Tuesday, May 27, 2008
P.S.
Unfortunately, it also must be stated that Kennedy allowed/approved of a catostrophic policy in the South called "Strategic Hamlet". This was where South Vietnamese villagers (many of whom were initially antagonistic to the Viet-Cong) were gathered up and placed (a cynical mind might say herded) into more secure/protected areas. And, while, yes, it was essentially a policy aimed at protecting these people, the heavy-handed imagery of it (soldiers dragging villagers away from their homes) clearly had unforseen consequences. The specific down-side was that many of these effected populations ended up turning not just on the South but on the Americans, too. So, yes, damned if it wasn't a major-league blunder, in other words. And, no, not the last by America in that part of the world, either - unfortunately.
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Careful will, your letting too many people know that the war between the North Vietnamese, who had defeated the French at Deim Ben Phu and the US creation started because the US refused to allow the Vietnamese people decide their own future long before JFK became president;
Using SEATO for political cover, the Eisenhower administration helped create a new nation from dust in southern Vietnam. In 1955, with the help of massive amounts of American military, political, and economic aid, the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) was born. The following year, Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly anti-Communist figure from the South, won a dubious election that made him president of the GVN. Almost immediately, Diem claimed that his newly created government was under attack from Communists in the north. Diem argued that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) wanted to take South Vietnam by force. In late 1957, with American military aid, Diem began to counterattack. He used the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency to identify those who sought to bring his government down and arrested thousands. Diem passed a repressive series of acts known as Law 10/59 that made it legal to hold someone in jail if s/he was a suspected Communist without bringing formal charges. [Kinda reminds ya of Georgie and the neo-cons with the "Patriot Act" and "homeland security" doesn't it?]
The outcry against Diem's harsh and oppressive actions was immediate. Buddhist monks and nuns were joined by students, business people, intellectuals, and peasants in opposition to the corrupt rule of Ngo Dinh Diem. The more these forces attacked Diem's troops and secret police, the more Diem complained that the Communists were trying to take South Vietnam by force. This was, in Diem's words, "a hostile act of aggression by North Vietnam against peace-loving and democratic South Vietnam."
Oops did that just say the Vietnamese people didn't like Diem BEFORE Kennedy became president? kinda make you look like a dishonest chump again doesn't it?
As for JFK;
In 1961, President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in the South and to assess future American aid requirements. The report, now known as the "December 1961 White Paper," argued for an increase in military, technical, and economic aid, and the introduction of large-scale American "advisers" to help stabilize the Diem regime and crush the NLF. As Kennedy weighed the merits of these recommendations, some of his other advisers urged the president to withdraw from Vietnam altogether, claiming that it was a "dead-end alley."
In typical Kennedy fashion, the president chose a middle route. Instead of a large-scale military buildup as the White Paper had called for or a negotiated settlement that some of his advisers had long advocated, Kennedy sought a limited accord with Diem. The United States would increase the level of its military involvement in South Vietnam through more machinery and advisers, but would not intervene whole-scale with troops. This arrangement was doomed from the start, and soon reports from Vietnam came in to Washington attesting to further NLF victories. To counteract the NLF's success in the countryside, Washington and Saigon launched an ambitious and deadly military effort in the rural areas. Called the Strategic Hamlet Program, the new counterinsurgency plan rounded up villagers and placed them in "safe hamlets" constructed by the GVN. The idea was to isolate the NLF from villagers, its base of support. This culturally-insensitive plan produced limited results and further alienated the peasants from the Saigon regime. Through much of Diem's reign, rural Vietnamese had viewed the GVN as a distant annoyance, but the Strategic Hamlet Program brought the GVN to the countryside. The Saigon regime's reactive policies ironically produced more cadres for the NLF.
Yes he did make some mistakes from the mess Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers created.
BTW why haven't you addressed the lies you told about me in the last post?
Hey Will! Did you hear the latest about Obama?
His great cousin liberated Art Buchwald.
No Voltron, his great uncle, Charlie Payne of the 89th Infantry Division, 355th Infantry Regiment, Company K. helped liberate Ohrdruf concentration camp.
to wit;
It was liberated on April 4, 1945, by the 4th Armored Division and the 355th Infantry Regiment of the 89th Infantry Division, U.S. Third Army. It was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the US Army.
When the soldiers of the 4th Armored Division entered the camp, they discovered piles of bodies, some covered with lime, and others partially incinerated on pyres. The ghastly nature of their discovery led General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12, with Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley. After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf:
. . .the most interesting--although horrible--sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'
Seeing the Nazi crimes committed at Ohrdruf made a powerful impact on Eisenhower, and he wanted the world to know what happened in the concentration camps. On April 19, 1945, he again cabled Marshall with a request to bring members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps so that they could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public.
