The first threat on which I wish to report is widely misunderstood: the smoldering coals of war in Southeast Asia. South Viet-Nam is already under attack--sometimes by a single assassin, sometimes by a band of guerillas, recently by full battalions. The peaceful borders of Burma, Cambodia, and India have been repeatedly violated. And the peaceful people of Laos are in danger of losing the independance they gained not so long ago.
No one can call these "wars of liberation." For these are free countries living under their own governments. Nor are these aggressions any less real because men are knifed in their homes and not shot in the fields of battle.
The very simple question confronting the world community is whether measures can be devised to protect the small and the weak from such tactics. For if they are successful in Laos and South Viet-Nam, the gates will be opened wide."
JFK, United Nations Speech, September 25, 1961
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of lweiger at umich.edu Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 7:27 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Eat shit and die, was United against a Pro-War Democrat
Quoting "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>:
> "...won the war of national liberation for the Vietnamese"? Vietnam today
> doesn't look much like a country that won such a war. The US achieved its
> war aim -- thwarting an example of independent development under domestic
> control. --CGE
I've asked before, and I'll ask again: what evidence do you have that anyone in the Kennedy administration was quaking at the prospect of utopia in Vietnam?
If you said something along these lines to McNamara, he'd laugh at you, and for once in his life, he'd do so sincerely.
-- Luke ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk