"We could have won the Vietnam war we just lost our will to fight" (John McCain)

About 60,000 Americans were killed during the Vietnam war and 300,000 Americans were wounded.
The number of Vietnamese killed and wounded runs into the millions.
The Vietnamese are still suffering the effects of Agent Orange and the land mines that blow off their limbs to this day.
Billions of Tears and Broken hearts.

And yet Senator McCain says we could have won if only we hadn't lost our will to fight. Does anyone doubt that Senator McCain would be willing to attack Iran at the drop of a hat?
Under McCain how long would we be stationed in Iraq?
I get the feeling Senator McCain is not afraid of War at all. In my opinion under a McCain adminstration we could slip into world War 3 as quickly as you can say stubborn old man. Senator McCain gives "experience" a bad name. This wouldn't just be a third bush term. McCain would leave his "mark" and you can bet American blood would spill. If you think Bush has been bad wait until McCain takes office. Bush will look like a pacifist in comparison to where McCain will take us. To those of you who consider Senator McCain an option I ask you to consider who will pay the ultimate price for your vote and for what? I know one thing for sure, McCain will never lose his will to Fight!  Joe Conason's report at realclear politics or Salon has more on this

I don't want to belabor or be gratuitous about this, but I think it's important to defend Wes Clark's right to challenge McCain's service record insofar as it is being used as a Commander-In-Chief credential.

To be clear, on a personal level, I have the greatest possible reverence for John McCain's wartime sacrifice and his overall service record. McCain and his fellow brothers-in-arms who survived the Hanoi Hilton hell-hole are heroes in every sense and remain to this day inspiring profiles in human courage.

Because of this, very few people have the moral and experiential standing to comment on McCain's service record. I would go so far to say that not everyone who has simply worn an armed forces uniform has standing to comment. It requires a peer record of combat service. Wes Clark has such a record.

Surprise visit from The Dude: the real one, who inspired The Big Lebowski (Jeff Dowd) www.jeffdowd.com. He's a big fan of Left, Right & Center and dropped by to do KCRW's Guest DJ Project http://www.kcrw.com/music/kcrw-guest-dj- project. Meantime, on today's show we talk about Guns and SCOTUS; North Korea Nukes; Oil; Democratic Unity and Obamacons. Visit our new blog for links to articles mentioned http://leftrightandcenter.vox.com/; special guest right is Jim Antle, associate editor of the conservative mag, The American Spectator. Listen to today's show here: http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPl ayer2.html?type=audio&id=lr080627sco tus_on_gunsn_kore

I am going to try and not add much to this story. My older brother who was a big time Peaceful Vietnam protester just connected some dots for me.

Have you ever heard of helicopter gunner Lawrence Colburn? He was part of the helicopter crew that helped stop the My Lai massacre and he is my cousin.

Here is a piece from the story:

Thirty-four years ago this coming Saturday (3/15/08), more than 500 unarmed women, children and old men were raped, mutilated and killed by American soldiers on a rampage in the Vietnamese hamlet known as My Lai.

The massacre was stopped when a 24-year-old American helicopter pilot landed in the line of fire between the U.S. troops and Vietnamese civilians. While his 20-year-old crew chief and 18-year-old gunner covered his back, the pilot confronted one of the leaders of the massacre, then evacuated 10 villagers from a bunker. The crew also rescued a child clinging to his dead mother in a ditch.

When you are young, terrified, far from home and surrounded by craziness, how do you hang onto your moral compass? How do you develop one in the first place?

That's what we asked Lawrence Colburn, the helicopter gunner, who was born in Coulee City, grew up on Whidbey Island and in Mount Vernon, and joined the Army in 1966.

As American soldiers fight a war in Central Asia where boundaries and enemies can be similarly unclear, Colburn, now 52, offers this advice to young soldiers: "Beware of peer pressure that moves you in the wrong direction."

This is Colburn's story, in his own words, distilled from recent conversations with Pacific Northwest magazine writer Paula Bock.

Read the rest of his story here at the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacific nw/2002/0310/cover.html

There is also a related article at CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03 /16/vietnam.mylai.ap/index.html

More below...

According to BHO, "we are the ones we have been waiting for"

So why don't we examine who we really are:

From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/ 14dumb.html?em&ex=1203397200&en= 38525b1af4915364&ei=5087%0A

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment (on 9/11, right after the bombings in NYC), she (Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason,") said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day's horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

"This is just like Pearl Harbor," one of the men said.

