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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (84970)	8/7/2000 12:08:16 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I disagree that this was a rich man's war. I heard a lot of conspiracy theories about why we were in VietNam, including oil, rice, and heroin, but none of them panned out over time. Most war's are "rich men's wars". WWI and WWII were anomalous in this sense. Very few people of privilege go and fight. Some do. Most don't. Viet Nam was a more "traditional" case. If you were poor, you went. Middle class, you chose (accepting the penalty and inconvenience). If wealthy, you got National Guard. On weekends. Or, a deferment. Billions were made in munitions. It was profitable. My family's income was because of Viet Nam and the Cold War. Yeah, we were just another aerospace engineer's family, but we there at the teat. But at the bottom of the pyramid. Starting with Korea, we haven't had (ick, I hate to say it) a "popular" war. Actually, that's a good thing. Now, we should be asking ourselves "What are we doing in a conflict, if it can't be explained who the good guys are and who the bad guys are?" And I don't mean this week! This weak cost-benefit calculus is the signature of pretty much all the conflicts of the last half of the 20th century.

To: Ilaine who wrote (84970)	8/7/2000 12:26:24 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Respond to of 108807

I love the red, white, and blue, I get thrilled when I see the sun shining through the flag making the red and white stripes glow and the stars shine. I love that flag. I would vote to amend the blue to Cobalt Blue.;)

To: Ilaine who wrote (84970)	8/7/2000 6:51:06 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

We should have invaded North VietNam and forced surrender that way. Do you really think that would have worked, or would it have been just another quagmire? Certainly we could have taken Hanoi and the major cities, and any piece of countryside that we wanted at any given time. But could we have held it all? Installed a government capable of functioning without the constant presence of our army? I doubt it. The French held all the key points in North Vietnam, and it didn't help them. I don't believe we should have been there in the first place. When the Vietnamese were fighting the French, our ideology blinded us to the basic fact that colonialism is more fundamentally immoral than communism, and we took the wrong side. Sometimes the good guys do win, and in this case it happened to be when we were backing the bad guys.