I am trying to write less, but am going to choose not to resist the impulse to make a few obvious comments.
1. Ho Chi Minh helped found the French Communist Party around 1920. He was a Communist aligned with the Soviet Union from its earliest existence.
2. He had what amounted to his henchman, General Giap, focus his efforts not on the Japanese when they were occupied in the Forties, but upon rival National leaders, many of whom were assassinated.
3. One of the first things he did when he got control of the North in the 1954-55-56 was murder a percentage of each village and town in the areas under his control. Bernard Fall, if memory serves, documented this.
4. The Vietnam War was ALWAYS an effort by the United States to help the South resist an invasion by the North. Most of the so-called Vietcong were men conscripted against their will by NVA terrorists in their villages, who would rape their wives and daughters, kill their sons and brothers, steal everything they owned, and generally make their lives hell whether they fought or not.
5. The bombing of North Vietnam was always so half hearted and militarily idiotic that it made little military difference. But when we DID bomb the North seriously, it took WEEKS to bring the war to an end. That happened around 1972, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed.
6. The reason we remember the Vietnam War as lost, despite the FACT that we had a peace treaty signed on favorable terms to us and the South, is that Democrats in Congress, under the thrall of skillful Communist lies (lying being the one thing they are good at in addition to amoral violence) basically retreated from a victory the deaths of nearly 60,000 American soldiers had honorably won.
7. If Barry Goldwater had won in 1964 we would have no more memory of the "war in Vietnam" than we have the war on the Barbary Pirates under Jefferson. It would not have been a big deal, would not have lasted long, and would not have divided our nation. He either would have withdrawn our advisors, or made the North hurt so bad they stopped sending their troops across the internationally recognized border.
Kissingers legacy is complicated, more complicated in my world than any of you can imagine, but the real crime with regard to Vietnam is that we turned a nation that had actually undergone significant land reform and genuine liberalization over to bloodthirsty psychopaths, who murdered hundreds of thousands of people immediately, broke apart millions of families, destroyed all traditional villages and their cultures, kidnapped hundreds of thousands of kids from their parents to be brainwashed, and impoverished and immiserated an entire nation for NOTHING. Nothing good happened. The war against America merely became a war against Difference and Diversity. Now, they are locked into 1975, just as Cuba is locked into the early 1960's.
While I generally agree with your comment, Vietnam, while repressive like China and other communist countries, is not as stagnant as Cuba or North Korea. According to Wikipedia: "Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies of the 21st century. Vietnam has high levels of corruption, censorship, environmental issues and a poor human rights record; the country ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion and ethnic minorities." There is also a reasonable amount of American tourism. I was in Vietnam in 1970-71 and, while my tour wasn't nearly as bad as most (i.e., not infantry), I have no desire to return.
I will add: what do you think is better for business for arms suppliers and the bankers who fund everything? A short war, fought skillfully with a minimum loss of American lives, or a long term war, fought stupidly with maximal inefficiency, and concluded poorly with much loss of equipment? Johnson did their work. Nixon ended it, and paid for it with his job and reputation. Such seems plausible, in any event.
I might note that the man who warned of the rise of a "Military-Industrial Complex" was one of the few five star Generals we have had.
I couldn't pass that up. In any event, I didn't. I won't get started on JFK's asssassination, other than to note both that a Secret Service man on his detail recently offered testimony making the "Magic Bullet" idea impossible--necessitating at least one more shooter; and the team of ER doctors who were the first to see JFK's body testified that the fatal bullet seemed obviously to have entered from the front, and that the body shown in the official autopsy seemed to have been altered with plastic surgery so that it no longer looked like what they had seen, which of course many "conspiracy" theorists have long claimed.
These two items were in mainstream news.
I think my problem is that I have never been OK with going along to get along. I understand that there is a Narrative, and that my life is easier if I just pretend it makes sense to me. But I know there are a lot of sick and stupid people out there, and that although I don't know their percentages relative to the overall population, it seems obvious that they are highly represented in government and media, and that they do little but lie to cover up egregious crimes committed for money, sex and power.
The first piece, on "the paranoid style", amounts to integration propaganda that could easily have been authored in Langley or the Albert Embankment. Nothing to see here, says a seemingly erudite and well intentioned man of honor and integrity.
I don’t know if we will ever know what happened that day in Dallas. But I do know the Warren Commission Report is not it. Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency regarding the president’s head wounds. The autopsy does not reflect what was seen by those at Parkland. And 60 years later, both Trump and Biden have refused to release the remaining documents. What does this all mean? I’m not sure. But Mr. Tinline’s attitude is no different than what we see today in the attempts to control what can be said/heard. I’m sure Mr. Tinline is an avid supporter of “combating disinformation”.
I am trying to write less, but am going to choose not to resist the impulse to make a few obvious comments.
