The Face of My Enemy

[exlrrp]

this is being written by way of experimentation on my new keyboard. The keyboard on my laptop went haywire, all the letters started printing different.
Played around with it a long time, ran the recovery disc, nada different. Went up to Best Buy, bought a USB keyboard, plugged it in once, ran the software, same thing, except now I stated shutting down every 2 minutes. Ran the software one more time, here I am
At least it seems to be running


Ron--I want to say thank you for your honesty--thats all I ask for. I think you tell the true story and its hard to admit sometimes. I Know I'm still in denial about it sometimes.
I think the fact that most GIs thought the Vietnamese sucked was too obvious to even bring up--untill everybody started denying it.
And I think that people who think a whole people suck probably shouldn't be running around in that country armed
here comes a shut down, bye
don't know h0w long I can stay on.
just be who you are
I'll probly be gone for a while

James

James-

Seems to me that the brush you're paintin us with is just a mite too wide.

Didn't want to be in the Army.Didn't want to go to VN.Somehow got stuck with that anyway and tried to do my duty as best I could.

Wasn't my job or desire to kill or hurt anybody.Wasn't mad at anybody.My job was to help folks as best I could.

After awhile it became apparent that the NVN government considered mass-murder a valid matter of policy and that its' tools-the VC and NVA-were seriously into the rape and torture of children and other innocents both as a matter of policy and for recreational purposes.Call me old fashioned,but I tend to take a dim view of such going ons.When these things effect folks that I care about, and am trying to help, it really pisses me off.THAT's where my hate comes from.

I'm a laid-back kind of guy.I rarely anger easily.Takes a lot to make me hate.I also rarely (if ever)forgive.

James, you have an absolute right to your point of view.Since we don't have Comrades Stalin or Mao or Uncle (Ass)Ho on this forum,it can add depth to our discussions.

However,if your "enlightenment" came from AA,I believe that we should request that they begin useing a disclaimer:

WARNING:PARTICIPATION IN THIS 12-STEP PROGRAM CAN LEAVE THE PARTICIPANT VULNERABLE TO COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

Red Dawn:
"All that hate's gonna burn you up."
"Naw.Keeps me warm."

[DMZ-LT]

Take care James. God's speed. Thanks.

[39mto39g]

You said
"But if you really thought so, wasn't the right thing to do to tell the government about it? I thought so then and still do "

I joined the Army, I didn't have any Idea whear I was going or what I would be doing, When I went to VN , I didn't know anything about VN, Didn't even know where it was, didn't care either. I got there and seen right off we were on the wrong side. I didn't care about that either. My country sent me there to kill there enemy, so I pointed my gun and pulled the trigger, 10,000 times latter I went home, My fellings have not changed, I think we were on the wrong side.

I also have to agree with 2/47, you paint the Gi's and the people of VN with to broad of a brush.
Buuuuut Your feelings are your feelings , express them loud and often.

Computer,
Disconnect your mose, hook it to a new one, turn it on.
www.dell.com $400.

Ron

[exlrrp]

Originally posted by Doc.2/47 James-

WARNING:PARTICIPATION IN THIS 12-STEP PROGRAM CAN LEAVE THE PARTICIPANT VULNERABLE TO COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

What do you think Bryce??
Is this the true story? Think I should stop participating in this program because it makes me vulnerable to Commie Propaganda??Am I going to be the only one who defends openmindedness??!!
how about tolerance and forgiveness??
Do they know those words in Texas???????
Doesn't hardly seem like it
James W

[exlrrp]

Originally posted by 39mto39g You said
, My fellings have not changed, I think we were on the wrong side.



