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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (21154)	8/22/2004 3:21:13 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

Kodiak, re: " I wrote several times about the appropriate way to body count the Vietnam War. Take the casualties, year by year, assign those casualties to the president in power, lagging by one year ... and then tell me whose war Vietnam was. I didn't know there was a formula that could tell you it wasn't Nixon's war and that it was Johnson's war. Nor did I know it was an either/or proposition. I thought it was Johnson's AND Nixon's war, and that Kennedy started it. I didn't even know it had anything to do with democrats or republicans at all. I guess I just am not properly tuned into "for us or against us," "good or evil" or black or white thinking. I thought both Johnson and Nixon were foolish, arrogant and callous, that either of them could have de-escalated it or stopped the death in Vietnam sooner and cut our losses, and I thought BOTH of them were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of young men who died there fighting for something we cannot yet define in any way that justified the war. But maybe I'd better rethink it. I wouldn't want to be a "long winded lightweight." I wouldn't even want to be a short winded heavyweight, in fact I'd actually like to lose 5 pounds but not much more. If I'd known the key to avoiding that kind of rep was to hang on every one of your posts, no matter how narrow they were, I would have paid closer attention. And that press is pesky, isn't it? Sometimes they don't know the difference between printing what we want to hear, printing what we think is best for the country to hear or just getting stuck trying to print reality. As for me, I'd rather our country did the smart, moral or lawful thing so we wouldn't have to depend on the press to supress the truth or make up stuff. Cause regardless of how the press portrayed the Tet Offensive of 68, this country had lied like crazy about the war's progress in the previous years, it continued to lie about it afterwards and there was no way we were going to kill the ideas that were driving those nationalistic fighters that were killing us in Vietnam. So I'll just blame the loss we suffered in Vietnam on bad judgement and tough opponents, instead of the press or Kerry. And I'll just keep on being glad that we got out when we did, bad press or not, instead of sending more men to die there. Cause Vietnam was your war and my war, it was a bad one, and the leaders who sent us and those who colluded with them and hid the truth acted in our names. They shamed us all and caused far too much senseless suffering and death for me to forgive. But if you think it was "Johnson's war," good for you. That is, after all, what this country is all about.