Vietnam

Of interest…

Fresh Air: Terry Gross’s interview with Rusty Sachs, a Vietnam veteran who participated in the anti-war protests that also included John Kerry. Sachs is one of the vets featured in the 1971 documentary Winter Soldier that dealt with these protests and which is being re-released.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4793878

Winter Soldier site
http://www.wintersoldierfilm.com/

--
It was terribly frustrating during the last presidential election to hear John Kerry vilified for condemning U.S. Vietnam War atrocities during 1970s’ war protests. His critics acted as if he had been unpatriotic to speak out and implicit in their criticisms was the fiction that such atrocities never occurred. I respect John Kerry for his courage in the 70s. I am disappointed that Kerry stayed on the defensive during the elections and didn’t have the same balls he had as a younger man. Of course, in retrospect, it’s easy to say he made a mistake by distancing himself from his earlier anti-war activities… He was trying to get elected afterall…

What I find most disturbing, however, is our ability to forget: 300 years of slavery, a policy of genocide against the American indigenous peoples, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and (in light of the war in Iraq) Vietnam… Is it unpatriotic to hope we will uphold those ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” that we claim as our own? If we allow ourselves to believe it is wrong to hold our government to a higher standard through our speech and our actions then we will never be the people we hope to be…

My Lai massacre…