The other asked, "What is Pearl Harbor?"

"That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War," the first man replied.

I am cross posting this from my g/f's blog. I waited to see if there was anything similar of substance posted at myDD but I have not seen anything. Let me know if I am wrong.

Cross posted at: Washington Woman

On this day we remember Martin Luther King Jr.

Our thoughts are drawn to the fight for racial and economic equality, but some of us may forget the other great things that Martin Luther king Jr. stood for and against, fought for and died for.

He spoke out against the tragedy of the Vietnam War. The comparisons of the Vietnam War and the current tragedy known as the Iraq War, can be seen and heard in his words concerning the Vietnam War and our responsibilities as humans and as citizens of the United States.

He died while fighting for the poor, the disenfranchised and the rights of all workers to unionize for the good of all not just the good of the few, the greedy and the powerful.

This video gets to the heart of his feelings concerning the Vietnam War. These words can and should be used in our opposition to the current tragedy in Iraq.

For a more complete version of Martin Luther Kings Jr's speech about the Vietnam War and more, please check below.

[You can talk] to women -- from the Philippines to Latin America to the Middle East -- who can vote, own property, or go to school, because Hillary Clinton helped start a global women's movement for women's rights. [You can travel] to Africa and Asia, where Hillary Clinton visited countless remote villages to show how the poorest of the poor could become entrepreneurial and self-sufficient when given access to small loans. -- Lissa Muscatine and Melanne Verveer, "Hillary's Unprecedented Experience on the World Stage," Huffington Post, Dec. 14, 2007

In 1996, Hillary Clinton addressed the Council on Foreign Relations:  

In this great post on the Movement Vision Lab blog, grassroots activist Dan Horowitz Garcia argues that if there is a peace movement (and he doubts it...) it needs to change its tactics.  According to Dan, marches don't end wars --- and never have.

Dan Horowitz Garcia says that history repeats itself, and so do movements.

Contrary to many beliefs, the peace movement didn't end the war in Vietnam. Three things ended the war in Vietnam. They were, in order of importance, the Vietnamese, the tanking economy, and the resistance of U.S. soldiers. If I extended this list by 100 more items, I still wouldn't include marches on the U.S. capitol or attempts to raise the Pentagon. It is beyond doubt that popular resistance in the U.S. had success in restricting the scope of the war, but it didn't end it. If public opinion alone could stop a war, then the Iraq occupation would have ended back in November 2004 when public support dropped under 50%. Majority opinion may hold sway in a democracy, but not in the U.S.

Dan also details how marches against WWII in the United States didn't really stop that war, either.  So what makes us think they'll stop this one?

Instead, Dan says the anti-war movement has to stop being merely anti-war --- and offer a clear alternative instead.  Here, Dan argues for a peace movement that is challenging hegemony and violence much more broadly:

I believe we also have to expand the conversation from Iraq to the so-called war on terror. This is the elites' latest framework for empire, and we have to challenge it. The "peace movement" (it still doesn't feel right to say that) can learn a lot from organizers fighting the criminal justice system. The parallels between the rhetoric justifying the war on terror and the war on crime are plain to see, if you look at them. In the war on crime, bad people are coming into your neighborhood or even your house to do you harm. (These people just happen to have dark skin.) To keep you safe, we need to be tough on these criminals. We need more cops with more equipment (i.e. guns), and we need places where we can put the bad people far away from the good people. In the war on terror, bad people are coming to your country to do you harm. (These people also happen to have dark skin. Coincidence?) To keep you safe, we need to be tough on these terrorists. We need more troops with more equipment (i.e. big guns), and we need to kill the bad people in places far away from the good people.

In a comment on the blog, another community organizer Gabe Gonzalez talks about how his daughter is convinced there are monsters under the bed.  So he has to spend his energy convincing her otherwise.  In other words, even if progressives were to take up the agenda  that the "war on terror" and its ever-present threats are false, why should we have to convince the public?  Shoudn't we be forcing the Right wing hawk fear mongerers to prove their point?  

Otherwise, we're in the position of proving that the invisible threat doesn't exist.  Which is sort of like disproving monsters under the bed.  

We should be fighting the "war on terror" by making THEM defend it!

What do you think?

Sally Kohn is the Director of the Movement Vision Lab.