidence to contradict it, and it's based on a false premise.
The false premise is that freedom is a threat to peace. In fact, it's only a threat to peace of mind of dictators. The most peaceful places in the world are the most free, and as freedom has spread around the world, the levels of violence worldwide has dropped to historic lows. Again, the "peace" they speak of their own peace, not for people the government doesn't like; the people of Tibet, Xinjiang, and elsewhere suffer a lot of violence, perpetrated by the government. The poor have no freedom and are therefore driven from their homes; where is their peace? If people are so happy with the peace the Communist dictatorship provides, why not hold an election - the Communists are sure to win!
Freedom begets peace in part because people with rights live under less threat (their rights protect them; they can protect their property in court; etc.), and people with freedom of speech and voting rights can express their needs verbally and at the ballot box. Cut off those avenues and their needs don't just go away; they turn to guns, insurgencies, civil wars, riots, etc.
That people in China - unlike most other places in the world - would not desire freedom is also plainly false. In the only parts of China where people have the option of freedom, Taiwan and Hong Kong, they value their freedom very much. They also have a much higher standard of living than the non-free parts of China, and freedom from want is also important.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really understand you. I want to know why Americans on both political wings aggressively support their soldiers. I can understand if it's a country being attacked and their own soldiers defend it. But nobody is attacking America. What good did its soldiers do by fighting wars instead of just waiting to defend?
Two reasons: they chose to take the job (which can result in your own death and being ordered to do very difficult things in service to your country) and they are our children, brothers and sisters. Once they chose to serve, they are subject to the orders of our civilian government and so we separate the decision to go to war made by politicians from the decision to potentially die in service to our country made by s…
I heard that in WWI, soldiers were naive and didn't understand what they were getting into. Now though, there's no excuse. Everyone learns history at school and can use Google. So the decision to join should be fairly obviously likely to lead to doing bad things. The US has been nearly continuously at war since WWII, it's not going to suddenly stop when your son joins the army.
Also, how do Americans reconcile that "my family" attitude with the fact that the people they're fighting are also somebody's sons and brothers? It's not seen as equally noble to be an Isis soldier as a US one. What makes the US special other than "my country"?
So, just finished reading the article... I guess everyone should, just for the sense of thoughtfulness it should provoke. The thing is, the perpetrators started out as ordinary young American men. What tipped the balance, to turn them into stone-cold killers? It's not unique to this situation: this is what soldiers eventually tend to do. The ultimate modern example of pure, large scale monstrosity is the Red Army, at…
Stone cold killers is not the right description here. These soldiers, conscripts, were put into the most bizarre, dangerous, depraved situation you could imagine. The stress must have been unreal, in the jungles. They suffered a situational insanity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> try visiting Little Saigon on Bolsa Avenue in Orange Country > If you want to get assaulted [..] try bringing Vietnam's current flag and parade it around What a bizarre argument. Of course you're going to find pro-USA sentiment in the very people who decided to move to the USA. I hope you realise that the opinions of a few immigrants in the states are going to be pretty unrepresentative of those who actually live i…
Actually, Vietnam is one of the most pro-American countries in the world. There was a survey a while and over 90% view the US favorably. You can find it with a google search.