Thursday, September 17, 2009

Bad Vietnam Lesson for Afghanistan

By Douglas Valentine
September 17, 2009

It just had to happen. And I just had to laugh.

Read on.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent commentary, "A Bad Vietnam Lesson for Afghanistan"
by Douglas Valentine; discussing relentless US use of terror tactics in America's long "counter-terror" Vietnam war.
Very few US discussions of Vietnam War mention that we (Americans) attempted to place a ruling Catholic (puppet) regime in absolute, dictatorial (permanent wartime state of emergency) state of power over a nation of 90% Buddhists.
Even fewer discussions of the Vietnam War mention that the French colonials (and their Catholic Vietnamese allies, who by virtue of being Catholic became allies of the French, and elite over non-Catholic Vietnamese, i.e. rewarded with government perks, jobs, land grants, etc., often at expense of other families) were ALLIED with the JAPANESE ARMY during WWII, just as the Vichy French were allied with the Nazis back in France after Germany's conquest of France in 1940.
Even fewer discussions describe the artificial FAMINE in Vietnam during the last two WWII war years (1944-1945) when the French siezed SO MANY RICE STOCKS for the IJN (Imperial Japanesee Army), that OVER A MILLION Vietnamese STARVED.
During the war, US 'intel' officers (of the OSS, forerunner to the CIA) were ALLIED WITH Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh fighters, who would RESCUE US airmen downed behind Japanese lines... while the French police and military, allied with Japan, would HAND US FLIER OVER to the Japanese, almost always for EXECUTION. (US fliers were very good at shooting up and bombing Japanese army units; to be downed meant near certain death.)
But after the war, French President Charles DeGaulle BLACKMAILED America to support the French colonial (re-) occupation of Algeria and Vietnam - or France would TOSS NATO OUT.
In addition, many of the (Yale) lawyers who founded the OSS & CIA were Catholics, and after the war, they tended to forget French (& Catholic Vietnamese) support for the IJN; and their Catholic sympathies - and US paranoia about "losing Asia to China Communism" - would turn the page, for the next 3 decades America would oppose our WWII Veit Minh allies, in the process Valentine discusses so well.

According to at least one source, the French Foreign Legion hired former (Nazi) SS troops and officers to man their attempt to re-colonialize Veitnam after the end of WWII booted the Japanese army out of that war-torn country -
http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Guard-George-R-Elford/dp/0440614236

Sat Sep 19, 09:46:00 AM 2009

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