OBAMA IS IN ASIA: AN APOLOGY IS DUE

President Obama is visiting Vietnam and Japan this week. He will be the first U.S. President to visit Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb detonation that took place in 1945 and killed thousands of Japanese civilians. Obama has said, rightly in my opinion, that he will offer no apology for this U.S. act of War…..but, as Obama visits Vietnam….a deep and sincere apology should go out to the Vietnamese people from the United States of America.

A sober and objective view of the foreign policy decision that had us invade Vietnam and play a huge role in the death of 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians will reflect that what we did there was a War crime against the Vietnamese people. It was a scar that our nation swathed across their country for 9 years. Imagine Sherman's genocidal march through the South in 1865 that killed women, children, and torched property to the ground...but imagine it going on for 9 years.

Sadly, it wasn’t until 1968, 4 years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that LBJ used to give the U.S. the authority to shower terror on the Vietnamese people, that there was any measurable public resistance to our participation in the Vietnam War. As a people we sat on our hands for 4 years....before we even protested. That's how long the German people sat on their hands during the Nazi assault on the Jews.

Until then we, as Americans, took the stance that our government was righteous and doing what we needed to do to preserve liberty. We felt that our government was justified in retaliating against what was later determined to be a fabricated incident of aggression on the U.S. by the North Vietnamese. We didn’t question our leaders….(dangerous).

In fact, in a vote on the Senate Floor to give the President the power to “retaliate” the vote was 98 – 2. Sound familiar? The vote to give W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq and topple Hussein was 77 – 23. If you add those numbers up, you get 175 people who voted to give the U.S. the authority to do heinous deeds to the people of a sovereign country without provocation…and only 25 who voted against it. This means for every person who made the right and just decision, there were 7 American Senators that made the wrong decision. Supposedly, our "Best and Brightest" are dead wrong by a 7 to 1 ratio. You could have pulled a bunch of guys out of a Bowling alley and got a better ratio than that.

"When you find yourself in the majority, step back and think again" - Mark Twain

Vietnam had just liberated itself after a 9 year War waged with France for it’s own sovereignty…until then, Vietnam was under French colonial control…the Vietnamese fought from 1946 to 1954 and lost approximately 750,000 civilians and soldiers gaining what was its rightful autonomy. Not long afterwards the U.S. government showed it’s determination to prevent a Communist North Vietnam from overtaking South Vietnam. Unbeknown to most today, communist leader and nationalist, Ho Chi Minh, was a largely popular figure…he was the unequivocal hero in the fight for Independence with France. It is estimated that Ho had approximately 80% popularity throughout all of Vietnam…Yes, he was even more popular with his own people than Bernie Sanders is with the people of Vermont.

In this country almost exactly 100 years before, Abraham Lincoln fought a war against his own people…in an effort to force them to comply with Lincoln's wishes. Lincoln had far less than 80% support…it was slightly over 50%. Imagine if another country disagreed with Lincoln’s attacking his own citizens and saw it as an act of genocide that needed to be halted. Imagine if that country invaded the U.S. and started fighting on behalf of the South….and ended up slaughtering millions of American soldiers and civilians…raping, killing children, and torching land.

Imagine how unwelcome would be our attitude towards this invading country; a country that would spend 9 years bombing and killing our own people.

This would be seen as an inexcusable act of unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation…much like our invasion of Iraq 13 years ago. It’s a miracle that we have any reputation to protect after what can only be seen in my view as repeated war crimes by any objective observer.

The U.S. tragically and needlessly lost 58,000 soldiers in Vietnam... and we lost…..we accomplished nothing..the Vietnamese lost 3 million due to LBJ's decision.

The larger point is that we stood still and watched our government fabricate an excuse to invade so that LBJ would not risk losing the 1964 election to Barry Goldwater. LBJ won in a giant landslide…but he hedged his bets and we got a 9 year war and unspeakable horrors and death…we stood by for 4 years and said nothing…we assumed that our leaders were doing what we needed to do….they were not…we turned our backs and failed the world….We gave LBJ a 4 year head start on an unprovoked war that killed our brothers and fathers and sons.

An apology is in order…

The United States is a great country …we were almost perfect in WWII. We have done great things……but we have made many many terrible decisions from the top down. We exterminated the Indians at the direction of our Presidents...we discriminated against a whole race of people and forced them to live as outcasts in their own country. We didn't give women the right to vote until less than 100 years ago. Our country has authorized reprehensible acts of war and made very few correct foreign policy decisions over the last 70 years.

How could our government get things so wrong so often?……I love America...don't get me wrong, but it is a much better bet to bet against what our government says…to do the opposite of what they recommend. So many of our institutions are floundering….our public schools across the country are failing….the IRS is oppressive, as is our system of incarceration…..Our Congress is corrupt to a man….there are back door deals…secret meetings, lack of transparency…meanwhile, our government bails out Wall Street….and the rich always get richer...that is the one common denominator. I can't think of anything on a large scale that has given me true pride since we landed a man on the moon...and that was 47 years ago.

Question authority…question it more now than ever….don’t assume that our institutions with all their pomp and circumstance and authority, are getting it right…

Food For Thought....