Yankees go the fuck home.
The only good American soldiers in Vietnam were the ones who fragged their officers
It's feels like only western leftists share this sentiment. The Vietnamese, in my experience, understand the class dynamic and hold little resentment towards individual Americans.
It is only western leftists, at least in my experience, who engage in this kind of moralistic peacocking over people who by now are all either dead or very old.
Like yeah the viet cong were justified in doing whatever they had to do to get the US out of their country, even if that meant shooting teenagers conscripted against their will. But it's only in the US and Europe that you see leftists kind of reveling in post-hoc revanchist violence.
I think its another symptom of there being no consructive, material political project for people to rally around, and a reaction to the fact that we live in easily the most jingoistic, propagandized society on thr planet.
"Leftism" in the US (politics broadly you could say, but especially left-wing since we don't even have a party of our own to VOTE! for) is basically just a means of self-expression and trying to feel morally righteous.
Well... yeah. Real self-actualization is pretty thin on the ground around here. There's few meaningful lefty groups left so it's mostly atomized individuals being cynical as usual.
Only about 25% of US troops in Vietnam were draftees. Apparently a lot of men "volunteered" bc they got perks or something if they enlisted voluntarily, but were just assigned something if they were drafted. Either way, the idea that all US troops were drafted is a myth/revision. Apparently draftees had a slightly higher death rate. Didn't know that.
conscripted against their will
there is always a choice
prison or war crimes
anyone who chose war crimes deserved what they gotcall me a "western leftist" all you like
there is no excuse for choosing to kill people who have done absolutely nothing to you over a stint in prison
i say this as someone who spent five years in oneWe're talking around each other's points, which is what always happens in threads like these.
I'm not excusing any US soldiers from moral culpability for their actions in the Vietnam War, or any war, drafted or otherwise. Nor am I saying that Viet people's perception of America, whatever it may be, is unjustified.
I'm saying the urge to grandstand about how glad we are that US soldiers got owned 50 years ago is a symptom of political malaise and the general rudderlessness of the western "left." Like GnastyGnuts said, it shows that all we really have is performance and self-assurance of our own virtue. Replace "US soldiers in Vietnam" with the Romanov kids, or Germans deported from Poland after WW2, or whoever else you want. We fixate on retaliatory violence, even if justified, because we have no constructive alternative in which to direct our energies.
i am not one for retaliatory violence, especially against kids
i go against the grain for MLs in that i see the killing of the romanov kids as an excess, though i can understand the usual reasoning, i do not agree with it
but when it comes to enemy soldiers, all bets are off, conscripts or otherwiseThe Romanov thing wasn't retaliatory. You have to kill the entire line of succession to deny the nobility any figure head to rally around. It's just business. Sucks for them, but then Nick could have abdicated and left Russia, so.
this is the standard ML reasoning that i do not agree with, yes
i do not want to get into an argument or debate over it, so i would like to leave it at that
shooting teenagers conscripted against their will
Don't you know guys? Real leftists post U.S. military propaganda.
Like yeah the viet cong were justified in doing whatever they had to do to get the US out of their country, even if that meant shooting teenagers conscripted against their will. But it’s only in the US and Europe that you see leftists kind of reveling in post-hoc revanchist violence.
o that we all had the courage of our misspelled king :william-van-spronsen:
Do you think when members of the Resistance kill IDF conscripts, Palestinian Communists are shedding tears?
I think no one here has killed a US soldier in Vietnam.
Are you the subject of the new *chan meme about people who can't process hypotheticals?
Here, I'll help: you laughably believe that a penchant for retributive violence is unique to the Western Left. In response to this, I posed a hypothetical that I have seen play out dozens of times.
People who have actual stakes in struggle love violence against their oppressors.
Moreover, the three examples of retributive violence that you've used (Vietnam, Germans in Poland, Romanovs) were carried out by non-Westerners.
What's your point? That being glad invaders are dead isn't building toward the revolution? Nothing anyone does on this website has ever mattered. It's a reflection of our political powerlessness (it's not, retributive violence happens all the time), so what?
It's clear that you're upset that people want invaders dead. Can you explain why it's worth condemnation and consternation?
If not, I'm going to make the assumption that has proven 100% accurate so far: you're an American and thus incapable of valuing the lives of foreigners.
