MetaFilter posts tagged with vietnam

"We know what happened because he said 'yes'"

IvoShandor — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:57:38 -0800

Last week on Bill Moyers Journal LBJ tapes were presented detailing Lyndon Johnson's decision to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. Moyers connected these tapes with the current U.S. administration's quest for a solution in the Afghan War.

Moyers: Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone. Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart. And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision. We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes. ("A Tale of Two Quagmires" - Transcript)

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum began releasing the LBJ tapes in 1993. Today, 100s of hours of President Johnson's phone conversations are available to the public. The library sells copies of the tapes to the public for six dollars each and CDs for eight dollars apiece. The LBJ library is not the only place to find these recordings. The conversations run the gamut and reveal much about Johnson, his policies and the process he used to arrive at his decisions. Some of the topics discussed include the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, civil rights, frustration over Vietnam, social security, and Nixon. C-SPAN has a nice searchable collection of many LBJ tapes, compiled from those recordings which aired on C-SPAN Radio. The University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs has a large collection as well (I read it was all of them but am unsure if it actually is). (Prev-iously)

Calley Apologizes for My Lai Massacre

ob1quixote — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:47:23 -0800

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today that William Calley spoke to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. During his remarks he apologized for his role in the My Lai massacre.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

The Kiwanis gave him a standing ovation, the first time the club secretary recalls that happening. (Previously)

Vietnam in Pennsylvania

billysumday — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:42:29 -0800

Civil War reenacting is so 2002. Vietnam reenacting is the new black. But really, if reenacting is your thing, you've got lots of wars to choose from.

Strange

lullaby — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:14:48 -0800

Former US Secretary of Defense and 'architect of the Vietnam War' Robert S. McNamara has died at age 93. The Outsider: How Robert McNamara Changed the Automobile Industry McNamara's Many Wars The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara google video / transcript (previously) Conversations with History: Robert S. McNamara

One man's trash is another man's gold

Christ, what an asshole — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:48:03 -0800

FRONTLINE: Ghana - Digital Dumping Ground On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the biggest fallouts? Identity Theft.

The things they returned

LenaO — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:18:25 -0800

In 1970, while burning captured enemy documents with no military intelligence value, Fred Whitehurst came across a tiny diary. Advised not to burn it by his translator, he kept it and took it with him to America when his tour was over. Thirty five years later, the diary came back home. That diary belonged to Dang Thuy Tram (she went by her middle name Thuy), a young doctor from the North. Freshly out from medical school, she followed the NVA down South and set up a clinic in Quang Ngai province, one of the fiercest battle ground in Vietnam (this is where My Lai happened). Young, idealistic and passionate, she wrote about her patients, her desires to join the Communist party, her childhood love, and most of all about her longing for family and friends: More links: Scan of the diary: (In Vietnamese) Last night I dream of Peace Translated by Andrew X.Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala Audio interview with the Whitehurst brothers and excerpts from the diary Women in war: Radio interview with Fred Whitehurst How the two families bonded Previously on things returned by old enemies.

a photo returned

HuronBob — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:57:56 -0800

A photo returned... A short video of a man returning a photo to the daughter of the man he killed, and from whom he removed the photo, during the war in Viet Nam.

A marriage made in water

elgilito — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:42:56 -0800

Last week, following torrential rains, Northern and Central Vietnam suffered their worst flooding in the past 25 years, killing more than 70 people and devastating buildings and crops. Still, life goes on in the inundated Hanoi neighborhoods, and water won't prevent people from walking/driving/boating around the city, getting engaged, marrying and fishing. These folks got their car back and the scenic Ninh Binh region looks like the Ha Long bay. By the way, Google understands vietnamese now.

Make-Believe Maverick

homunculus — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:00:18 -0800

Make-Believe Maverick. "A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty."

The Wars of John McCain

homunculus — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:30:30 -0800

The Wars of John McCain. "John McCain believes the Vietnam War was winnable. Now he argues that an Obama administration would accept defeat in Iraq, with grave costs to American honor and national security. Is McCain’s quest for victory a reflection of an antiquated pre-Vietnam mind-set? Or of a commitment to principles we abandon at our peril? Is there any war McCain thinks can’t be won?"

