19-05-2018, 07:24 PM
The PBS Ken Burns Documentary is a must-watch for every US contemporary history buff. I learned a lot from that source that I never realized before.
As for JFK and Vietnam, I think the following were true:
1. JFK was informed in 1963 that we were winning the Vietnam War. I think that was actually true.
2. There is no doubt that the Vietnam War was based on a theory that South Vietnam was Catholic-run and that it should be kept that way. Much of the entire "Cold War" was a Catholic vs. Communist struggle disguised as something else.
3. The US did not lose the Vietnam War. We WON the Vietnam War. The domino theory was real. Indonesia was about to fall to the Communists and India had been neutralized by the Sino-India War. The Vietnam War was a war of attrition much like our Civil War and World War I. The US was buying time and we bought 30 years with our Vietnam strategy. By 1975 when it ended, the world was an entirely different place than in 1955 or 1965.
4. One of the main theses of Ken Burns' documentary was that with proper material support, the South Vietam (ARVN) army could have defended itself against the North. According to Burns, the US simply cut off material support for the South inn the 1970's and this caused the surrender of the South.
5. I also believe the thesis of Fletcher Prouty's book where he says there was no such thing as the Communist Viet Cong. They were, rather, displaced Catholic refugees from the North who were only fighting for economic survival. This same phenomenon was played out in England in the days of Robin Hood (who lived and plundered from the Sherwood Forest) and Ethiopia in their Civil War (in the 1990's) where there were only plunderers living in the woods and robbing people to just survive.
O should add a P.S. that the only disagreement I had with the JFK foreign policy speech by Jim Di Eugenio was the portrayal of Dag Hammerskjold as a "good guy". He was actually a Swede who made his name by managing money in Sweden for the Nazis. He was a Nazi Collaborator. This pattern was repeated by Kurt Waldheim who had a Nazi past. And also Pope Pius XII. And also Pope Benedict XVI and the current Pope, Francis. Francis was in Argentina during the heyday of the Juan Peron and Argentinian mass murder. And then you have the Bilderbergs run by SS Officer Prince Bernhard.
These international groups just can't cut the umbilical cord to the Nazi past.
James Lateer
As for JFK and Vietnam, I think the following were true:
1. JFK was informed in 1963 that we were winning the Vietnam War. I think that was actually true.
2. There is no doubt that the Vietnam War was based on a theory that South Vietnam was Catholic-run and that it should be kept that way. Much of the entire "Cold War" was a Catholic vs. Communist struggle disguised as something else.
3. The US did not lose the Vietnam War. We WON the Vietnam War. The domino theory was real. Indonesia was about to fall to the Communists and India had been neutralized by the Sino-India War. The Vietnam War was a war of attrition much like our Civil War and World War I. The US was buying time and we bought 30 years with our Vietnam strategy. By 1975 when it ended, the world was an entirely different place than in 1955 or 1965.
4. One of the main theses of Ken Burns' documentary was that with proper material support, the South Vietam (ARVN) army could have defended itself against the North. According to Burns, the US simply cut off material support for the South inn the 1970's and this caused the surrender of the South.
5. I also believe the thesis of Fletcher Prouty's book where he says there was no such thing as the Communist Viet Cong. They were, rather, displaced Catholic refugees from the North who were only fighting for economic survival. This same phenomenon was played out in England in the days of Robin Hood (who lived and plundered from the Sherwood Forest) and Ethiopia in their Civil War (in the 1990's) where there were only plunderers living in the woods and robbing people to just survive.
O should add a P.S. that the only disagreement I had with the JFK foreign policy speech by Jim Di Eugenio was the portrayal of Dag Hammerskjold as a "good guy". He was actually a Swede who made his name by managing money in Sweden for the Nazis. He was a Nazi Collaborator. This pattern was repeated by Kurt Waldheim who had a Nazi past. And also Pope Pius XII. And also Pope Benedict XVI and the current Pope, Francis. Francis was in Argentina during the heyday of the Juan Peron and Argentinian mass murder. And then you have the Bilderbergs run by SS Officer Prince Bernhard.
These international groups just can't cut the umbilical cord to the Nazi past.
James Lateer