Modern Vietnamese people who simply study the past, yes. But speak to the ones who fought in the war or the ones who are taking care of agent orange kids. They don’t forget that shit regardless of how they feel about modern America.
As a Viet, my feelings trend towards resentment more than anything. Having to migrate here hugely because opportunities at home weren’t as good as the country that pillaged us, then learning that said country celebrates that pillaging and sees you as subhuman unless you’re some gusano removed waving a fascist flag of a country that no longer exists. It’s pathetic. It’s also frustrating because these types are usually the only types to exist in the Vietnamese diaspora, so I grow to resent people even in my own community. You cannot have differing thoughts or else you’ll be ostracized, or killed if you piss off some washed up general or his kid. Sometimes they’ll say “go back to Vietnam if you love communism so much,” the underlying message being that the US values free speech and freedom or whatever, but ironically, Vietnam is on good terms with the US and bad blood between southerners and northerners are largely forgotten. People criticize the government openly all the time and even sing southern nationalistic songs without anyone caring. Wave a red flag in the US and you’ll get a protest outside your house.
I don’t know if other Vietnamese migrants feel the same. Or if they even care - in my experience, they usually don’t because they usually already love the US (though complain about everything being expensive, isolating, violent, and traffic jams). But these are my feelings after learning beyond what textbooks say and seeing other Vietnamese Americans’ relationship with America
weird because america today is only really upset that they lost vietnam and make jokes about the warcrimes. They want them dead same as ever.
It's the gag with Red Foreman in That 70's Show
"Okay, first of all, we didn't 'lose', it was a draw..."
Counterpoint: being an american """"leftist"""" means knowing that the majority of Americans are unfixable, therefore dead imperialist soldiers are funny
Laughable idea. You people need to get outside of the English language internet.
I knew an old guy in work who upon being drafted for Vietnam went the “Fuck you, I’ll take jail instead” route.
Dude did his time, got out and proceeded to fuck every army officers wife who was down.
:uncle-ho-2:
Based. This was a surprisingly common choice dudes made at the time, I work with a couple boomers who either dodged or took jail time.
I asked a dude at work as a random hypothetical to get banter going if he'd dodge the draft if there was one and how. He said his parents would get him out of it somehow. RICH KID ALERT
vietnam vet hats are just participation trophies for war criminals
I saw one in Hawaii once waving the South Vietnamese puppet regime flag. Everyone was cheering. Absolute ghoul country.
Many southern nationalists don’t even know their own history. The country they simp for was sabotaged after their beloved president was assassinated with CIA assistance. Seeing them wave the southern flag alongside the American flag is like an abused dog who keeps wagging its tail whenever it sees its owner because he feeds it sometimes. It’s sad really.
I see these flags all over town here at Vietnamese businesses and temples. For a long time I didn't know what it was and just assumed it was some Buddhist thing.
During the Jan 6 riots there were Vietnamese people waving the southern flag alongside confederate flags, kekistan flags, and crusader flags. Some liberal goobers started saying “this isn’t what our flag represents!” No, it’s 100% of what it represents.
That dude belongs in a re-education camp so he can be taught basic manners.
Yeah, but rn he living life in hawaii being hailed as a "hero of the nation" while driving around a ridiculous car and being a general piece of shit. Just like the old american sex pests who spend retirement here.
In about 2-3 days, my dog and I will have matching "NVA: Back to Back Vietnam War Champs 1957-1975" hats.
I can have sympathy for the individual soldiers who were press-ganged by the US empire and sent to Vietnam against their will. They didn't deserve that. But the responsibility for their suffering lies solely with the US empire and the ghouls running it. The Vietnamese had every right to do anything it took to throw the foreign invaders into the sea.
That’s how I feel about most drafted/conscripted soldiers. I thinking there is a certain level of poverty draft today and the sheer amount of brainwashing young people are exposed to is a bummer too. I feel bad for them I do, but the real evil like you said the Ghouls at the top that force kids to go kill other kids. Americas military should have been radically defunded like 80 years ago. The military-industrial complex is a fuck.
However I have genuine respect for people who take up arms against imperial invaders.
Yeah I think there is a solid case that call of duty is grooming children
The only ones I have any sympathy for were the mentally disabled ones sent to do suicide missions. Other than that, :shrug:
Yankees went "home" then native americans said "go home" then they went to europe and the rich said "this is my land now since the enclosures act, go die in a hole i guess, or go back and steal someone else's land, your choice."
and this is how the mayo races came to be cursed to endlessly wander the earth like ghosts, mourning their sense of place.
the same fate awaits all those others who are colonized by capitalism.
they are the foreshadowing of the fate of the entire earth.
