We'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 otherwise
The 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.
We'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 otherwise
The 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