That same day, Marshall received permission from the Secretary of War, Henry Lewis Stimson, and President Harry S. Truman for these delegations to visit the liberated camps.
Ohrdruf made a powerful impression on General George S. Patton as well. He described it as "one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen." He recounted in his diary that
In a shed . . . was a pile of about 40 completely naked human bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime, not for the purposes of destroying them, but for the purpose of removing the stench. When the shed was full--I presume its capacity to be about 200, the bodies were taken to a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried. The inmates claimed that 3,000 men, who had been either shot in the head or who had died of starvation, had been so buried since the 1st of January. When we began to approach with our troops, the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crime. Therefore, they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle composed of 60-centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations. They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them. They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones, skulls, charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds.
You know what is really interesting Voltron, you made many more factual mistakes in your off handed remark, then Barack Obama did.
I find that interesting, according to your logic it is OK for you to be so wrong while attacking someone who admits he made a mistake.
Tom, to you. 1) I'm going to say this one more time. Please read it slowly. I PERSONALLY THINK WE SHOULD HAVE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH VIETNAM. I think it was a mistake for all U.S. Presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon) to have gotten us involved in that shit-hole. My only point (and, yes, this is MY opinion - you can have yours, too) is that I firmly believe that any politician of that day, if he/her were President, would have done something akin to what Eisenhower did. I also believe (again, this is MY opinion) that, if Truman were in office, Truman would not have shown the restraint that Ike did during the Dien Bien Phu incident. I.E., he probably WOULD have sent American troops. 2) I think you need to learn the difference between a mistake and a "lie". If I misquoted you, I apologize (voluminous, one sided diatribes sometimes overwhelm me). The impression I get, however, is that you cannot seem to hold a Democrat accountable. "Yes, Kennedy made mistakes....but Eisenhower made bigger ones...na, na, na, na, na. 3 A chump? I guess that "I don't call you names" policy of yours has officially ended. 4) As for your theory that everything would have been hunky-dory if only Ho Chi Minh had been able to take over, I'm sorry, but that is naive beyond belief. I mean, sure, Diem was a bastard but Ho Chi Minh was one of the worst killers of the twentieth century. He killed, mamed, tortured, and starved hundreds of thousands of people - not because the Americans pissed him off but because these people had the audacity to own some land. And he displaced millions more. 5) As for why Kennedy changed his tune, it had nothing to do with a realization that the Vietnamese were fighting for liberty. He changed his mind (to his credit) because he saw it as a winless propostion. It was a pragmatic shift, in other words.
Tom.
Art Buchwald
HUMOR:
Pronunciation: \ˈhyü-mər, ˈyü-\
Function: noun
a: that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous.
b: the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous c: something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing.
synonyms: see 'wit'
"You know what is really interesting Voltron, you made many more factual mistakes in your off handed remark, then Barack Obama did.
I find that interesting, according to your logic it is OK for you to be so wrong while attacking someone who admits he made a mistake."
ROFLMAO!!!!
(acronym meaning: Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off)
You beat me to the punch, Voltron. All I can think of is that he didn't know that Art Buchwald was a famous Jewish writer. And he says he's not an Obama supporter. Tom, ladies and gentlemen!
Sorry Will but I knew who Art Buchwald was, BUT I also know what the holocaust really was about and it is NOT a joking matter.
Obviously you and Voltron think joking about it to score crass political points is OK, well that speaks volumes about you doesn't it?
LOL
Yeah Will, liberals have absolutely NO sense of humor. Zip, Zilch, Nada.
(AND their eager to prove it time after time after time.)
Will, ever notice how you gotta splain everything to these innerlectuals?
The joke here Tom was about OBAMA, NOT the holocaust.
it is funny Voltron you post numerous articles about the supposed outrage we are supposed to have against Muslims for what a small minority of them do, however what Adolph Hitler and the Nazis did during the Holocaust is much worse by many orders of magnitude, which sort of makes you one of those whose outrage seems more a matter of political conveniences then real personnel beliefs.
I for one will never understand the right wing attempts at humor, but their evident lack of perspective.
"You know what is really interesting Voltron, you made many more factual mistakes in your off handed remark, then Barack Obama did.
I find that interesting, according to your logic it is OK for you to be so wrong while attacking someone who admits he made a mistake."
VS
"Sorry Will but I knew who Art Buchwald was, BUT I also know what the holocaust really was about and it is NOT a joking matter."
Nice try Tom. IF you knew who Art Buchwald was you'd have IMMEDIATELY known I was joking.
Good thing I provided a link eh?
Sorry Voltron but you joked about what Obama's great uncle actually did, NOT what Barack Obama did.
