People's History: Vietnam, 1960s (Chap 18)
Like A Rolling Stone, Bob DylanFor What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield
|
Summary Ambitions for control and foreign riches motivate decisions, as in Vietnam, to bomb and devastate. Chapter The war in Vietnam: the strongest country on the earth against a tiny peasant colony of France whose birth of independence under Ho Chi Minh in '45 demanded all the rights that each American alive should understand. But we resisted, giving foreign aid to stop their quest, the threat of 'dominoes' a masquerade while lusting over Asian rubber, tin, petroleum. The French withdrew, but our imperial intentions, numb to self-determination, urged us on. A populist attempt to help the peasants was a form of communist control to us. We took the south of Vietnam and made a country. Chosen leader Diem's star began to fade and we deposed him during 'freedom' talks by JFK. And now, in '64, the war took hold with LBJ. The Gulf of Tonkin, though a fake, allowed us to declare a war against the Viet Cong -- a grandiose affair, a quarter-ton of bombs for every person in the land. Napalm, defoliants for villagers who simply stand and watch a half a million foreign warriors destroy their fields and huts, with every elder, woman, girl and boy considered dangerous. Americans were all in shock at My Lai -- children pushed in ditches, shot. As if to mock the 'liberation,' soldiers told of "many My Lais" spread throughout the country. Opposition gathered, surged ahead, the Tet Offensive demonstrating popular support. And our response? As if engaged in some barbaric sport, bomb Laos, and then Cambodia. "So tell us, LBJ," said chanters all around our nation, "who'd you kill today?" With LBJ resigning, that left Nixon's strategy: withdrawing troops, increasing bombs, inflicting misery from longer range, with Viet allies using US arms to finish off the communists and villages and farms. |