The vast majority oppose current illegal wars, while remembering to respect all
warriors. . Ho Chi Minh had lived in the US from 1911 to 1919, working as a line manager at General Motors and other jobs. He also lived later in the UK and France and traveled to Russia and China, in each place learning the language. Few have been told that Ho Chi Minh first petitioned President Woodrow Wilson after World War I for help in freeing Vietnam from the colonizing French invaders
He had mistakenly thought that America would help other countries trying to free themselves
from white European colonizers. Next Ho was promised in World War II by President Roosevelt that if the Vietnamese helped fight the Japanese, the US would help free Vietnam after the war from French oppression.
*
Roosevelt died and Truman broke the promise. Dulles in the Eisenhower administration
even offered nuclear weapons to the French. John F Kennedy was murdered for wanting to withdraw from Vietnam (as well as wanting to abolish the CIA, the Federal Reserve, and to remove nuclear weapons from Israel). Lyndon Johnson resigned because of popular opposition to the war he expanded as General William Westmoreland hid Americnn casualties while multiplying the 'kill' numbers of the Viet Cong. Nixon and Kissinger further expanded the genocide, bombing Cambodia.
*
Millions of Vietnamese died along with 58,000 Americans who
died, many drafted into fighting a war they opposed. The jungles were burned with napalm.
Countless animals, birds, reptiles were bombed or burned.
Herbicides such as agent orange (a toxic defoliant) poisoned plants and trees while even today Vietnam vets and Vietnamese are dying from the carcinogens which drenched Vietnam.
*
Soldiers were programmed to sacrifice themselves for their country, but that was not
the case. They were dying for the greed of the rich who wanted to expand capital markets.
Even today, the Military Channel, History Channel, Fox News, and countless other media
contrast communism with democracy, a falsehood since communism, socialism and capitalism
are economic systems, while monarchy, oligarchy, democracy are political systems.
Picture is of Ho Chi Minh at the age of 31.
-s shriver-
Footnote:
Some of the most famous Vietnam war pictures include Kim Phuc and other children running from bomb fires, My Lai casualties lying in a ditch, and a Viet Cong soldier summarily executed in the streets of Saigon.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/
(May the Spirit of Mahatma Gandhi attract all beings to nonviolence)
Agent Orange, bombs, defoliants, Franklin Roosevelt, herbicide, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Phuc, My Lai, napalm, Viet Cong, Woodrow Wilson
