I'm barely old enough to remember the Vietnam War. I was 10 years old when the peace accords were signed in 1973. So, I recognized a lot of the terms that were used to describe the war, like "Tet Offensive" and "Khe Sanh" and "Ho Chi Minh Trail" and all that, but I really couldn't put them into a context. I knew it was said that our soldiers won the war, but our politicians lost it, but I really didn't know what that meant. I had never read a book about the war, so my knowledge was pretty fragmented. I played wargames, but I always avoided modern stuff, like Vietnam.
Well, the Vietnam war is not as modern as it used to be, and I found myself watching a Ken Burns documentary for my Covid 19 entertainment.
What a thoroughly and utterly messed up piece of history. The people who ran that war were a disgrace. Whether it's LBJ, or McNamara, or Westmoreland. The lot of them should be remembered by history as completely awful people, or at least so thoroughly and utterly inept that it borders on criminal.
I vaguely remember "body counts". As a small child I remember seeing on the news that our team lost 400, but their team lost 640, so that meant we were winning. That made sense to my six year old brain, but come to find out that was the level of thinking of the people in charge, too. It's incredible that such incompetence went on for so long.
Meanwhile, our generals knew how the NVA was getting into the country, and how they were shipping supplies to the Viet Cong, and we bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but didn't actually occupy it to prevent those supplies from coming in, because as long as we had a positive kill ratio, we were winning.
I had heard about all this stuff before, but I think it took a documentary of that length to really grasp just how incredibly stupid it all was.
If you want to see something that shows you just how incredibly stupid a government and militiary industrial complex can be, watch it.
Well, the Vietnam war is not as modern as it used to be, and I found myself watching a Ken Burns documentary for my Covid 19 entertainment.
What a thoroughly and utterly messed up piece of history. The people who ran that war were a disgrace. Whether it's LBJ, or McNamara, or Westmoreland. The lot of them should be remembered by history as completely awful people, or at least so thoroughly and utterly inept that it borders on criminal.
I vaguely remember "body counts". As a small child I remember seeing on the news that our team lost 400, but their team lost 640, so that meant we were winning. That made sense to my six year old brain, but come to find out that was the level of thinking of the people in charge, too. It's incredible that such incompetence went on for so long.
Meanwhile, our generals knew how the NVA was getting into the country, and how they were shipping supplies to the Viet Cong, and we bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but didn't actually occupy it to prevent those supplies from coming in, because as long as we had a positive kill ratio, we were winning.
I had heard about all this stuff before, but I think it took a documentary of that length to really grasp just how incredibly stupid it all was.
If you want to see something that shows you just how incredibly stupid a government and militiary industrial complex can be, watch it.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2XkFJsI
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