To some of the older people here

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V Nura

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I'm curious as to how this war and vietnam were similar in terms of homeland attitude?


I'd love to hear some thoughts I'm goign to try to use FYM as a tool for understanding rather than a platform for debate for once.
 
I was only 4 years old in 1975 when the last u.s. personel were airlifted out of there, but since no one has answered you yet, I'll give my 2 cents:
the vietnam war lasted over a decade and cost over 50,000 lives of u.s. soldiers alone, did not end in u.s. victory, tore this country apart politically and socially, and also coincided with the assasinations on JFK, MLK, RFK, etc.
this war seems to be on its last legs after less than a month, at last count around 100 u.s. soldiers dead or captured, certainly has u.s. victory stamped on it, and the majority of americans support it.
the most important thing to do now is to stabilize iraq and hold elections, and get out of there. then we really need to try to improve our image in the arab world, and leaving iraq as soon as it is feasible will be a good start.
 
I was 11 in 1975. My 2 cents:

The US never had a clear objective in Vietnam and didn't commit fully to whatever objectives it did have. Many citizens could only ask "what are we doing?"

In Iraq, the objective is clearer and GWB has made his resolve well know to complete the objective.
 
I was 8 in 1975. I can't spare 2 cents my taxes are too high.

Here goes. I remember it, being on the news. I remember my parents were opposed to it. My father is not opposed to the action in Iraq. When I asked him about this, he said that the DRAFT made the situation quite different. It was different knowing that people, based on the luck of the draw were being sent off, in many cases to die. That to me is one of the major differences. Today we are looking at a professional military without a draft.

Peace
 
Alright, I was 15 in 1975 :mad: I agree with most of what's already been said here. Over 50,000 American soldiers plus 2 million Vietnamese died. It was absolutely devastating. It is a completely different situation than the war with Iraq. In terms of homeland attitude, Vietnam divided the country like nothing had since the Civil War. News coverage of the anti-war protests which frequently turned into riots (like Kent State) was huge. I was deeply affected by the war. It dominated media coverage for 10 critical years of my childhood into my teens, my parents were depressed, the country was depressed, the gruesome details of the war were splashed across magazine covers constantly. I think R&R saved my sanity.
 
In 1975 I was 20.

In the early part of the war the majority of the American people supported the VN war. It was seen as an ?us versus them.? Anti war protesters were seen as un-American. We entered VN war on a resolution ?Gulf of Tonken?, that was passed on information that was false. (Most believe this today.)

The vote that gave Bush the power to act was partly based on false information. Fraudulent papers stating Iraq was trying to import nuclear materials from Africa.

The establishment attacked the anti-war protesters, calling them communist dupes. They were told ?Love it or leave it. (America)?. War supporters said ?The Silent Majority supports the war?

I have seen the Love It or Leave It? and ?Silent Majority? terms used in relationship protesters today. It sounded like an exact repeat of the 60s.

Iraq is much different than Viet Nam. Polls have been taken that state if the war lasted a few months and there were 5000 US casualties the American people would demand it be stopped. The American people supported the VN war for a few years before the tide turned against it.

We have an overwhelming advantage in our wars today. The US does not have to concern itself with a counter balance super-power. If we had a quick success in Viet Nam it would have been deemed a just war of liberation.
 
presently 67 per cent of 20-30 yr olds support the US Troops in Iraq.

Vietnam Conflict was only supported by 21-23 per cent of the 20-30 yr olds in the 1970s.

GW will be vindicted.
Mr Deep will continue to seeth;)

end of story.:)
DB9
capt.1049908361.iraq_us_war_jbm104.jpg


a diamond bonus photo:):up:
 
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I was only 9 in 1975 but I didn't know of anyone who supported the US being in Vietnam. My parents were just out of their teens when their friends started being sent over and when they came back, they were some seriously screwed up people. My Mom was anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-police, etc. and wore the counter-culture version of the love it or leave patch...she had "America, fix it or fuck it" sewn on her jeans.

Today that very same woman is pro-Bush and agrees with what we're doing in Iraq. She says the difference is no no knew why we were sending our young men to their deaths in Vietnam...we at least have some idea of what we're doing in Iraq.
 
I'll cough up my age. I was 15 in 1975 and lived next door to a Air Force base and an Army base. All my friends and I were against the war and many were military brats, as they were called. I had friends that had family members as POW's and MIA's and I wore a POW bracelet - he never came back.
It was the frist time that people OPENLY spoke aout against the
status quo and the government (without McCarthy there to jail you). I came to the situation late, the 60's were the first to protest, and I was too young. However, 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam. Every night at dinner time the news showed reams of dead US soldiers real and in body bags and also Vietcong and Vietnamese civilians. I dislike the antiseptic bullshit on TV, I think all Americans especially the young should still see what a real war is about.
After months of watching people die, the "Establishment" got involved in ending the war and it happened.

