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VIETNAM'S WAR CRIMES
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has accused former Sen. Bob Kerrey, the president of Manhattan's New School University, of committing a war crime when he was a Navy SEAL serving in Indochina.
The incident in question first came to notice a year ago. It provoked an orgy of reflexive, ignorant and disrespectful media condemnation from both left and right (Kerrey is a Democrat), even though the "witnesses" to the alleged "massacre" - an alcoholic former SEAL and a Viet Cong widow - lacked credibility.
Yes, Kerrey himself concedes shame and regret that civilians died when his team raided the village of Thanh Pong in 1969.
But he maintains that what happened was a tragic accident - and, given the lack of real evidence to the contrary, we believe him.
In any event, the government of Vietnam had no reaction to the controversy until last month's publication of Kerrey's memoir, "When I was a Young Man," revived the issue.
And how much credibility does Hanoi have? Anyone remotely familiar with the brutal record of Vietnam's Communist rulers should find it almost comically hypocritical that they should dare talk about "war crimes."
Despite the prominence given in America to the U.S. atrocity at My Lai, it was the other side that committed the most numerous and brutal crimes of the war.
The best known of these is the brutal torture of scores of American POWs, including Sen. John McCain.
But the Vietnamese Communists' record of atrocity dates back to the 1940s, when French prisoners were horribly mutilated by Ho Chi Minh's troops.
And it continues today with the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.
Perhaps the worst single crime of the entire Vietnam War was the massacre of 5,000 civilians - priests, government officials and their families - in the city of Hue during the Tet offensive of March 1968.
North Vietnamese regular troops rounded up these men, women and children, marched them to a dry river bed and executed them with bullets, bayonets and clubs.
There was also the assassination over two decades of 36,000 South Vietnamese civilians, including teachers, social workers and medical personnel by Viet Cong death squads.
After the war ended in 1975, up to a million Vietnamese, mostly from the South, were dispatched to "re-education" camps, where they were subjected to forced labor, brainwashing and torture.
Some 60,000 died in custody.
After their victory the Vietnamese Communists also initiated a program of systematic human-rights abuses that skirted outright genocide against the Montagnard peoples of Vietnam's central highlands, some of whom had fought the Communists alongside American troops.
They continue to be subject to torture, murder, religious persecution, the forced sterilization of women and the confiscation of ancestral lands on a huge scale.
Bottom line?
The men who control the wretched tyranny based in Hanoi are in no position to accuse anybody of war crimes, let alone former Sen. Bob Kerrey - who, after all, won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the service of his country
Yes, Kerrey himself concedes shame and regret that civilians died when his team raided the village of Thanh Pong in 1969.
But he maintains that what happened was a tragic accident - and, given the lack of real evidence to the contrary, we believe him.
In any event, the government of Vietnam had no reaction to the controversy until last month's publication of Kerrey's memoir, "When I was a Young Man," revived the issue.
And how much credibility does Hanoi have? Anyone remotely familiar with the brutal record of Vietnam's Communist rulers should find it almost comically hypocritical that they should dare talk about "war crimes."
Despite the prominence given in America to the U.S. atrocity at My Lai, it was the other side that committed the most numerous and brutal crimes of the war.
The best known of these is the brutal torture of scores of American POWs, including Sen. John McCain.
But the Vietnamese Communists' record of atrocity dates back to the 1940s, when French prisoners were horribly mutilated by Ho Chi Minh's troops.
And it continues today with the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.
Perhaps the worst single crime of the entire Vietnam War was the massacre of 5,000 civilians - priests, government officials and their families - in the city of Hue during the Tet offensive of March 1968.
North Vietnamese regular troops rounded up these men, women and children, marched them to a dry river bed and executed them with bullets, bayonets and clubs.
There was also the assassination over two decades of 36,000 South Vietnamese civilians, including teachers, social workers and medical personnel by Viet Cong death squads.
After the war ended in 1975, up to a million Vietnamese, mostly from the South, were dispatched to "re-education" camps, where they were subjected to forced labor, brainwashing and torture.
Some 60,000 died in custody.
After their victory the Vietnamese Communists also initiated a program of systematic human-rights abuses that skirted outright genocide against the Montagnard peoples of Vietnam's central highlands, some of whom had fought the Communists alongside American troops.
They continue to be subject to torture, murder, religious persecution, the forced sterilization of women and the confiscation of ancestral lands on a huge scale.
Bottom line?
The men who control the wretched tyranny based in Hanoi are in no position to accuse anybody of war crimes, let alone former Sen. Bob Kerrey - who, after all, won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the service of his country
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This is with all due respect to all other generations, the older ones being our teachers, and the younger ones being our children and grandchildren, who in many ways are also our teachers. The peaceniks of all generations are proud of our peace movement that along with the Vietnamese people helped put an end to the US War Against Vietnam.
