Hi Jeff: Glad to see you paring down the superfluous rehtoric to the meat and potatoes so we can begin to see where we actually stand on this topic. Probably a lot closer together than you think. Jeffrey Blankfort wrote: Thirty years doesn't change facts. It doesn't equate the victimizer with the victim although this is the way much, if not most of US history has been reported in our textbooks, and I have no doubt that other countries do the same as well, but few have as much to cover-up as we do over the same period of time. JW reply: No, thirty years doesn't change facts, but it should widen our preceptions of them and move our rhetoric away from the hyberbole used to present an urgent case to end a war to a more studied and scholarly one. And, you were misreading me if you think that I was equating the victimizer with the victim. It wasn't about the Vietnamese at all. I used the case of the NLF/NVA as examples to illustrate my objection to the broad scope of your statements that painted not only US policy and policy makers in a bad light but by implication everyone else, except the NVA/NLF, who were involved, including people like Ron Kovics, without any consideration for reasons and circumstances on a narrower and more individual level. JB wrote: I have responded to your allegations and what seems to me a desire on your part to make the NVA and the NLF forces into a bunch of child killers when the number of dead children at the hands of US forces, including the Marines, dwarfs whatever number were killed, as you say, by the NVA and the NLF. JW reply: The fact that you say that I wanted to make the NVA and NLF into a bunch of child killers illustrates my point about your hyperbole. That some of them killed children I do not doubt, that they are all a bunch of child killers is not a term that I would use, no more than I would say or imply that the US forces in RVN were all a bunch of child killers. That would be a gross overstatement that would not fare well under any serious academic scrutiny. As for who killed how many, I don't have any reliable figures, do you? One thing to note is that often the figures for casualties are cited that the US lost so many and the Vietnamese lost so many and we immediately equate the Vietnamese losses to those of the NLF/NVA and allied civilians, conveniently forgetting that a lot of Vietnamese losses were caused by other Vietnamese. JB wrote: I am not going to bother with another point by point refutation more than to deny anything I wrote endorses the killing of children by any side. JW reply: I do not doubt that you do not endorse the killing of children but some of your defense of the NVA/NLF seems to say "so what if they did, the US made them do it." JB wrote: What I would like to know is what proof you can offer that NVA and NLF engaged in the killing of children (and for what reason?) The US military clearly had its reasons, but your efforts to rewrite history don't make the millions of dead at US hands any less repulsive. Sorry. JW reply: I can not offer you first hand information on that although I would suspect that the reason would be the same as for most killed by the US, incidental and undesired casualties in an action. One would hope that they would not have shot entire families in cold blood as a lesson to others, but I can't say for sure, and it would not surprise me. As much as their cause was right, they were not angels. I am curious as to what you may think that the US reasons were for killing children, particularly since you say that they are so clear. Finally I am not rewriting history here, just trying to clarify it instead of enshrining anti-war slogans and personal predjudices. And you are right, no matter how we cut it in the end, the number of deaths on either side will remain totaly repulsive. Every single one was a waste and all of those who were responsible for the policy that put us there and then kept us there despite good advice and public desire to the contrary should be held accountable. -- 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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