Michael Wright wrote:
West appears to be trying to discredit accusations
of war criminal behavior by US military personnel
with the notion that if they are guilty of such,
then so are the World War II GIs. I think this
comparison is flawed.
JW reply:
I am not. You totally missed the point. I am just trying to bring some
logic to Jeffrey Blankfort's amorphous classification of what
constitutes a war crime. Jeffrey basically said that if you invade
another country you are a war criminal, I tossed up the invasions in
Europe to make him take a look at the significance of what he had said.
If you use Jeff's logic my comparison is not flawed. By his argument
that invasions of foreign countries are war crimes one can infer that
since we invaded foreign countries in Europe those invasions were war
crimes. I don't believe this and I would argue differently, but that is
where Jeff's logic takes us as he stated it.
Michael Wright wrote:
You had these elements present in the Vietnam
situation of the 1960s -- an invader army (the US),
a puppet government (the RVN), guerilla resisters
(the NLF). The only problem was that the US was
on the wrong side.
JW reply:
Don't forget the the regular forces of the NVA who were a more
significant element than the NLF. Otherwise, I agree with you
completely. We should have stuck with Ho in '45, but that is not the
issue here.
-- Jerry West Editor/publisher/janitor ---------------------------------------------------- THE RECORD On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast An independent, progressive regional publication http://www.island.net/~record/
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