The Vietnam War was an American-sponsored genocide. According to Robert McNamera -- the Secretary of Defense who ramped up the war -- we killed over 3 million people. See his book, In Retrospect. Why don't you write a story about that, or the 40% of Cambodia that was carpet bombed by the United States? Someone needs to tell our current candidates that carpet bombing is not a joke. Millions -- not thousands -- die.
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Moderator....could someone review the comments for submission....it's been awhile....thanks very much!
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And you don't think all of us know that wars aver very destructive and expensive and that Monday morning quarterbacking gives all of us 20/20 vision? That was not the point of the article.
Seems odd the Vietnam wall is really only blocks from the White House. Guess Bush and Cheney must never have walked by those 58,000 names. Or if they did it must not have meant anything.
When will the next monument go up over there?
When will the next monument go up over there?
4
Why don't you focus on LBJ and the Democrats who got us into Vietnam through their phony Gulf of Tonkin incident? It was used as a pretext by them to put half a million US troops in Vietnam.
And while you slam Bush and Cheney, never forget the almost 38,000 Americans killed in Vietnam while LBJ was still president. And it all started with a lie.
And while you slam Bush and Cheney, never forget the almost 38,000 Americans killed in Vietnam while LBJ was still president. And it all started with a lie.
War stories. I don't have any war stories because I didn't go to war in Vietnam.
I have death and disabled stories. In 1970 as a career counselor working with disabled vets, I visited Letterman Army Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco to meet with healing soldiers about their future jobs.
It was 8:00 PM, the lights were dim in the day room with only one nurse in the nurses station. I was standing in the center of ten disabled soldiers, all in wheelchairs, and all with bandages covering the stumps where their legs and arms had been amputated.
There was a deathless silence in the room since all the patients were heavily medicated with antidepressants and pain killers. I looked at them but they were too sedated to look back or talk.
Since we could not speak to each other, I quietly walked to the door and went home.
I have death and disabled stories. In 1970 as a career counselor working with disabled vets, I visited Letterman Army Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco to meet with healing soldiers about their future jobs.
It was 8:00 PM, the lights were dim in the day room with only one nurse in the nurses station. I was standing in the center of ten disabled soldiers, all in wheelchairs, and all with bandages covering the stumps where their legs and arms had been amputated.
There was a deathless silence in the room since all the patients were heavily medicated with antidepressants and pain killers. I looked at them but they were too sedated to look back or talk.
Since we could not speak to each other, I quietly walked to the door and went home.
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Thanks for the memories of that divisive era. The colleague's remarks about women and children highlights the NYT's arrogance and tarnishes the fact that a few million men and women dutifully served despite the unpopularity of the conflict.
Btw, this was by far the greatest foreign policy blunder by the US- not the Iraq fiasco. Because it was instigated by a Democratic President (JFK- to demonstrate his testicles after abandoning freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs)) and escalated by another Democrat (LBJ- to curry favor and gain conservative support for his Civil Rights initiatives), and not a conservative Republican, it is glossed over. The human cost (more than 58,00 American fatalities) and dollar cost ( over a trillion in today's parlance) over 11 years (which was paid for with no taxes but double digit inflation of the resultant cheaper dollar), makes it stand alone as a monument to the stupidity, stubbornness, and superciliousness of politicians of all stripes.
Btw, this was by far the greatest foreign policy blunder by the US- not the Iraq fiasco. Because it was instigated by a Democratic President (JFK- to demonstrate his testicles after abandoning freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs)) and escalated by another Democrat (LBJ- to curry favor and gain conservative support for his Civil Rights initiatives), and not a conservative Republican, it is glossed over. The human cost (more than 58,00 American fatalities) and dollar cost ( over a trillion in today's parlance) over 11 years (which was paid for with no taxes but double digit inflation of the resultant cheaper dollar), makes it stand alone as a monument to the stupidity, stubbornness, and superciliousness of politicians of all stripes.
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I think it is wrong to cite such frivolous, psychological, motives for leaders in wars. it sounds great, on the surface, but it could be said that "W" got into Iraq to live up to his father's expectations, to finish his father's task. The cause of wars is often an illusive concept as so many serious historical studies show. Stan, i can jokingly say to you that you seem somewhat schizophrenic in your views, or just maybe encyclopedic.
More US (and Vietnamese) killed AFTER Nixon took over. He campaigned on a "secret plan" to end the war, then extended it. JFK's motives in the very early 1960's were perhaps mixed, but he believed in the domino theory. What were Nixon's motives in 1969?