Ron

I thought so too, you are telling the true story once again, exactly right.And nobody can EVER tell me you are the type to be convinced by Commie propaganda either--this was based on what you SAW and experienced--same like me. And I thought it was worth my time to tell the government just exactly that when I got home because I had seen it way up too close and personal.( Plus it was also the best place to meet loose hippie chicks--hope you guys had fun in those Young Christian Conservative meetings) (not you Ron)
I made sure to let the Vietnamese know it when I was there last year, that may be the reason we got along so good

James

[39mto39g]

I never partisapated in any of the acts against the VN civilans, but, I didn't do much to stop it either. The only people that I ever seen that wanted us or like us there and showed it, were the Yards,
They were some tough people to know, but if you helped one out you had a true friend. On the other hand, don't cause harm to his family or you die GI.
"ALL" the Vietnamese people I had contact with in VN would sell you a knife, steal it back from you and stab you with it.
(the trick is, don't buy the knife)

Ron

[SuperScout]

Obviously, your new 'puter keyboard has a built-in spelling deficiency, especially when it comes to first names! Oh well, I've been called a lot worse - remember one time when my drill sergeant..... don't want to go back there!

12 Step Program and Vulnerability to Communist Propaganda? No, but there is a true and proven connection between a 12 Step Program and Successfully Yanking Another's Leg in Jest. It worked. :re:

And I would encourage you to put away your very broad brush about how we all hated the Vietnamese. You can either speak for yourself, or unjustly malign many others that don't subscribe to your attitude. I categorically deny this hating of the Vietnamese, and my various citations, my volunteering to teach civilians in my off-duty time, my very basic ethos would absolutely preclude me from hating them. What I hated was the violence that the communists brought to the country, the corruption that our flooding the country with money produced, the political venality of the LBJ administration, and grandstanding officers who stood on the shoulders of others to make themselves look good. All this confession comes from a position of rigorous honesty after a fearless moral inventory, as called for by our AA program.

And I don't think that your self-inflicted halo for open-mindedness is wearing too well - the tarnishing is getting a bit apparent! And believe it or not, forgiveness, compassion, and tolerance are VERY big words, and more important, VERY big actions and deeds, here in Texas.

[exlrrp]

[i]And I would encourage you to put away your very broad brush about how we all hated the Vietnamese. You can either speak for yourself, or unjustly malign many others that don't subscribe to your attitude. I categorically deny this hating of the Vietnamese, and my various citations, my volunteering to teach civilians in my off-duty time, my very basic ethos would absolutely preclude me from hating them. What I hated was the violence that the communists brought to the country, the corruption that our flooding the country with money produced, the political venality of the LBJ administration, and grandstanding officers who stood on the shoulders of others to make themselves look good. All this confession comes from a position of rigorous honesty after a fearless moral inventory, as called for by our AA program.

And I don't think that your self-inflicted halo for open-mindedness is wearing too well - the tarnishing is getting a bit apparent! And believe it or not, forgiveness, compassion, and tolerance are VERY big words, and more important, VERY big actions and deeds, here in Texas.

Brice--first let me say I'km sorry about the misspelling of your name-- I have a postcard from Tom from Bryce Canyon up on the board in front of me and hehehwell, Doh--my bad,sorry, won't happen again

