Re: The Summer Of Love/Vets

Paul Heavens (paulh@cruzio.com)
Sun, 31 Aug 1997 10:34:23 -0700

>At 12:38 AM 8/27/97 +0000, you wrote:
>>
>>My analysis of all of those complicated and complex issues is:
>>1.America's participation in the Viet Nam War was wrong.
>>2.America's policy makers who got us in the War were wrong.
>>3.American's soldiers who fought in the War were wrong.
>>(Once you buy into #1 you have to buy into #2 & #3 because #1 could not have
>>happened without them.)
>>
>This is where I, and many others, disagree with you.
>
>My father was in the Navy during the Vietnam War, in fact, his ship served
>an observer function in North Vietnam in the late 1950's. Although he was a
>dentist, and therefore normally a non-combatant, his general quarters
>station was fire control officer on the forward gun turret. I have and
>never will see my father as a potentially wrong and evil man for serving
>during time of war; if ordered to combat area, he would have gone as a very
>loyal sailor who had worked his way up from enlisted ranks and loved
>(loves) his country.
>
>Those who serve, serve for many reason. During my own naval career, I
>learned that it was the military person who usually hated war the most,
>because we knew the costs.
>
>Marcella Ruland
>formerly LT USN
>.-

"Once there was a tribe of monkeys whose elders decided to attack thier
neighbors for no other reason than that thier neighbors had the potential
to steal from them."

War is dead wrong, unless your a monkey defending your turf from assault.
To go to war not knowing what you are fighting for, to take up arms to take
the lives of others without justifiable cause, is wrong. Where was the
justifiable cause for Vietnam. We had to save them from themselves? Yeah,
right! I'm sorry, we all saw the same war happening. Frankly, I know it
takes a lot of courage to be unpopular, the antiwar movement was unpopular
for a while, then the returning vets were unpopular. Today we can look back
and see the war was wrong and we can also see that we were able AS A NATION
to make a lot of people believe at that time that the war was worth
American young lives. We were wrong as a nation. Cant we accept that?
There were no "evil people" risking thier lives. Just the number expected
in a country like ours buying the system line. And why not? they were
educated and primed for it. There is no blame here. The "event"showed us
who we were as a society, that we were people who did what we believed in
even if later it proved to be wrong. We are also people who can recognise
when we are wrong and move on. I hope.

_
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http://members.cruzio.com/~paulh
paulh@cruzio.com

Valuing the differences is the essence of synenergy - the mental, the
emotional, the psychological differences between people.- and the key to
valuing those differences is to realise that all people see the world not
as it is, but as they are.