Nice Tribute For Next Year At EAA

[Bill Greenwood]

Rick, you and I look at the Vietnam War, and seem to see the opposite things. I see the suffering and the lies, ("remember the light at the end of the tunnel") and you see the effort of the individual soldier, and maybe even some "valor".

Let me give 2 somewhat parrallel cases.

My Son is a lawyer, he worked like a slave to pass law school and the bar, even after two consussions from accidents. I am very proud of him. He has been a prosecutor, deputy District Attorney, and is moving to private practice. I hope he is financially sucessful, but if he does it representing polluiting chemical companies, or organized crime, or mass murders, I won't be bragging on how clever and determined he is.

War is like chemotherapy. It is awful, and almost kills the patient while trying to kill the tumor. It should be used only when warranted. No good doctor would give it to a healthy person just for the experience or to make a profit for the drug company.
Even WWII, which most people would agree was a "just war" in the sense that we really were fighting two evils and we were in the right; still resulted in 50 million deaths and many of them were civilians, like at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War makes otherwise decent people do horrible things. We are currently condemning Syria for using chemical warfare, but we did it in Nam with agent Orange.

The invasion of Iraq and Afghan, came to a large extent from the 9-11 attacks, or at least that is the basis the war was sold to the public on. However, we have lost about twice as many dead and ten times as many maimed in these wars than the 9-11 attacks and the war goes on and on. Somebody needs to say, wait a minute, less use some logic and not just emotion and propaganda here.

You mention Korea, and while I served during Vietnam and have researched it, I don't know much about Korea. It was a nasty place to fight, but we didn't lose the war, we got a tie or better at least. We don't control the North , but they don't control the South.
Why don't you start a topic on Korea or the other wars and see what comments you get.

And I'd like to hear about your service, when you went in, under which President , where you served, what you did and most of all, what you knew about Vietnam before you went in? Did you know that after WWII , the U S opposed a democratic election that would have united the north and south, because they did not want the socialist Ho Chi Minh to win?