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From: geb@cadre.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Vietnam controversy
Message-ID: <236@cadre.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Jun-84 15:49:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: cadre.236
Posted: Mon Jun 11 15:49:27 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Jun-84 02:34:17 EDT
Distribution: net.misc
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pgh.
Lines: 34


> You are right.  there are those among us who refuse to admit that the
> "war was wrong."  Including me.
>
>The problem is that no-one has ever talked about the strategic reasons why we
>might have preferred that Indochina didn't become controlled by essentially
>hostile other countries.
>
>Had we won the Indochina war, there might very well have been SIX MILLION FEWER D
>FEWER DEATHS in Cambodia, and Thailand, a peaceful country itself, would
>not be fighting a prepetual border war against people FROM OUTSIDE THE
>COUNTRY ATTEMPTING CONQUEST BY FORCE.
>
>The chance to prevent this is in itself sufficient moral justification for
>the war.

One could argue that had the U.S. not conspired to prevent the democratic
election of Ho Chi Minh 30 years ago there would not have been a Viet
Nam War, neither all those deaths.  Arguing what might have been does
not retroactively justify criminal acts, however.  In my mind, when
Lyndon Johnson, having pledged not to, then within 9 months of his election
announced that American youths were to be sent, whether willing or not,
to die for someone else's country because of what LBJ thought was good
for the US, and when he deliberately falsified information (Gulf of Tonkin)
in order to trick congress (not that they are innocent) into giving the
green light to his war plans, he became a war criminal.  Whether or not
Viet Nam would have been better off if we had won does not expunge the
guilt or bring back the dead draftees.  If the war had been fought only
with volunteers, only with money contributed by those who approved the
goals (it looks like there are enough of you out there), then we might
listen to some arguments that it was justified, but as it was done,
it is immoral on its face.