Psycho-Cannon
11-08-03, 06:09 AM
The papers over here in the UK have picked up on what some papers in the states are apparently doing in reviewing the Vietnam war (I think it was the times?) looking at new files dug up from the pentagon etc that show the war crimes of some of America's most elite units.#
In late October, the Toledo [Ohio] Blade published a four-part series detailing horrendous and widespread atrocities committed against civilians in Vietnam in 1967 by an elite US army unit.
Whilst we all know that some funked up shit happened over there and it's not an era to look back on with any kind of pride for our fellow human beings and war a few people are starting to link it to the current war on terror.
It just made me think is this sudden re-view of the war crimes commited during war and the horrors of war on a massive and hard to identify enemy a conincidence in timing or does it conincide with the US promise to step up the tempo and the pressure on the war on terror?
A Washington Post op-ed article on October 26, entitled “The Right Fight Now: Counterinsurgency, Not Caution, Is the Answer in Iraq,” argued for the use of combat methods employed in Vietnam. The article’s authors, Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, are associated with right-wing think tanks with links to Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. The piece continued, “The United States knows how to fight such wars.”
Another Post article on October 29 discussed the Bush administration’s determination to accelerate its so-called “Iraqification” program. This involves increasing the numbers of Iraqi police and soldiers providing security while freeing up US troops to “conduct raids and other concentrated attacks on resistance fighters.”
“Vietnamization” was a term coined by the Nixon administration in 1968 that referred to a strategic shift in its war effort. Through the increased use of South Vietnamese puppet troops in combat, backed by US air power and artillery, American forces were freed up to carry out deadly assaults on the Vietnamese population and forcibly depopulate vast areas of the countryside.
During this time, murderous military plans were implemented such as Operation Phoenix, which reached its height in 1969 with the execution of nearly 20,000 Vietnamese liberation fighters and supporters by death squads organized by the CIA. These operations were combined with “forced urbanization,” involving the expulsion of peasants from their land through bombing and chemical defoliation. During the notorious My Lai massacre in 1968, US soldiers killed some 500 civilians.
The conflict in Vietnam took the lives of 58,000 American soldiers, who were conscripts for the most part, and wounded another 300,000. Tens of thousands more committed suicide in the years following their tours of duty in Southeast Asia or were mentally or morally destroyed by their experiences in the war. In 1995, 20 years after the defeat of US imperialism, the Vietnamese government claimed that a staggering 4 million Vietnamese civilians and 1.1 million soldiers were killed during the war.
Now i'm not suggesting we are going to see anything on this scale again...i damn hope not, i say that having flash backs to the massacres in Afghanistan and the interviews with US Troops who want to shoot first and ask questions later....but what are all your thoughts on this, i mean i'm suprised the papers over in the states are able to start bringing this matter up and suggesting the links with the air of "patriotism" that currently seems to preside over in the states without being severly put down.
In late October, the Toledo [Ohio] Blade published a four-part series detailing horrendous and widespread atrocities committed against civilians in Vietnam in 1967 by an elite US army unit.
Whilst we all know that some funked up shit happened over there and it's not an era to look back on with any kind of pride for our fellow human beings and war a few people are starting to link it to the current war on terror.
It just made me think is this sudden re-view of the war crimes commited during war and the horrors of war on a massive and hard to identify enemy a conincidence in timing or does it conincide with the US promise to step up the tempo and the pressure on the war on terror?
A Washington Post op-ed article on October 26, entitled “The Right Fight Now: Counterinsurgency, Not Caution, Is the Answer in Iraq,” argued for the use of combat methods employed in Vietnam. The article’s authors, Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, are associated with right-wing think tanks with links to Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. The piece continued, “The United States knows how to fight such wars.”
Another Post article on October 29 discussed the Bush administration’s determination to accelerate its so-called “Iraqification” program. This involves increasing the numbers of Iraqi police and soldiers providing security while freeing up US troops to “conduct raids and other concentrated attacks on resistance fighters.”
“Vietnamization” was a term coined by the Nixon administration in 1968 that referred to a strategic shift in its war effort. Through the increased use of South Vietnamese puppet troops in combat, backed by US air power and artillery, American forces were freed up to carry out deadly assaults on the Vietnamese population and forcibly depopulate vast areas of the countryside.
During this time, murderous military plans were implemented such as Operation Phoenix, which reached its height in 1969 with the execution of nearly 20,000 Vietnamese liberation fighters and supporters by death squads organized by the CIA. These operations were combined with “forced urbanization,” involving the expulsion of peasants from their land through bombing and chemical defoliation. During the notorious My Lai massacre in 1968, US soldiers killed some 500 civilians.
The conflict in Vietnam took the lives of 58,000 American soldiers, who were conscripts for the most part, and wounded another 300,000. Tens of thousands more committed suicide in the years following their tours of duty in Southeast Asia or were mentally or morally destroyed by their experiences in the war. In 1995, 20 years after the defeat of US imperialism, the Vietnamese government claimed that a staggering 4 million Vietnamese civilians and 1.1 million soldiers were killed during the war.
Now i'm not suggesting we are going to see anything on this scale again...i damn hope not, i say that having flash backs to the massacres in Afghanistan and the interviews with US Troops who want to shoot first and ask questions later....but what are all your thoughts on this, i mean i'm suprised the papers over in the states are able to start bringing this matter up and suggesting the links with the air of "patriotism" that currently seems to preside over in the states without being severly put down.