The USA's involvment in Vietnam was more about the Military-Industrial complex making money than it was about doing what the electorate wanted. The Tonkin Gulf incident was a means to galvanize the electorate to back the war. Only problem was that it was contrived. It was fabricated. Our leaders were backing the corporations not the people and that's when the campus riots started. Our visionaries and dreamers saw what was going on and wanted it stopped. The big Domino Theory scare about Communism turned out to be untrue. After we left Vietnam, the countries did not fall like dominoes as was predicted by our leaders. The Domino Theory was but another scam to scare the electorate into backing the war/Military Industrial Complex. Follow the money.

-- Steve Rasmussen (srasmuss@flash.net), December 10, 2000

Answers

Well, that may be plausible and even partly true. There's always someone around willing to turn things into personal gain.

But millions of human beings were killed by the communist Pol Pot regime in Cambodia for basically idealogical and barbarous reasons. Over a million Vietnamese boat people were sent on the high seas. I work with Czechs from the communist Czech days who were denied schooling and lodging because their parents owned corner shops and thus were deemed "capitalist" oppressors. There were untold millions slaughtered in communist Russia over the century.

The UN is almost entirely corrupt, and so are most regimes in Africa and when food is sent to starving peoples, the food was bought from someone and transportation services were bought from someone else. Someone makes money off charitable causes. Does that mean we should not do it?

As for dreamers and leaders, you may have too rosy a view. The US student protest movement died about 5 minutes after the draft was eliminated. And that generation of 60's idealists turned out to be the world's most image-crazed, self-obsessed, whining litigious consumer/shopper ever. It's not depression-era grand-parents buying all those obscene SUV's, designer jeans and sunglasses.

Follow THAT money, why don't you?

-- Robert Roaldi (robert@terren.com), December 20, 2000.

Not all boomers protested against or hated the Vietnam war. Some were actually bamboozaled by the politicians and backed the effort whole heartedly. These are the ones who can easily be manipulated by leaders, are sucked in by consumerism, have been convinced to buy big insurance policies and listened to Pat Boone while most people their age were listening to rock music. They were all followers with not a leader in sight. They never questioned authority. They were good boys and girls. You can't blame the problems of today on our radicals of the Vietnam era but possibly you can on the people from that time that were the puppets to the politicians, the followers.

-- Steve Rasmussen (srasmuss@flash.net), May 16, 2001.

This can be answered in many ways or views. Money is linked to every social and physical wars. Money can bring jelousy therfor war will follow. Any leader will denie this and say they like cheeseburgers but can u believe everything they say!.

-- Scott Adam Resnick (srpredz99@aol.com), May 09, 2002.

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