What disgusts me is that some of the people in power are the ones that hated war until it helped their wallets.

"Forget in Ohio"
 
Scarletwine said:
I'll cough up my age. I was 15 in 1975 and lived next door to a Air Force base and an Army base. All my friends and I were against the war and many were military brats, as they were called. I had friends that had family members as POW's and MIA's and I wore a POW bracelet - he never came back.
It was the frist time that people OPENLY spoke aout against the
status quo and the government (without McCarthy there to jail you). I came to the situation late, the 60's were the first to protest, and I was too young. However, 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam. Every night at dinner time the news showed reams of dead US soldiers real and in body bags and also Vietcong and Vietnamese civilians. I dislike the antiseptic bullshit on TV, I think all Americans especially the young should still see what a real war is about.
After months of watching people die, the "Establishment" got involved in ending the war and it happened.

What disgusts me is that some of the people in power are the ones that hated war until it helped their wallets.

"Forget in Ohio"


wow scarletwine.when I posted this I was actually hoping you'd chime in. That's was a great post to read it's a side of history many ppl my age never get to see really. thanks for sharing


deep the Gulf of tonkin is something I think every american should know about..how the government went to war unde ra fabricated incident.


I'm glad I started this thread.
 
I guess that's why I'm so against war still.

I think if people saw more of the reality of war, they'd be against it.
By the way we've killed approximately half as many civilians as died on 9/11 and wounded twice as many. I must be stupid, but I have a hard time saying that is ok, we're liberating them.
 
I was 12 when Nixon brought the troops home in 1973. We were technically there until 1975, and when the last American left the tank busted the gate of the Presidential palace and that was it. We lost, whether anyone wanted to admit it.

Nixon promised in his 1972 campaign to bring the troops home, and most of them started pulling out after he was re-inagurated in 1973. I remember watching on TV as former POW's ran up and hugged their kids. It gave me the chills. Of course, some were never found.

Having always been interested in the news from a young age, I remember a lot. I remember seeing images of the Vietnam war on TV and hearing the numbers of people killed. Some of the first things I ever learned to write were copied from a newspaper and were war related. This is interesting- my father was a career military first seargant. He had been drafted in WW2 and stayed in for the job security. My brother was a draft dodger. I remember the draft lotto on TV- they would put every day of the year on a calendar chart, then roll a bingo type basket of balls with numbers on it. They pulled out one for each date to see how high your draft chances were. My brother was #52 out of 366. Not good. He was not the fighting type. He was 18 in 1969, prime pickings for them. I recall the first day he came home wearing a peace sign pinned to his hat. I recall him playing Jonathan Edward's "Sunshine", an anti-draft song, literally every morning.

My brother enrolled in community college to get a deferrment. We couldn't afford an actual university, and his grades weren't good enough since he'd been a goof off for years. He didn't go half the time, and my mother did his homework and wrote his papers. My father supported this. Why, he the military guy with the hippy son? Tell you why- he had seen it happen. He saw the draftees being sent over and the ones who cried and didn't want to go were the ones who got killed, and the raring to go gung-ho ones came home with honor, though his coworkers joked it would be the opposite, he knew better. He knew my brother would never make it in battle. He wasn't cut out for it any more than he was being a brain surgeon and he didn't want to lose him. Dad retired from the military, and my brother was never drafted. The draft ended in 1974. People my age never had to worry. If you wanted to go, go, if not, don't. That's how it should be.
 
Oh dear, I got away from the main subject, sorry. Homeland attitude- I saw a lot, the hippies, a lot of things. The big difference was that took so long, years, and it was never really resolved. Time will tell how this compares to then.

When I was in high school, we were discussing the Vietnam war (it was the late seventies and it was over by then) One boy almost laughed, saying he remembered hearing the news of Vietnam like it was a football game- 25 US soldiers killed today, 123 Vietcong- our side is winning! I had never thought about it like that until he put it that way, but it was like that for us kids, that's how it seemed. I think it was more distant and surreal for kids, even though we do have memories of it and heard people talking, you probably need someone who's at least 50 now to remember in the terms of a 'grownup.'

One thing I can say is, I never, EVER feared for my own life in my little surburban neighborhood. We had no fear of terrorism, chemical or biological warfare, suicide bombings, or any 9-11 type things. I remember seeing them on TV, in Lebanon, Israel, even Ireland. But we felt very safe in America in those days, and I don't anymore.
 
