War party squanders $30 million to whitewash criminal Vietnam War

This aging but still feisty 1960's anti Vietnam war protester is appalled by the war party's $30 million waste of my tax dollars to re-write history for the majority of Americans too young to remember. The result, a fancy interactive website, www.vietnamwar50th.com, supposedly commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. The 1964 start date simply refers to LBJ and his war hawks' fantasy tale about the... Tonkin Gulf incident used as the trigger to escalate US involvement into millions of dead, including 58,000 GI's. The real heroes of Vietnam, the millions of protesters who did much to ultimately end the war are virtually ignored. The slaughter of 500 unarmed civilians at Mai Lai is dismissed as an "incident." The site mentions Agent Orange in passing, not bothering to describe its disastrous effects and three generations of Vietnamese, with hundreds of thousands affected, including tens of thousands Americans, and destruction of much of Vietnam's natural environment. Many "hot spots" around former US bases remain active today. Nixon's 1968 election treason, in which he back channeled South Vietnam to reject LBJ's peace proposal, resulting in a million more dead people, is AWOL. The story of how the US propped up the French colonial empire from 1945 till the French were booted out by revolutionaries in 1954, and then took over the task of preventing Vietnam reunification for 21 years is a disgrace to legitimate historicity.

The millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians killed or damaged by our needless war deserve better.

The 8,000,000 US military personnel who served in Vietnam, including hundreds of thousands who deserted for good reason, deserve better.

And the generations of Americans who have no memory of the horror that needless war brought to Southeast Asia and America, deserve a real history that strips bear the folly of the war party who have just committed America to a new 30 year war that no one really understands and nobody not empowered or enriched by the war party gives a damn about.

Two Nobel Peace Prize speeches

 "To say that force is sometimes necessary isn’t a call to cynicism, it’s a recognition of history, the imperfections of man, and the limits of reason."  - President Barack Obama, 2009

"Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones."
  - Rev. Martin Luther King, 1964

Since winning his Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama has bombed seven Islamic countries. And Rev. King? He spent the last four years of his life preaching, living and spreading the message of peace.

Which one do you believe lived up to that glorious honor?

Who said that?

"In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They... are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. "

Surprise, Adam Smith in 'The Wealth of Nations', published in 1776, the year America declared its independence. 'Wealth' is the revolutionary treatise on the sources of nations' wealth which is still the foundation of classical economics. The quote could well describe today's American war party and ruling class except for two revisions:

1. Simply replace "fleets and armies" with "drones and F-16's".
2. Complete "To them this amusement" with "is accomplished with no increase in taxes whatsoever under the concept of war paid with borrowed money."

That's the American war party, which understands completely that 'war is the health of the state.'

Trib's endorsement of Congressman Roskam an editorial disgrace

The Trib's endorsement of my Congressman Peter Roskam is truly divorced from reality. You say Roskam "remains a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he can be counted on to look out for taxpayers." Did you conveniently forget or did you simply not care that Roskam, as House GOP Chief Deputy Whip, helped lead the unconscionable 16 day government shutdown last year that dealt a $24 billion dollar blow to our economy and inconvenienced many millions. Then you tout Roskam's challenger Mic Mason for running because  "he is disgusted with the gridlock in Congress, so he decided to  run after he retired from the U.S. Postal Service." That is true in large part because Roskam helped fuel Congressional gridlock every day of the President's six years in office. Your endorsement is a disgrace to honest, thoughtful and informative opinion. Why not just say "We endorse Peter Roskam because he is a dependable right wing ideologue".