:lmayo::stalin-gun-1::stalin-gun-1:
The solution is as simple as no longer identifying as "white". But they won't, so they don't.
personal solutions don't work.
it is only a collective destruction of the system of whiteness that will end the idea that they are separate from the rest of the native population and must go somewhere else than where they live.
it's not a matter of "identifying" it's a matter of systemic dismantling of the policies laws and privileges of white supremacy.
It's a hell of a thread to pull, and I'm not sure where to start pulling.
idk, it's shit like red-lining and racist mortgage practices, hiring discrimination, shit like that. Fox News has everyone in red rural areas convinced that major blue cities have like mad max levels of constant violence and crime. So end that propaganda. Institute a propaganda counter-narrative. "Actually we're pretty much all the genetically the same, skin color is an adaptation to how much UV radiation you get," shit like that. They reinforce whiteness constantly, we can set the whiteness machine in reverse if we can take over.
i'm not sure where you'd find enough people you could trust with kids and to not be horribly racist or queerphobic but if we can handwave those problems i think it would eventually help 30 or 40 years after starting such a program, if a year or two of elementary school and a year of highschool was some kind of exchange program between rural, medium density, and urban settings. (and you couldn't game it with religious shit)
get kids having those "communist liberal diverse college environment" experiences way earlier and more than once, plus libs would hopefully have more connection to and solidarity with rural poors.
Didn’t socialist groups do this in like the late 18 and early 1900s? But with adults.
maybe. would still be a good thing to do if people could afford it and not be abusers
And there’s the rub, to “take over” we need to solve the issue of white supremacy.
i can "not identify as white" all i want but i'll still get treated like it in a white supremacist society and benefit from my skin color or fall through the cracks just the same.
i can be agender but without signs and signifiers communicating that and the vast majority of people not having any cultural context i'll still get treated like and assumed to be a cis man (even in queer spaces unless i've got a nametag and people actually bother to read it)
oh this is sarcasm, I think. I know a bunch of old boomer dudes who either dodged the draft or got thrown in jail for refusing to go to vietnam.
It was pretty common to understand murdering Vietnamese people was a bad thing. Muhammad Ali famously spoke up about it, for instance.
I think they’re doing the “muh historical moralism” thing that chuds are into, but it’s poorly written so idk
Its just left brain reactionary thought, its a 'well actually'
I’d argue the reactionary thought is cheering for exploited people to die because they were compulsively forced to kill other exploited people.
Should I be happy about every westerner that died during Ww1 because their countries were imperialist?
You can call me when Kissinger dies. I’ll celebrate an actual architect of war dying
I’d argue the reactionary thought is cheering for exploited people to die because they were compulsively forced to kill other exploited people.
Most people were volunteers and prison was always an option.
Were the Waffen SS just poor propagandized victims, forced to kill by the state?
What if the 20k dead conscripted minority’s. Legit 1/4 of the dead.
Edit: also the Waffen SS is volunteers. I’m not talking about volunteers. A better comparison to what I’m talking about is Italian or Hungarian draftees.
It’s sad any of these people were exploited or put in a position where they felt forced to go into conscripted military service. I don’t think this site, one that typical is strong in showing empathy, should celebrate all deaths in a war as good.
Edit: also the Waffen SS is volunteers. I’m not talking about volunteers. A better comparison to what I’m talking about is Italian or Hungarian draftees.
No, a better comparison is the Wehrmacht, which was where all the Nazi draftees went.
"Oh poor Hans, you shouldn't condemn him for being drafted into the Wehrmacht" - that's you right now. And I don't know about you, but that sounds like fascist apologia to me.
Over 1 million soldiers on the eastern front in the Wehrmacht were conscripted ethnic minorities from areas that were forced to fight for occupation. They made up almost a quarter of the causalities. Very similar numbers to the minorities conscripted into the American military.
It’s great that you are so much wiser than the 18 year old black kid from Arkansas that received draft papers in 1966 with no alternative media options to explain what the conflict actually was.
I’m gonna hold my bloodlust for the actual architects and engines of war, rather than pray and cheer for the deaths of millions of grunts over the course of centuries of imperial conflict.