There are so many famous images from the Vietnam War that were burned into my memory the minute I saw them as a child, mostly from looking through LIFE magazine at my grandmother's house. Most of them are horrible and painful. But here is one of my favorites. It just says so much, about the era, the naivete, the hope...I don't know, it moves me.

sol1.jpg
 
I was not born yet during the Vietnam conflict which essentially ended for the USA in January of 1973. All US forces were withdrawn by then with only about a platoon of troops to guard the US embassy. Essentially at that point, Nixons policy of Vietnamization had worked. The South Vietnamese were holding and would continue to hold on until a serious of military set backs in the spring of 1975 over two years later. The USA was not involved in any fighting in Vietnam after Linebacker II bombing raids in December 1972.

But anyways, this is about the homefront and I'm informed on that by my parents. My father spent a full year in Vietnam during the heaviest fighting. 1968. He was there for the Tet Offensive. He came back and married mom and continued his military career. He did not expect to be lectured by some people who were friends who never went to Vietnam about how terrible the war was and that the US military was criminal. He did not expect that when going into public areas or through an airport, he had to wear civilian clothes rather than his uniform for because of the possibility of various types of harrassment. When I hear how US citizens, many of them in the Peace movement or hippies treated US soldiers coming home from the war, it angers me. The way many US soldiers were treated when they came home is shameful.

I also find the media coverage of that war to be mis-guided and to often taken events out of their proper context. Reporters rarely reported the people that were often helped by US soldiers and were obsessed with SHOCK news primarily because bad news or shock news sells more papers. I strongly support the rules the military places on the media today especially with technology and live pictures in which a reporter could mistakenly give away a units position live on tv. I also do not think a Father and Mother should learn of their sons death through live combat footage on CNN. That is totally disrespectfull of thats soldiers family and friends.

Those that have seen combat and their family and friends do not need a TV reporter to tell them what combat is like. Reporters often got the overall story wrong in Vietnam and made many mistakes. Anyone that has researched the technical aspects of various battles in Vietnam knows this. Not that reporters are without mistakes today, I've seen many over the past 3 weeks.
War is certainly ugly, but so is living under Saddam Hussein. How many people would still be in opposition to war in Iraq if they had to watch all the rapes, torture and executions done by Saddam over the past 24 years? Saddam has killed over 1.7 million people. How many more would have died if he had not been overthrown?
 
"When I hear how US citizens, many of them in the Peace movement or hippies treated US soldiers coming home from the war, it angers me. The way many US soldiers were treated when they came home is shameful."

I agree 100%, most were drafted to start with. That didn't happen where I lived mainly because it was a predominately military community. By the way, this wasn't about Iraq.
 
STING2 said:
My father spent a full year in Vietnam during the heaviest fighting. 1968. He was there for the Tet Offensive. He came back and married mom and continued his military career. He did not expect to be lectured by some people who were friends who never went to Vietnam about how terrible the war was and that the US military was criminal. He did not expect that when going into public areas or through an airport, he had to wear civilian clothes rather than his uniform for because of the possibility of various types of harrassment. When I hear how US citizens, many of them in the Peace movement or hippies treated US soldiers coming home from the war, it angers me.

Thats an interesting post. It helps me to understand some views.

I am not a Hippie - but as a person who partly sympathizes with this movement (because in my eyes it helped to raise consciousness in America and therefore contributed to the late return of the troops) - and generally as a peace loving person, I may say sorry, even if I wasn?t born then and even if I would never harass a soldier.

I don?t know if your father has ever heard sorry from someone who is what you may describe as a typical anti-war person. So, if he hasn?t, tell him.

I am believing in love and in peace, and I know what respect means.
 
Scarletwine,

In reference to Iraq, I was only responding to your post that sort of brought it up.

"By the way we've killed approximately half as many civilians as died on 9/11 and wounded twice as many. I must be stupid, but I have a hard time saying that is ok, we're liberating them."


Thats cool HIPHOP, thanks.
 
I've seen more "conflict" and war that I ever imagined I would. When I graduated in 1972, all hell was breaking loose. My cousin came home to angry people who blamed him for the war. He didn't die in the war, per say, but his soul died after he returned. Then he died in a boating accident. He felt that he had been led into a conflict with no outcome that would make any difference. He gave up. Then he just drifted, and died. That was a horrible war, decision's by our so called leaders to even get involved in the early stages of the conflict, just don't compare to what's happening now. I'm watching and I'm very wary of the decisions being made now, but also realise it's different. Vietnam was wrong, killing is wrong, but it's still isn't my decision, alone.. But Saddam was so totally wrong. Read something else that is wrong, also:
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/cgi-bin/ri/bulletin?bc=00531
 
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