By Gerry Caplan - May 4, 2013

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam is not just another history book. Its implications for today are both profound and unnerving. It will haunt you every time the United States launches yet another military adventure somewhere in the world in the name of American idealism.

By RON JACOBS - January 15, 2013

Low-intensity conflicts that included the massacre of Salvadoran farmers by US-funded death squads and militaries; the murderous subversion of a popular government by CIA- contra forces in Nicaragua; the arming of religious extremists in Afghanistan to fight a secular and progressive government in Kabul...All of these elements and hundreds more are what describe US foreign policy. They are not mistakes any more than the US war on the Vietnamese people was a mistake. Indeed, they are the price the world must pay.

By MICHAEL D. YATES - Counterpunch

The Vietnam War should never be forgotten. It was a stain on our country and on humanity itself. To glorify it is an ignominious crime. We should instead honor the Vietnamese people, who fought more valiantly and suffered more for their liberation from foreign rule than we ever did for our own.

March 2, 2012 - CBC News

Many workers in Vietnam will "suffer debilitating diseases" over the coming decades from handling asbestos — some of which is imported from Canada, a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks says...Canada is cited as one of the major exporters of asbestos...to Vietnam, which has increasingly turned to the material for use in low-cost roofing material...Vietnam is described as having one of the world's highest per-capita consumption rates of asbestos.

By John Pilger - December 03, 2010

...[T]here is no place like Vietnam. Within my lifetime, Ho Chi Minh’s nationalists had fought and expelled the French...then the Japanese, with whom the French colons collaborated; then the British who sought to reinstall the French; then the Americans, with whom Ho had repeatedly tried to forge an alliance against China; then Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, who attacked from the west; and finally the Chinese who, with a vengeful nod from Washington, came down from the north. All of them were seen off at immeasurable cost.

Our guest, Mike Wong, was born and raised in San Francisco, and became a soldier during the Vietnam War. He was very influenced by the anti-war movement. So when he received Vietnam orders, he went AWOL, then turned himself in to the Presidio stockade with his lawyer, pleaded guilty to AWOL, and attempted to press a limited conscientious objector case.

By Alfred W. Mccoy - April 19, 2010

With few choices between diplomatic niceties and a destabilizing coup, Washington invariably ends up defaulting to an inflexible foreign policy at the edge of paralysis that often ends with the collapse of our authoritarian allies, whether Diem in Saigon, the Shah in Tehran, or...Hamid Karzai in Kabul. To avoid this impending debacle, our only realistic option in Afghanistan today may well be the one we wish we had taken in Saigon back in August 1963 -- a staged withdrawal of U.S. forces.

"A Conservative government will stand up for full and fair compensation to persons exposed to defoliant spraying during the period from 1956 to 1984."

- Stephen Harper

By Mumia Abu-Jamal - October 16, 2009

Begun under dubious circumstances, more as a demonstration war to set the stage for the real drama of Iraq, Afghanistan has almost always been more useful as a proxy war, fought by others, rather than a direct war, fought by Americans...But 9-11 changed all that, and today, 9 years later, Barack Obama is beginning to resemble, more and more, another congressman who became a president: Lyndon B. Johnson...What makes that resemblance all the more remarkable is Johnson's inheritance of the Vietnam War, and his decision to escalate it.

By Mahir Ali - September 02, 2009

...[Ho Chi Minh] looked upon the US as a potential ally...[W]hen the [pro-Nazi French] Vichy regime allowed Japanese forces to enter Vietnam without firing a shot, Ho and his comrades organized a fairly successful resistance, coordinating their actions with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA...Ho allowed himself to presume that...the US would be favorably disposed towards occupied nations yearning to breathe free.

Two articles

To not speak out fully because of respect for the deceased would be to mock the memory of the millions of innocent people [Robert] McNamara caused to be maimed and killed in a war that he later freely admitted never made any sense. Much has been made of the fact that he recanted his support for the war, but that came 20 years after the holocaust he visited upon Vietnam was over.

By DAVE LINDORFF - Counterpunch

In Vietnam, atrocities and massacres of civilians by American forces were not aberrations, they were part of the battle plan...Israel's IDF is no better or worse than America's military. Given the level of mutual hatred between Israeli and Palestinian, I have no doubt that while there may well be humanists among IDF draftees...many in the IDF are as ready to blow away women and children in Gaza without a moment's remorse as Hamas rocketeers are happy to hit a kindergarten in Israel.

by Ted Rall - Common Dreams

When [Republican Presidential candidate and Senator John] McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can’t help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11...Maybe he would have made it[?]...But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.

by Michael Byers - Wednesday, June 04, 2008

The steady stream of maimed or killed soldiers is but one of many increasingly disturbing parallels between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War.

Police in Vietnam have started surrounding hundreds of peasants who have been demonstrating in Ho Chi Minh City for almost a month over land disputes, a demonstrator said overnight. About 200 demonstrators, most of whom are women, have been encircled by "many police, both in plain clothes and uniform"...