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This is an important day in history, but not many people in the U.S. know it, care about it, or think about its significance. On May 7, 1954, the Vietnamese defeated the French in a famous battle and rout called Dien Ben Phu.
Before World War II, France claimed Vietnam as a colony, used its people as slave labor or servants, and stole its resources. The French fled the advancing Japanese during World War II, and the Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the Viet Cong, fought against the Japanese.
After World War II was over, the leaders of the allied forces met on several occasions to congratulate each other on defeating fascism, and to divvy up the world among themselves. Vietnam sent a delegation to one of those meetings, and told the powerful leaders that they wanted their independence. They were told no. They were told that their nation "belonged" to the French, and that was that. Except it wasn't.
The Vietnamese just kept fighting, this time against the French. French public sentiment turned against the war (other French colonies such as Algeria were also rising up in wars of independence) but the Americans provided aide and advisors to the French to help them maintain their Vietnamese colony. On May 7, 1954, it all collapsed, the French were defeated, and the Vietnamese were successful.
Except that the war was not over, because the U.S. decided it would step in, begin taking over from the French, and the U.S. would beat this poor peasant nation. After all, we've got the strongest military in the world, right? Of course the U.S. stayed and stayed, killed and killed, but eventually were forced out of Vietnam after murdering 2 million of their people and dumping poisonous chemicals all over their nation which has created a tragedy of cancer and birth defects in the civilian population. The U.S. has not done a thing to help those poor people.
Some of the idiots in this country insist we should have stayed longer, killed more. They feel personally demeaned because their government did not just nuke the whole country.
Now we're in another war. Actually lots of them. Among others, we're in a war against Afghanistan, one of the poorest nations in the world, a country where our own top military leaders have admitted there are about 100 members of al Queda. So we send in hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight about 100 al Queda.
People hoped Obama would end this tragic war, but he has instead escalated it. There is no rational explanation for that escalation except the one suggested by the war's opponents from the outset: the western oil corporatoins want to run pipelines across the nation of Afghanistan, but the only way they can do that is if the U.S. keeps its military there to protect the oil pipelines, to be used in stealing the oil and gas from Afghanistan's neighbors.
We have 104,000 mercenary contractors in Afghanistan working for the U.S., being paid enormous salaries by the bankrupt and unemployed taxpayers of the U.S. Don't we deserve an honest answer about why we have 104,000 private mercenary contractors occupying Afghanistan?
We have about 100,000 military troops in Afghanistan. Total military and private contractor mercenaries inside Afghanistan is over 200,000. For what?
Now we hear that the U.S. is focusing on new nations. First, Pakistan. The U.S. is directing Pakistan to attack regions of its own nation, and is receiving quite a bit of resistance to those orders. The U.S. continues to threaten to attack Iran. For what? Iran helps other people in the middle east who are fighting against the U.S., or so we are told. Which one of these does not belong: Iran? Or the U.S. We don't belong there. It's not our oil, they are not our nations. We need to end these wars.
Or, Obama may simply keep them all going, permanent war. Keep the defense corporations rich, keep the working people with an unemployment level over 10%, do nothing. Make sure the Democrats don't get blamed to ending a war, God forbid, what a terrible reputation that would be.
Many Democrats believe they lost elections because they eventually supported ending the war in Vietnam. It was too little too late by too few politicians, first. And second, if it was true, which it is not, they should be proud to be called peacemakers. Instead, the Democrats push war and cause killing for no legitimate reason. Much like the Republicans.
End the Wars. All of them. Bring the troops home. Now.
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