That is why I don't understand why people like YOU and Bill O'Rielly's failures at his misstatement about Malmedy where he accused Americans who were brutally murdered by the Nazis of War crimes.
Sorry Voltron sometimes you just have to call a rotten attempt at humor what it is, bad humor which is politically driven with very little humor unless you that partisan.
I for one is just not that partisan to think the suffering of the holocaust should be reduced by people who at other times try to take a stance like you seem to do.
For some reason you always want to use a very limited attempt at humor which many find humorless, as a distraction from things which matter a little more to the majority of people.
Could it be because you have little else to actually contribute to the discussion because the political philosophy you hold to has been exposed for the fraud it seems to have been to those who claimed to practice it the last decade or longer?
I for one think so.
(voluminous, one sided diatribes sometimes overwhelm me).
In other words you want sound bite truths and bumper sticker quotes, instead of the complex facts as they actually existed.
Sorry that post is mine.
Tom PLEASE get over yourself.
"Hey Will! Did you hear the latest about Obama?
His great cousin liberated Art Buchwald."
"Sorry Voltron but you joked about what Obama's great uncle actually did, NOT what Barack Obama did."
I NEVER mentioned his "great uncle", nor did he ACTUALLY liberate ART BUCHWALD.
I was lampooning (I'll get you a dictionary reference in a minute) the fact that Obama will say practically anything to ingratiate (reference coming) himself to whatever crowd he's addressing.
I was making fun of Obama's STATEMENTS, NOT the holocaust.
refer to my above post, re: time after time after time...
You and your slimy sockpuppet Crusty dont address a single point Tom, Utah Savage, myself or anyone else makes Volt..........which shows you have nothing left but poking fun and using corny humor and running away when your lies, spin and propaganda get outed with fact........facts to you are like sunlight or holywater to a vampire Voltron.
No Voltron you don't get it.
Obama was speaking to a veteran about the horrors of war and relating what he knew about his great uncle, which you quote dishonestly trying to to lesson the credulousness of dishonoring a veterans service, something you have done on your blog, (Yes, I have read all of it since you appearance here on Contra O'Rielly.)
For some reason you people one the political right think it is OK to attack individual veterans and their service, but are quick to attack when the left does a similar thing, I have read your quotes about the move on Gen Petreaus ads.
It is a patent double standard you refuse to admit but it exists none the less.
Trying lamely to say you were making a joke, which is a political joke is just being dishonest no matter how you try to frame it.
Well goodnight Tom.
There wasn't a whole lot of humor there anyway, and you've just drained pretty much all of it.
Voltron then there was none anyway, because humor isn't drained as you dishonestly post. In reality it never exists except in the minds of those so bent.
Oh and Sober up Mike.
That's all I've been doing for about 20 posts now is address Tom's lame ass point.
Best thing he can do now is put a hat on over it and hope nobody notices.
Goodnight to you too.
I think that just about sums it up.
I "lied" about humor, because it never really exists?
Hey Mike, pass me one of whatever it is your on?
toodles.
Run away Voltron when you get called on deflkecting and derailing with your corny jokes becasuse you CANT debate or counter the facts being posted because you and your treasonous hero's have too many lies to defend.
Thats EXACTLY what fascist fan was reduced to when Thu and Clif dismantled and humiliated him last Summer!
"As for why Kennedy changed his tune, it had nothing to do with a realization that the Vietnamese were fighting for liberty. He changed his mind (to his credit) because he saw it as a winless propostion. It was a pragmatic shift, in other words."
Nice to see you can "read minds" over the decades something Bill O'Rielly sometimes claims power at also.
It's funny, I post facts to support my assertions, but you are all opinion with very little to support it, very partisan if you will.
Because a true non-partisan sticks with the facts as they exist, not inserting their opinion at every turn, which you have continously done since this discussion has begun.
Don't think it is a fact, I can prove it;
to wit;
Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...
Have you noticed how protective of Eisenhower I've become? You can bash any other President (Bush, Clinton, what have you) and it doesn't bother me but you lay a glove on Ike and I go frigging crazy. You don't think I've got a man-crush on HIM, do you? LOL
May 24, 2008 9:10 PM
From Voltrons blog. the very last comment.
Why when you claim not to be a partisan, are you so partisan for Ike?
Yeah, I guesss I am a little partisan for Ike. That was kind of a joke, too, though. P.S. It wasn't "mind-reading". I based that conclusion on research. Kennedy was a pragmatist (one of the things I liked about him - that, and the fact that he was a staunch anti-Communist).
This is starting to remind me of that old wresting shtick; the 30 man over-the-rope "battle royal". Am I the only one old enough to remember that?
Not to me will I never was very impressed with wrestling far to fake.
Hopefully the facts and not some stage managing will prevail here.
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