3
ONE colleague makes a comment that "captur(ed) the envy and exasperation that Mr. Apple’s colleagues could simultaneously feel for him" and THAT "...highlights the NYT's arrogance..."??? I saw this as a comment about one individual and not about the "... few million men and women (that) dutifully served..."
1
"women and children. I presume." Yeah I get the cynicism and the dark humor. Still, given the vast numbers of actual women and children we killed in that obscene war, the attempt at flippant conclusion falls a little flat.
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One of the great characters of journalism. Although - "trouser-splitting incident?" I always wonder if he replaced one letter with two others...
7
The definitive Apple story may be the one that Tim Crouse told in his enduringly splendid account of the reporters covering the 1972 Presidential campaign, "The Boys on the Bus." (I would repeat it, but it wouldn't pass censorship.) Crouse's takedown was sufficiently memorable to be mentioned in the Times's own obituary of Apple.
There are some parts of the world America was never meant to be. Viet Nam. Iraq. Syria. Why don't they ever learn?
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i think you might have said, why don't WE ever learn. We are the fools who elect these people.
I was there and experienced all Mr Apple describes. He was a brave and brilliant reporter. As someone wise once said, "truth is the first victim of war." Mr Apple tried hard to bring us the truth and most of us just didn't listen.
I was there and experienced all Mr Apple describes. He was a brave and brilliant reporter. As someone wise once said, "truth is the first victim of war." Mr Apple tried hard to bring us the truth and most of us just didn't listen.
So, killing women and children is the punch line? I don't get the joke.
13
That last paragraph is kind of extraordinary for a throwaway comment. We might wonder at the ethics of journalists killing 'a few' people on the battlefield themselves.
9
Johnny Apple was a wonderful reporter and an energetic and astute participant in Life. I lunched once with him, another NYT writer, and a rabid free-market lobbyist at The Oval Room in Washington (on the paper's dime, and thank you). After a lively discussion, Apple told the free-marketer, "I have never been as certain of anything as you are of everything!" He made the world a richer place.
-- Happy New Year to All!
-- Happy New Year to All!
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He was Hemingway and Patton. So his stories reflected that dichotomy of art and brutality. But did those pieces open our eyes or did they lull us into the story, the fiction, of war? Did we read them because they informed us? Or because they engaged us ultimately because of the that seductive power they had to draw us in and want to know, "know/feel/SEE" more, rather than truly experience the terror, the horror of war, so that we were torn between the call of heroism and the truth of what was really happening so that those who wanted to prolong the war as a "fight against Communism" gained cover, where the soldiers themselves found none?
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Those of us who fought against this war for Imperialism go uncelebrated.
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War is hell!
As well you should go uncelebrated!!While you were "fighting" imperialism, a whole lot of young guys like me were drafted and fighting for our lives--even when we knew it was a gigantic mistake.
4
What WE did was walk out unarmed toward armed police, as we tried again and again and again as we tried to save YOUR lives by repeatedly, publicly, denouncing the human cost of letting power-mad ideologues drive our foreign policy.
Some Vietnam vets get it. Some don't.
Some Vietnam vets get it. Some don't.
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More, please ... more.
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Was he a correspondent or a combatant?
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Seems tp me it would be a betrayal of the men protecting him to not do his part to protect them. If you were in such a situation and you chose not to help them could you object to them doing nothing to protect you? Or should you claim noncombatant privilege? To tell you the truth though, I never did hear of the VC not shooting journalists.
Correspondent
Notable personal experiences by both the dead and the survivors are legion after all wars--luck plays its role. Vietnam was no exception. The big story of Vietnam and most of the "small" wars the US has fought since then is that we backed the wrong sides. In Vietnam this meant backing a Catholic dictator and hierarchy in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country. To succeed there we would have had to change the religion and culture of the country--a task too far.
In Afghanistan we tried to establish American-style strong central government in a country ruled by tribes from the bottom-up for centuries. In the Middle East we are working to keep intact WW I borders in countries where the people are riven by religious and cultural factionalism.
Iraq and Libya have broken apart. Who knows what Syria will look like in the future?
In Afghanistan we tried to establish American-style strong central government in a country ruled by tribes from the bottom-up for centuries. In the Middle East we are working to keep intact WW I borders in countries where the people are riven by religious and cultural factionalism.
Iraq and Libya have broken apart. Who knows what Syria will look like in the future?
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Unamed colleague? Gay Talese made that up.
1
Gay Talese does not make anything up.