There are exceptions among our generation who continue to be warmongers and have no shame for what the US did in Vietnam, which was no different from what the Nazis did. Most of those exceptions, like George War Bush and Dan Quayle, never went to Vietnam of course, as they were rich and it is only the workingclass who have to figure out how to escape the draft; the rich have guaranteed options to the draft. Some, like Democratic ex-US Senator Bob Kerrey, actually showed up in Vietnam and still have no shame. Many members of the Vietnam War generation won all kinds of medals, including Congressional Medals of Honor, and the peaceniks among them threw them back at the Pentagon in mass demonstrations as being the insulting, worthless garbage they are.
The World Socialist Website of June 6, 2002 has an excellent article on Democrat Bob Kerry entitled:
"Vietnam Charges Ex-Senator Bob Kerry with War Crimes" by Bill Vann at:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/kerr-j06.shtml
Pertinent paragraphs are:
Referring to Kerry's autobiography,
"Did he give the order or not? Did he participate in the killing, or was he merely an innocent bystander? The reader is left in the dark."
"Kerrey’s account evades the detailed description of the bloody start of the Thanh Phong raid that appeared in the New York Times magazine last year. A Navy enlisted man who served under Kerrey reported that there were five people in the house. An older man resisted and, according to this account, Kerrey knelt on his back while another raider cut his throat. The four others in the house—by one account a woman and three small children—were taken out and slaughtered separately."
"Continuing the narrative in his new book, Kerrey says that he and his men proceeded into the village where they found only women and children, awakened by the noise and standing in front of their homes. Someone fired a shot, he said, and the SEAL squad returned “a tremendous barrage of fire.”
“I saw women and children in front of us being hit and cut to pieces. I heard their cries and other voices in the darkness as we made our retreat to the canal.”
"This constitutes Kerrey’s sole description of a night in which he and the men he commanded massacred 21 women, children and elderly men."
"One of the raiders, Gerhard Klann, offered a far more detailed account of the killings to the Times. He insisted that no shots were fired at the SEALs and there was no “crossfire.” Rather, the Americans rounded up the civilians in the center of the village and massacred them at point-blank range. Vietnamese survivors of the attack have since come forward to confirm Klann’s rather than Kerrey’s version of the raid."
"More than three million Vietnamese were killed, most of them victims of US carpet bombing, napalm, and the type of massacres carried out by Kerrey in Thanh Phong. The most notorious of these was supervised by Lieutenant William Calley in My Lai, where 567 old men, women and children were killed, most of them shot to death in a ditch."
"The raids that Kerrey led during his short stint in the Mekong Delta were part of a secret CIA assassination program known as Operation Phoenix, which sought to exterminate the political leadership of the Vietnamese liberation struggle in the south. Operation Phoenix resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children. Targeted in the Thanh Phong raid was the mayor of the hamlet, who was known to sympathize with the National Liberation Front rather than the US-backed regime in Saigon."
"As for “getting beyond it,” millions of Vietnamese still suffer the consequences of the war. Agent Orange, the herbicide sprayed from US planes to destroy foliage and deprive Vietnamese liberation fighters of cover, has contaminated vast areas of the country. As a result of this chemical warfare, poisonous dioxins entered the food chain leaving millions of people with serious health problems, including an estimated half a million children with disabling birth defects. Washington has dismissed claims for compensation, asserting that there is insufficient proof and, like Kerrey, telling the Vietnamese to “get over it.”"
The World Socialist Website has previous excellent articles on Democrat Bob Kerrey.
See:
"What is At Stake in the Fight to Remove Robert Kerrey?" by the Editorial Board, June 1, 2001 at:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/kerr-j01.shtml
"The case of Robert Kerrey: how the US media covered up Vietnam War atrocity story" by Patrick Martin, May 18, 2001 at:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/kerr-m18.shtml
"Robert Kerrey defends Vietnam War in meeting with New School students" by Jerry White, May 17, 2001 at:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/kerr-m17.shtml
"New School students demand ouster of Kerrey over Vietnam War atrocity" by Patrick Martin, May 14, 2001 at:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/kerr-m14.shtml
"Robert Kerrey and the Bloody Legacy of Vietnam" by Patrick Martin and David North of May 4, 2001 at:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/kerr-j01.shtml
Almost all nations were founded by an invaztion of some sort.England by the Romans, then vikings, then the Normans etc..
All nations have blood on thier hands.
I could go on forever, the fact is The Native American Arguement is beating a dead horse, and I hope all the best for the surviving ones and thier Casino's.
No motherfucker's Mao collar is more Maoer than mine! I autograph my own little red books, thank you! My concubines all come from the elite Concubine Collective Farm, not some private imperialist brothel! That's what you get when you're the Maoist Motherfucker! Even Ho's hos weren't as fine as mine! I am the Maoist Motherfucker!
I got the biggest red tractor you EVER saw!
I am the Maoist Motherfucker!