You may be right, absolutely right, I want to go into an argument openminded enough to start with that--I wouldn't bother otherwise
I also want to say that I believe you are telling the absolute truth as you know it and perceive it, just like Ron--but truth comes in many forms and what we perceive as middle class white Americans with White Supremacy backgrounds (ALL of us our age!) acting in our own interests is not necessarily how the worlds perceives itand what you and I think is best for the world is not how others perceive it.. People like you and I can ONLY look through that filter, it is our ground of being. We may be able to surmount it but its what we grew up with, its always there unless we stay conscious and fight it
It is very clear to me that we did not spend enough time looking through our enemies eyes and seeing if his needs were genuine.
And the greatest need for Vietnam was to end the war--there was nothing the Communists did to the people that was worse than the continuance of the war, we killed far more than they did. We're awesome at it. It was the war we were waging itself thatwas damaging to the Vietnamese. After all the political BS was gone, while we were there Vietnamese were dying at the rate of hundreds a day some years. When we left, that ended and the country could heal. Ive been there and I can tell you, theyre a LOT better off now than when we were there. The Communists brought them peace and prosperity, not us, no doubt about it. Go look yourself if you don't believe me.
I now have no doubt that the Communists had a more benign vision for their people than we did--this was what I was in the most denial about for decades and I probably still would be in denial if Al Gore hadn't created the internet (lol) You see, I feared the Vietnamese and held them in contempt but I was hoping against hope that all you guys were doing better than that, otherwise they wouldn't support us--now I see not but only after reading it time after time in the written words on these Vietnam veterans websites. You don't have to read between the lines--just read the lines.
You see: I tend to take things on face value too much and when I all I read on the internet is how much the Vietnbameae sucked and how most of the linedogs thought we should have been fighting on the other side I know why America lost The other side had The Fire and our side didn't--that fire was nationalism--throw the ugly white foreigners the hell out!!!, We could never have beaten this.
The facts are already established and indisputable, its just a matter of connecting the dots:
Lets say we have a young man-we'll call him Don
Fact A: Don hates the Vietnamese (there are other ways to express this)--we know this because he says this every time the subject comes and he is an honest person so you tend to believe him.
Fact B: Don called in B52s in Vietnam
Now what suspicious nasty thought jumps into your mind right here, based on a lifetime of dealing with people?If you are a combat vet, what do you KNOW happened? When Don plastered a valley he'd drawn fire from with B52s, did Don go check and make sure there weren't a ville full of innocent people there?? Would he?? Tell the truth, now--just connect the dots.
We're not calling B52 strikes surgical strikes are we--I evaluated them (through binoculars!) and I am here to tell you that it was the most awesome thing I saw in the war.
And calling in fire on places including villes that we had drawn fire from was SOP,as was reconning bunkers with grnades and rifle fire--wasn't it??--is this a good policy to enact on the side youre supposed to be supporting?
I'm sure that you were real nice to the Vietnamese but it wouldn't take more than one Don one day to cancel out all the work 100 people like you did in a year. And there were a lot of Dons--and Jameses.
The other side was not foreign to the South Vietnamese, the was another lie we told. The Vietnamese knew better. The VC were the brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts,faters, mothers, uncles, husbands, wives of the Vietnamese. An American going in there teaching home ec or whatever is not going to change that fact. But I wouldn't have known about this--they'd have sooner given me a pass to the moon than time off to teach classes. I figured I was helping them out enough just being there but I was wrong.We were in a whole country of enemy sympathizers, another fact every grunt knew.


If hatred is the wrong word, how about contempt? Is anybody going to disagree with me that the grunts held the Vietnamese in great contempt? I mean the South Vietnamese--most every grunt talks about the NVA admiringly for their fighting skills--I think they were the toughest opponents America ever faced--and did it with less.
And of course there were varying degrees of this hatred/contempt.whatever throughout, exhibited at different time--I'm just talking about me here but I nthink evrybody here knows exactly what I mean--ever have a buddy hit a mine in a ville and You KNEW the people knew where it was. What happened to that village? Think all the people in it were culpable VC, even the kids?
One time of this canceled out every good thing you ever did, Brice--and this was pretty much SOP--you could disguise this behind all kinds of military talk--reconning by fire in a freefire zone for instance or siting in PapaTangoes. Think I didn't see this done? Didn't you?
And how can you do this to people you don't hate?