Over 1 million soldiers on the eastern front in the Wehrmacht were conscripted ethnic minorities from areas that were forced to fight for occupation.
Oh poor Hans, you shouldn’t condemn him for being drafted into the Wehrmacht
Conscripted minorities are certainly the most understandable perpetrators of the Vietnamese genocide. But prison was always an option, and every dead American soldier meant fewer dead Vietnamese.
are we really comparing the vietnam war to WWI now? lol lmao
When is a conscript a victim and when is a conscript a fascist?
Don't worry, this point is where this place loses me too. You have a nation that is simultaneously too propagandized to revolt but the same nation needs to be smart enough to see through propaganda and know that Vietnam was never a threat or enemy.
Believing that you wouldn't make the same decisions others make if you lived their exact lives is reactionary thought in my opinion and is a conclusion I've noticed that a lot of privileged lefties make.
A bunch of internet posters who actually think they would behave like Lenin in 1917 if presented with conflict against the state.
What of the tens of thousands of VVAW that succeeded in providing amnesty for draft dodgers in 1980? Should I wish they died instead of helping push the narrative against the war and end the draft?
Mods are deleting my post now because they can’t handle the argument that cheering the death of millions of proletariat is not Marxist.
Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't, hard to say if you don't live in any of those conditions.
I'd like to point to the conspiracy to kill Caesar, the conspirators had a couple of dozens onboard to assassinate Caesar but in the end only about 7 of them actually went and done the action.
The way a lot lefties look at conflict and arguments is a result of growing up in a western world, I think the left would be better if we strayed away from debate bro stuff and trying to peg things down into purely evil/purely good. Contradiction analysis n all that
Exactly what I was trying to say, but in a conflict oriented way.
I guess in the future I’ll be less confrontational. I just find it so “lib” to think so highly of yourself that you’d make all the right decisions in a period that’s 50 years removed from draft dodging being a felony and 40 years from smart phones and the internet allowing people to gather alternative media.
You have no idea what you would’ve been like back then. The conditions were completely different!
Dont be confrontational here is my recommendation, there are few places where people try to be nice and when people argue with you like that theyre wrong too, even if they think theyre right for it.
On the other note, You dont know what you would be like if you were born in another part of the country to different people, I think lefties think they are the way they are because theyre special when thats probably only a small factor of it.
Maybe if you were born in Oklahoma to poor people you wouldnt reach class consciousness or maybe much later in life.
Thank you for the advice
And yes, that specialness is what bothers me too.
I mean hell, Pat Tillman went from patriotic volunteer NAVY SEAL to the only public military service member to speak against the war. All in under a year of his deployment. Should I be happy he got shot by US troops because he ate up propaganda after 9/11?
Yes and no. Yes on the behalf of the third world, no on the behalf of the US consciousness. We live in contradictions, leftists should do their best to acknowledge them whenever possible.
It's a shame that anyone who was dumb enough to go into combat instead of just sitting in prison returned alive.
The empty mind does not decide. It does not choose. It simply acts. Does the water worry over it's course? No. That would hinder it's path to the sea.
i have very little sympathy for anyone who when offered the choice "go kill those people over the other side of the world, or go to prison" answer "i'll kill those people then"
:this: what the fuck kind of boot licking is going on in this thread
A solid chunk of the fighting force in Vietnam were volunteers and even with the draft like 2:3 in favor of volunteers. The us military still targets minority and impoverished communities to this day but that doesn’t change the fact that the actions performed are against the global proletariat and going to kill brown people on the other side of the planet to pay for college is a pretty shit excuse
When there's a draft the concept of "volunteering" becomes shaky. If the alternative to "volunteering" is to be drafted into something worse or similar, how voluntary is it really then?
I definitely feel for the people who were the targets of drafting, as resisting it had negative consequences they shouldn't have had to deal with, but people could and did resist it. There were other options than going to Vietnam and fighting for the US. Lots of people fled the country, lots of people were jailed rather than be drafted. Among those who did join the military, many refused to engage in combat, many deserted, and some fragged their officers. There were options; fuck the people who chose to fight in the war.
The only moral thing to do if you were drafted is immediately shoot the fuckers in boot camp
you can also be so shitty at everything they ask you to do they just assume you're too incompetent to be relied on to help
fuck yes they did. Same for every US soldier anywhere tbh, even in the US.
