>
>Let me say that I reject this analysis strongly.
>
>I strongly reject any chain of argument that leads to the condemnation
as a
>"war crime" of the invasion of the British Empire in the late 1770s by
>Lafayette and his volunteers.
>
>I am glad that Lafayette invaded the British Empire to aid the cause of
>liberty. And I reject the claim that Americans--like my ancestor
Artemus
>Ward--who allied with a foreign power against their own government were
>traitors.
>
Let me be the first to jump all over you on this one... ;-)
You are confusing your analogies. In the case of the American Revolution, the British were the Imperial power, supporting their client regime against a popular rebellion. The French (for their own imperial reasons, not for any great love of liberty) supported the rebel forces. Thus:
Americans = British GVN = Colonial governments Viet Minh = Patriots French = Soviets
Once you successfully purge your mind of U.S. propaganda about "liberating the Vietnamese form the Commies" and actually look at the historical facts, you see just another dirty colonial war, one of a depressing line going back thousands of years.
Jim Baird
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