Re: [sixties-l] WW II, Vietnam, & War Crime

From: Jerry West (record@island.net)
Date: Thu Jun 22 2000 - 22:59:36 CUT

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    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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