From my latest blog:
Once upon a time in America - we went to war. We fought in a country called Vietnam. For those of you too young to know, Vietnam was a war that had no winners or losers...
From Wikipedia:
The United States entered the war to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of a wider strategy called
containment.
Military advisors were sent beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s and
combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the
Tet Offensive. Under a policy called
Vietnamization, U.S. forces withdrew as South Vietnamese troops were trained and armed. Despite a
peace treaty signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued. In response to the
anti-war movement, the U.S. Congress passed the
Case-Church Amendment in June 1973 prohibiting further U.S. military intervention. In April 1975, North Vietnam
captured Saigon. North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.
A man named William Ayers has been in the news lately. Back in 1964, he wasn't the only one who was young and angry during this time period. When you see horrible killing and mutilations, you are bound to be angry. Yes, William Ayers was angry. He was angry at an unjust war being fought. He saw pictures of women and babies being killed. He wanted that war to stop. He used every single device available to him to try to stop it.
It is now 50 years later. William Ayers is now a 64 year old man. He is a Professor of Education now at the University of Chicago. He is now an old man.
To try to equate the William Ayers of 1964 to the William Ayers of 2008 is being very dishonest and unfair. From wikipedia - "Ayers was asked in a January 2004 interview, "How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?" He replied:[24] "I've thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it's impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful? ... I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable." On September 9, 2008, journalist Jake Tapper reported on the comic strip in Bill Ayers's blog explaining the soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"[25][26]"
I APPLAUD what William Ayers, and COUNTLESS OTHERS did during the 1960's to STOP the Vietnam War. In MY eyes, the man is a hero.
I lost my cousin to the Vietnam War. He led a troop of fellow Green Berets into a forest laden with Agent Orange. He contracted a very rare form of cancer years later because of exposure to that. If William Ayers had succeeded, maybe my cousin wouldn't have had to fight there in the first place.
I will ALWAYS support what William Ayers and others did. They stood up to the powers that be to fight for something that was plainly WRONG.
ALSO, peaceful demonstration didn't work....look at what happened to those poor students at Kent State:
From: Wikipedia
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre,[2][3][4] occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. Four students were killed and nine others were wounded, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[5]
Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. However, other students who were shot had merely been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.[6][7]
There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of eight million students, and the event further divided the country, at this already socially contentious time, along political lines.
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre,[2][3][4] occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. Four students were killed and nine others were wounded, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[5]
Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. However, other students who were shot had merely been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.[6][7]
There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of eight million students, and the event further divided the country, at this already socially contentious time, along political lines.
***
Hell, I remember that. I remember one day my Dad bringing me to his state college....and me seeing black coffins strewn out in the front lawn, with white crosses painted on them. There were four coffins.
I will close this blog off with the following thought, which still rings true, even today!
From: George Santayana (1905 -1906)
* Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
* Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
o This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