1. Ho Chi Minh helped found the French Communist Party around 1920. He was a Communist aligned with the Soviet Union from its earliest existence.
2. He had what amounted to his henchman, General Giap, focus his efforts not on the Japanese when they were occupied in the Forties, but upon rival National leaders, many of whom were assassinated.
3. One of the first things he did when he got control of the North in the 1954-55-56 was murder a percentage of each village and town in the areas under his control. Bernard Fall, if memory serves, documented this.
4. The Vietnam War was ALWAYS an effort by the United States to help the South resist an invasion by the North. Most of the so-called Vietcong were men conscripted against their will by NVA terrorists in their villages, who would rape their wives and daughters, kill their sons and brothers, steal everything they owned, and generally make their lives hell whether they fought or not.
5. The bombing of North Vietnam was always so half hearted and militarily idiotic that it made little military difference. But when we DID bomb the North seriously, it took WEEKS to bring the war to an end. That happened around 1972, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed.
6. The reason we remember the Vietnam War as lost, despite the FACT that we had a peace treaty signed on favorable terms to us and the South, is that Democrats in Congress, under the thrall of skillful Communist lies (lying being the one thing they are good at in addition to amoral violence) basically retreated from a victory the deaths of nearly 60,000 American soldiers had honorably won.
7. If Barry Goldwater had won in 1964 we would have no more memory of the "war in Vietnam" than we have the war on the Barbary Pirates under Jefferson. It would not have been a big deal, would not have lasted long, and would not have divided our nation. He either would have withdrawn our advisors, or made the North hurt so bad they stopped sending their troops across the internationally recognized border.
Kissingers legacy is complicated, more complicated in my world than any of you can imagine, but the real crime with regard to Vietnam is that we turned a nation that had actually undergone significant land reform and genuine liberalization over to bloodthirsty psychopaths, who murdered hundreds of thousands of people immediately, broke apart millions of families, destroyed all traditional villages and their cultures, kidnapped hundreds of thousands of kids from their parents to be brainwashed, and impoverished and immiserated an entire nation for NOTHING. Nothing good happened. The war against America merely became a war against Difference and Diversity. Now, they are locked into 1975, just as Cuba is locked into the early 1960's.
While I generally agree with your comment, Vietnam, while repressive like China and other communist countries, is not as stagnant as Cuba or North Korea. According to Wikipedia: "Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies of the 21st century. Vietnam has high levels of corruption, censorship, environmental issues and a poor human rights record; the country ranks among the lowest in international measurements of civil liberties, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion and ethnic minorities." There is also a reasonable amount of American tourism. I was in Vietnam in 1970-71 and, while my tour wasn't nearly as bad as most (i.e., not infantry), I have no desire to return.
Wow
I will add: what do you think is better for business for arms suppliers and the bankers who fund everything? A short war, fought skillfully with a minimum loss of American lives, or a long term war, fought stupidly with maximal inefficiency, and concluded poorly with much loss of equipment? Johnson did their work. Nixon ended it, and paid for it with his job and reputation. Such seems plausible, in any event.
I might note that the man who warned of the rise of a "Military-Industrial Complex" was one of the few five star Generals we have had.
I couldn't pass that up. In any event, I didn't. I won't get started on JFK's asssassination, other than to note both that a Secret Service man on his detail recently offered testimony making the "Magic Bullet" idea impossible--necessitating at least one more shooter; and the team of ER doctors who were the first to see JFK's body testified that the fatal bullet seemed obviously to have entered from the front, and that the body shown in the official autopsy seemed to have been altered with plastic surgery so that it no longer looked like what they had seen, which of course many "conspiracy" theorists have long claimed.
These two items were in mainstream news.
I think my problem is that I have never been OK with going along to get along. I understand that there is a Narrative, and that my life is easier if I just pretend it makes sense to me. But I know there are a lot of sick and stupid people out there, and that although I don't know their percentages relative to the overall population, it seems obvious that they are highly represented in government and media, and that they do little but lie to cover up egregious crimes committed for money, sex and power.
The first piece, on "the paranoid style", amounts to integration propaganda that could easily have been authored in Langley or the Albert Embankment. Nothing to see here, says a seemingly erudite and well intentioned man of honor and integrity.
Well said. Both comments. As I said to Raziel much of this could not occur with the ease it does if there were a functioning Congress.
I don’t know if we will ever know what happened that day in Dallas. But I do know the Warren Commission Report is not it. Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency regarding the president’s head wounds. The autopsy does not reflect what was seen by those at Parkland. And 60 years later, both Trump and Biden have refused to release the remaining documents. What does this all mean? I’m not sure. But Mr. Tinline’s attitude is no different than what we see today in the attempts to control what can be said/heard. I’m sure Mr. Tinline is an avid supporter of “combating disinformation”.
Mr. Tinline is comfortably ensconced on.his "centrist" perch looking down his nose at us plebes in the trenches.