Political Ephemera from the Vietnam War Era

Rumple — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:55:31 -0800

The University of Washington has put a collection of Vietnam War era printed ephemera (posters, flyers, pamphlets, magazines, mostly cheap mimeographs or photocopies) online. The browsable collection ranges from Defend the Black Panthers to How to Make a Revolution in the U.S. to the Planetary Citizen Human Manifesto to plain old Do Something. The collection offers a fascinating insight into the passion, energy and graphic sensibilities of grassroots, home-front politics in late 1960s and early 1970s Seattle. There are over 200 items, many with multiple pages (scroll bar in upper left frame). Some which caught my eye were: Gay Love is Here to Stay International Women's Day Teach-In Striking Covers of the Helix Magazine ("Seattle's Hip Rag"), e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4. Black American IQ Test for Honkies Our Fight is Here: Essays on Draft Resistance. NW Call - Democratic Socialis m: see the dove text-art on page 2. Job Ad for War Criminals Stop the War (Nixon as Bomb Payload) Housewives for Peace No More ROTC MANIFESTO - MAN (Making a Nation) January 1st, 1974: All Automobiles Will Be Destroyed Birthday Benefit for Huey SDS - Bring the War Home (see page 2, eery echoes of Iraq) The John Birch Society (a know thine enemy event) The Palestine Revolution and Its Problems People Can Stop IT&T Rehearse for the Apocalypse Seattle Gay Liberation Front Newsletter, Dec. 1970. Taste the Sweetness of Destiny, Racist Pig We Are All the Conspiracy Who's for the White Working Man? (American Nazi Party Recruitment) Plant Grass Everywhere Attention Campus Women: What did you learn in school today?

Rocket pistol

Artw — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:14:22 -0800

The gyrojet pistol (video) - a handgun firing 13mm rocket ammunition, was an attempt to revolutionise gun design in the 1960s. Around a thousand were produced, and some may have seen use in Vietnam. Rifle and carbine versions were also produced. Design problems meant that it never seriously competed conventional firearms, but there is a modern attempt to revive the concept.

John McCain, Prisoner of War

kirkaracha — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:58:12 -0800

John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account. Originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. "My six years of hell" is a February 2008 extract from McCain's book Faith of My Fathers.

"What are they gonna do, send you to Vietnam?"

not_on_display — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:13:28 -0800

[NSFW]"The following program is in living color and has been rated X by the Vietnam academy of maggots. The purpose of this program is to bring vital news, information and hard acid rock to the first termers and non-re-enlistees in the Republic of Vietnam. Radio First Termer operates under no Air Force regulations or manuals. In the event of a vice squad raid this program will automatically self-destruct." Radio First Termer was a pirate radio show broadcast by "Dave Rabbit," an anonymous USAF sergeant, for 63 hours between January 1st and 21st, 1971, out of the back room of a brothel in Saigon, gracing the dial at 69 MHz and 690 AM. Fearing reprisal from his superiors, Dave Rabbit then shut Radio First Termer down and, after returning to the States, went back to living a normal life. 34 years later, while helping his son on a homework assignment, Dave came across old recordings of his show. He's since revived his old persona via podcast, and has also brought Radio First Termer back to the warzone--to Baghdad, Iraq. More of Dave Rabbit in the Internet Age can be found here.

...even after five agonizing years of the Iraq War, a summer blockbuster isn't prepared to say that not only is its action hero is corrupt, he's corrupt because America has become corrupt.

gerryblog — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:53:31 -0800

Iron Man, who represents an imperial America, can only win Pyrrhic victories. Spencer Ackerman of Tapped Online has a nice history of the Iron Man comics that reads the character's alcoholism, Civil-War overzealousness, and persistent blundering "into a hell of unintended consequences" as a symbol and subtle critique of American exceptionalism and what Jonathan Schell among others has called "impotent omnipotence".

Showing the horror of war

homunculus — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:15:14 -0800

People can handle the truth about war. Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas reflects on how the media's willingness to show the horrors of war has changed since Vietnam.

The Heartbreak Campaign

kirkaracha — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:27:05 -0800

The Heartbreak Campaign. "Increasingly opposed to the Vietnam War, Robert F. Kennedy struggled over whether he should challenge his party’s incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, in 1968. His younger brother, Teddy, was against it. His wife, Ethel, urged him on. Many feared he would be assassinated, like the older brother he mourned." Excerpt from Thurston Clarke's The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America, due to be published later this month. Morley Safer, The Burning of Cam Ne. LBJ said Safer's 1965 CBS report on Marines burning a Vietnamese village "shat on the American flag" and demanded a security check, which revealed that Shafer "wasn't a communist, just a Canadian." LBJ responded, "Well, I knew he wasn't an American." Robert F. Kennedy, transcript of November 26, 1967, appearance on Face the Nation. Eugene McCarthy, November 30, 1967, Announcement of Candidacy for President [audio link on this page] Robert F. Kennedy, January 4, 1968, What Do We Stand For? The Liberation of the Human Spirit [Google cache] Robert F. Kennedy, February 8, 1968, Unwinnable War speech Robert F Kennedy, March 16, 1968, Announcement of Candidacy for President

"Yes, of course he has the stuff to go all the way," John J. Lindsay replied. "But he's not going to go all the way. The reason is that somebody is going to shoot him. I know it and you know it. Just as sure as we're sitting here somebody is going to shoot him. He's out there now waiting for him And, please God, I don't think we’ll have a country after it."

"I find myself looking for catharsis."

amyms — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:35:33 -0800

The Boneyard. I’ve come to bear witness to American folly, to rest my eyes on the flying machines that flattened the forests of Southeast Asia, poisoned its people, and changed my life. A personal essay about the long-reaching effects of Agent Orange. For more information about the AMARC [now AMARG] facility visited by the above article's author, go to The AMARC Experience or the Air Force's official page about the site. The Agent Orange Website. Agent Orange Project from Oxfam and the Fund for Reconciliation and Development. Blood Debt, an article about the effects of Agent Orange on the children of Southeast Asia [warning: graphic images]. Previous MetaFilter posts about Agent Orange.

Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:03:29 -0800

Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Massacre at Pinkville

madamjujujive — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:17:27 -0800

40 years ago tomorrow, more than 500 villagers were raped, tortured, and slaughtered (disturbing images) by American soldiers in a hamlet nicknamed Pinkville. Four Hours in My Lai tells the story. Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Amidst the carnage, a few courageous souls distinguished themselves. Hugh Thompson, Jr. tried to stop events and rescued some children. (Prior mefi thread). Events were covered up for a year until whistle blower Ron Ridenhour wrote a letter that triggered an investigation leading to Seymour Hersh's reporting, the first wide public airing of the atrocities. The My Lai Courts-Martial 1970 found Lt. Calley guilty and sentenced him to life, but he was pardoned by Nixon and today, is a jeweler in Georgia. No one else was held publicly accountable. Varnado Simpson, the soldier whose story opens and closes the video clips in the post, killed himself in 1997. Oliver Stone is working on a film called Pinkville based on My Lai events. Production has been delayed doe to the writer's strike.

Strange reunion

Artw — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:45:13 -0800

Vietnamese maid finds Taiwanese employer is her long-lost dad

Image of the Year.

kittens for breakfast — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 10:47:46 -0800

Image of the Year. From the article: "If you want to go shallow for an Image of the Year, you can't do better than Paris Hilton, seen through the window of a Los Angeles sheriff's car, weeping as she's being hauled back to prison to complete a probation-violation sentence. But when you first notice the credit on that now infamous picture, there's a double take. The image came from the camera of Nick Ut, whose picture of a little girl burned by napalm, naked and running directly toward the camera and into the conscience of the American people, became perhaps the most powerful and influential vision of the Vietnam War. Not only was the Paris Hilton image taken by one of this country's most celebrated war photographers, it was taken June 8, 35 years to the day after the devastating image of 9-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing her bombed-out village. Let's put these two pictures up on the wall together for one last, end-of-the-year look, and see if something emerges."

Nellis AFB Air Show.

saladin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:16:13 -0800

Wednesday morning plane pr0n.

Found Photos

thisisdrew — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:36:15 -0800

Man comments on Flickr photos he discarded in an alley dumpster 30 years ago. Vietnam 1967-1968: Darrell Hill, Photographer

"What dreams / Will be left / undreamed tonight?"

orthogonality — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:10:31 -0800

For 11/11, soldiers' poems of MACV (and interstitial matter):
I can feel traces of my heart / leaving wet rivers / down my manly cheeks.
∞
Stunned now / angry / helpless / bits of torn paper beside / empty red mailbag.
∞
So / You averted looking directly / at their eyes / (That last graveyard / for their fears)
∞
It's getting hard to talk to you, / You don't seem to communicate; / You get upset too easily, / I only asked what it was really like.
∞ (Previously, previously) More from The Vietnam Experience by Bill McDonald: • She begged us, / With her child like screams • Time slipped past us, standing in separate places / ... / He graduated cum laude / And I flunked Vietnam. • But children / My dearest children / I’ve killed / Someone else’s / children And Bill McDonald's "Guest Poets": • I was nothing more / than U.S. Grade A American meat / used for some bureaucrat's political gain. • Weird shadows dance against the twisted strands / And men stare anxiously / Until the glare dies down and they relax once more. / It is night in Vietnam • This weekend is our reunion of the men of the 2/47 Infantry / I won’t be going they remind me of a war fought long ago / It is not memories that I seek but freedom for my sick and weary soul. • While protestors heaped ridicule upon us / And newspapers treated us with scorn / We did what had to be done / For the nation to which we were born More from Deserts and Oases: A Veteran's Poetry, by by Jackson H. Day: • How can I tell her / about the screaming of the rockets / about the shaking of the ground close by / about the terror in the bunkers / asking if the time had really come; •I feel such anger. / I rage at all who do not know, / who have not heard, / who do not share / the burden of your pain, / the burden of our shame. • Infantry commander, eyes moist / against all resistance a tear / conquers stubbled cheek. More: But I left my legs in a foreign graveyard / and I leave them now as a memorial to John Wayne./ He is the only American who would have saluted me / as I was rolled unceremoniously down that ramp. More from Poetry of the Vietnam War by Curt Bennett: • In helpless, grim fascination, we watched him go / Plunging down through the quiet morning sun. / At the last moment, he spread his arms out wide, / Like Jesus on a cross, he swan dived and seemed to float, / For a brief moment skimming the clouds • The men lay still / In the rich, red mud / In awkward configurations. / It was difficult to tell / Which one belonged? / To which nation? / Their stiff arms / Seemed to stretch out / Reaching for each other. / It was almost, as if / Universal brotherhood / Had at last…been realized.