I lost several friends in Vietnam and the a hole that said women and children I presume would have gotten a stiff fist to the face if I had been there. Those who have never been in combat to say something like that really gets my ire up - have never been to the Vietnam Memorial - too many friends names are there. Did volunteer for Vietnam but my Navy detailer said I had to extend for another year to get there. No way - even though I was commissioned as a LT jg - had my own air conditioned stateroom - enough was enough.
To those who have served I say thank you for your service - yes Mr. Apple thank you for your service. As a Marine friend said, a kid with an AK can ruin your whole day.
To those who have served I say thank you for your service - yes Mr. Apple thank you for your service. As a Marine friend said, a kid with an AK can ruin your whole day.
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Ave...
I would have liked to have read Mr. Apple's stuff, but other stuff was happening...
Viet Nam '67 - '68
I would have liked to have read Mr. Apple's stuff, but other stuff was happening...
Viet Nam '67 - '68
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I was there too (Viet Nam '67 - '68)...
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reply to mr. HapinOregon. Someone needs to thank you for your service, sir. So.
Thank you.
William Wilson dallas texas
af15805095
Thank you.
William Wilson dallas texas
af15805095
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where is the rest of the story?
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People like this is what gives me reason to go on.
The Vietnam War was a tragic and disastrous mistake. Canonizing any participants is in poor taste, especially in cheekily noting that one of your reporters killed some Vietnamese. The hit Rambo movies appealed to our lowest instincts, and now we have that horrible Eastwood film about the sniper. Apparently the impressive size of the Texas crowd at his funeral was meant to be roughly proportional to the men he killed. I'm frankly a little shocked but not totally surprised that the Times is going all macho.
All of our wars since World War II have left America weaker and less respected than before, not to mention the enormous body counts.
You want some heroes from the Vietnam era? How about students from Berkeley in 1966, who laid down on the railroad tracks to stop the troop trains taking draftees to Vietnam? Many were Civil Rights and Free Speech veterans, and their arrests damaged careers.
Our wars are not so different from the ones in Europe's Thirty Year War, when Reformation idealism devolved eventually to little more than violence and rape, with changing alliances and forgotten motivations.
Someone needs to educate our Republican presidential candidates here, and some of the Democrats, too. It's quite startling to hear them feign knowledge of a distant part of the world as a way to justify continued bombings and invasions. Plenty of Americans are sick of it, and we can only hope that we will express that revulsion at the polls this year.
All of our wars since World War II have left America weaker and less respected than before, not to mention the enormous body counts.
You want some heroes from the Vietnam era? How about students from Berkeley in 1966, who laid down on the railroad tracks to stop the troop trains taking draftees to Vietnam? Many were Civil Rights and Free Speech veterans, and their arrests damaged careers.
Our wars are not so different from the ones in Europe's Thirty Year War, when Reformation idealism devolved eventually to little more than violence and rape, with changing alliances and forgotten motivations.
Someone needs to educate our Republican presidential candidates here, and some of the Democrats, too. It's quite startling to hear them feign knowledge of a distant part of the world as a way to justify continued bombings and invasions. Plenty of Americans are sick of it, and we can only hope that we will express that revulsion at the polls this year.
48
When you look at America's wars just in your lifetime, how can you place the United States any higher morally than dictatorships in Syria, Iraq, or Libya?
If Americans had any real understanding of how their country has behaved in its military adventures, like Vietnam, over the years, they would be speechless with shame.
If Americans had any real understanding of how their country has behaved in its military adventures, like Vietnam, over the years, they would be speechless with shame.
3
Clint Eastwood maintains that "American Sniper" sends an anti-war message in showing what the participants and their families go through. The scene where the marine shows his prosthetic leg and Kyle's visit to his friend in the hospital and this friends subsequent death is illustrative of this. His movie "Letters from Iwo Jima" was incredibly anti-war. His movie "Gran Torino" was vaguely anti-Korean war. His chair talk at the Republican convention chides Obama on the war in Afghanistan as an unnecessary war.
The Vietnam War ... was a Cold War-era proxy war* ... in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
This war followed the First Indochina War (1946–54) ... fought between North Vietnam—supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies—and the government of South Vietnam—supported by the United States, Philippines and other anti-communist allies. [....]
The U.S. government viewed its involvement as ... part of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism.
Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. .... Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. [...]
Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war... The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities.... Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. [....]
* A proxy war .... two separate powers utilizing external strife to somehow attack the interests or territorial holdings of the other.