This is what becomes clear from reading these websites. No one can EVER tell me that the best solution for the Vietnamese was to bomb more or invade the North. It wouldn't have been the best solution for us either. More hundreds of thousands of people kileed? For what??
Re: hatred and racism: it exists in everyone, ESPECIALLY in war, you would have been an unusually enlightened person not to be affected by it and an unusually enlightened person would have been smart enough to stay home. I sure was affected by it--I could tell all kinds of racist jokes:Yassuh Boss, trigger the nigger and coon to the moon-No the jig is up!! and I grew up in the most liberal place in America so I think people from places where aparteid segregation was the law and culture would have a harder time with it. Tell me how you got over it!!
. So when someone absolutely positively denies being racist or hateful I always suspect theyre in denial, instead of working on it--especially Vietnam Veterans -- thats just my opinion from knowing a lot of them and trying to understand them. We ALL need to keep working on it.

I Made a list of people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
When I did that I had to include a lot of Vietnamese, there ws no doubt about it. I had all the good reason in the world according to you but I didn;'t feel like it. I just felt like we hurt a lot of people--forget what the Communists did and look at what WE did:
>Killed millions of them, wounded millions more--probably less than a quarter of these were soldiers (this also counts ARVN dead).
>Defoliated 14% of their country, dropping thousands of tons of toxic chemicals on them some with a shelf life of 100s of years, the same as we accuse Saddam of doing.
This killed approximately 100,000 more of them and left sickness and birth defects in their gene pool for generations to come
>Devastated their economy.Vietnam in the 50s was a net exporter, by the 60s, they imported everything--and the US taxpayer subsidized it. Now its the worlds 3d largest producer of rice#4:CA)
>There's a LOT more and these are OUR numbers and estimations, not the Vietnamese
Up against all this I can't see how your volunteering to teach the Vietnamese would have had much of an impact. I thin k they had more pressing things on their mind. It was a good thing to d, no doubt.
Its hard to see how they could like us much (not you Brice, I'm sure they loved you)
Re Halos: I might resnt that if I was a resentful person which I'm trying not to be. Feel how you want and say what you want: no argument. You might could get one too if you learned to forgive and love the Vietnamese, maybe even take a trip there and make nice to them--Schwartzkopf did, had his picture taking smiling with Giap. theyre even sending friendly military liasons there now. That would make you into a really BIG hero--I need a role model for this, I'm not very brave, didn't even get any medals except the one I had to bust their balls to give me.

Bye for now

J,mesa (see, we're even)

[SuperScout]

James, your post card from Bryce Canyon National Park only proves my point: even the geographers can't spell! No big deal!

Forgive the Vietnamese? What did they ever do to me that begs or requires forgiveness? Neither did I hate them, nor have contempt for them; maybe I'm in the minority - don't really know since I'v never polled veterans - but it still appears to be a very broad brush you're using in your paint job.

I worked with an ARVN Ranger Company that met or exceeded the fighting capabilities of any American unit, possessing excellent leadership, great techniques, professionalism and all the other warrior traits that are worthwhile. It was a sheer joy to work with them, and they fought with a passion, skill and determination of a people threatened by outside forces, and them outside forces weren't us - it was the imported VC and NVA. To allude that all the VC were just home-grown anti-American trigger pullers is being naive.

I was raised in a part of San Antonio where I was a minority, and all my close friends were of the Hispanic persuasion. If I had grown up a racist, I would have had to play all by myself, and being a friendly sort, knew that that wouldn't do! I like people, and had parents that were for all intents and purposes, color-blind. When my high school was integrated in 1956, the communal response to having Blacks in our school, along with Hispanics, some Orientals of various backgrounds already there, who a big ho-hum. No riots, no protests, no nothing. At the end of my junior year, there was a "race-riot" of sorts, a major fight between the Blacks and the Browns. This multi-racial environment proved to be major blessing later on, giving me a better appreciation for various folks. And one more little tidbit: Edward Emmanuel Rouse and I integrated a cafe and restaurant in Killeen, Texas, in the summer of 1964, right after the Bill was signed into law. And I didnt even make him ride in the backseat of my car!!

OK, I love the Vietnamese, always have! Can I have my halo now? Do I need to make an appointment for a fitting? I plan to wear it on my visit there in the near future.