Response to this post of Bowser's.

What is ironic is that the Vietnam war was the result of the French rubber trade in "Union Indochinoise" and their persistent inability of French people to be civil with their subjects and their penchant for treating folks like dirt. The history of the French rubber plantations makes Uncle Tom's Cabin appear like a romance novel.

So the US comes in, ostensibly to stop the French industrial/military failure to turn into a victory for the spread of anti-western communism. But to the Viet Cong, one white guy, whether French or American was largely the same and a target - a symbol of oppression.

Folks were shooting at you because the French were --ses extraordinaire. You were just another "exploiter" a soldier from a land of "tyrants" The Vietnamese didn't know the difference between the US or France - no one had ever taught them western history.

Fast forward forty years.

Here we are in Iraq, having unrooted a French supported regime which also treated folks like dirt. And you are unhappy with that too. Here, our boys are STILL getting shot at because of the French industrial giants. This time it's not rubber - this time its nationalised French oil interests.

And yet you reserve all your hatred and contempt for folks who weren't even the bad guys! McNamara, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon...et al, were just MIDDLEMEN - they never profited from the fiasco. They aided the French (our 'allies') and look at the reward?! Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ retired a despised man, Nixon was equally despised and resigned in disgrace, McNamara became the ultimate symbol of DOD incompetence.

And here again, you focus your hatred at folks like Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld & Cheney. But this hatred is again misplaced. The boys are being brought home in body bags because of the French, which goes to show that the more things change the more they stay the same. 1967 or 2007 - not much has changed.

Then you suspend contempt Ahmadinejad - another buddy of the Frenchploitation slave-labor industry. All your life you've been angry with yourself and then the "bad guys" the "black & white" thinkers, etcetera.

Sure, it may be Kennedy's fault for sending folks to support the French against his better instincts, but the bottomline is you've allowed yourself to believe you were a bad guy and working for bad guys. No, by the time you probably got to Vietnam the exploiters had already been run off, you were fighting against communism and tyranny - like thousands of other US troops. You sure as heck weren't holding a M16 thinking "boy, I can't wait till we get the French rubber plantations back into operation!"

War is hell. Killing is hell. Violence is hell. This is a hellworld. My wish for you is that alongside your vow not to be suckered by the bad guys again is to come to peace with the realization that the folks who died (back then or now in Iraq) and the causes they died for were not selfish ones. In the end, that's the difference.

It's not Ironic that the true villains of these global conflicts are almost never photographed, never in the media spotlight and hardly a soul knows their names.