On my last birthday I got a few gifts.  Most were clothes.  This is not unusual for me, since I don't like to shop or even go to the mall . . . A few days later I went to do my laundry and opened the new shirts.  In looking for the washing instructions tags (I have paid the price before for ignoring this step) I did notice one thing that I thought was unusual.

     On one shirt, the other "tag," the one of origin, said, "Made in Vietnam."  On the other shirt, it said "Made in China."  Both shirts came from a major department store in Phoenix.

     I didn't think much about this until just the other day, when George Bush compared his occupation of Iraq with Vietnam, and implied that because we left Vietnam, people got hurt, we should have stayed (he didn't say how long), and now we should learn that lesson and stay in Iraq . . . presumably to protect the citizens.  How noble.

     The one shirt made in Vietnam was imported here in America and sold over the counter by a retail worker.  Vietnam is Communist, right?  Didn't we go to war there to prevent that from happening?  The Domino Theory, my God, we can't let southeast Asia go Commie.  But it did.  As did China after WWII, when Taiwan became something else.  And the point is, we trade with both countries, China most notably . . . seems like a capitalistic enterprise, that shirt, and how it made its way here.  As the other shirt and many other things around the house these days, from Communist China.

     What difference has it made since 1975 that Vietnam or China is communist?  Is Bush's lesson that hey, we should invade China, too, to prevent the spread of Communism?  Did communism in Russia fail?  When your system is corrupt, and does not protect the people, and they don't support it (Poland, Solidarity for example) it may take a while, but it will fail.

     Americans can travel to either country mentioned above as tourists.  They are likely safer there than they are in many parts of the world, including sections of many American cities. 

     I know people who still think we should drop nuclear bombs on Saigon and Hanoi.  They do not think of how many civilians would die.  Best estimates for Vietnam are that we killed at least 2 million people, roughly half women and children.  Certainly after we left for good in 1975 there were boat people, etc.  I knew a young man who was relocated to a camp in Indonesia and years later made his way here, and is now safe and successful.  But look at how much destruction and death we caused there . . . and how stable Vietnam is now . . . and who cares what government they have . . . we split the country in half . . . and installed an American-educated Catholic in charge of a country that was 99% Buddhist.  Brilliant. Only to be exceeded by the murder of that guy and the installation of worse dictators . . . done by us, that's right.

     I could go on for hours, but let's do a brief comparison with the situation in Iraq, since Georgie wants to compare them . . . we are again killing tens of thousands of civilians.  Our own military intelligence agencies says we are creating more terrorists than we are killing.  We are arming our enemies, as we often do . . . (the mujhadeen who became the Taliban, the Shah of Iran . . .  and Reagan's Arms for Hostages Election Ploy . . . Saddam Hussein also . . . now both the Sunni and Shia . . . what a track record.  There are similarities . . . we are again trying to establish a puppet government we can control . . . and the casualties be damned on both sides.   Again, our military wins battles, as defined by traditional war . . . like the Tet Offensive (a victory for us) and the overthrow of Baghdad . . . but is not prepared for a long occupation in a place where the locals hate us. . .  and we do not know the language, culture, religion, geography etc.

     The talking points over the last several years from the right are consistently taking their weakest point (Iraq is a "quagmire" as Cheney said publicly in 1994 that it would be if we invaded it, for example, or John Kerry's war medals [earned while Bush went AWOL and refused to take a flight physical because the Air National Guard was doing random drug tests]) and trying to turn night into day . . . and make you reverse field and think just the opposite of the truth.  1984 come and gone.  Spying just like Big Brother...

     I am drifting, as is the nature of the random, spontaneous rant . . . so I will stop soon . . . and for the record, I was a supporter of the Vietnam War as a young man, and even went there for a few weeks as a officer in the Naval Reserve . . . Qui Nhon, 1965 . . . giving me more time there than Bush and Cheney combined . . . BUT that did not change my opinion . . . that did not "turn" until I read numerous books about the causes of the war . . . and the results . . . and understood the lies from body counts to the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident . . . and I read how LBJ cheated his way into the U.S. Senate (notably from Texas), and how war profiteers made huge amounts of money during the Vietnam War . . . and realized that it was likely the military draft that turned the public's attention to it and they also began to rethink what they were told . . . of course, we had some reporters who tried to tell us as well . . . more than we have today . . . and finally that damn shirt . . . and I think about the guys in Iraq who still believe that they are getting even for 9-11 or preventing another one, and don't think about the Iraq Oil fields, or the Saudis who killed Americans that day . . . or Cheney's Energy task force, or the Condi Rice lies about mushroom clouds, or Colin Powel's disgraceful performance at the U. N. 

     In sum, Iraq is comparable to Vietnam . . . but not in any of the ways Bush says . . .

--Write on.

--KZ

ps.  I have not posted in several months.  No excuse except busy.  Moving.  Major life changes, but for good, methinks.  The truth is also that I have seen too much space and effort wasted on these 'strings' by Progressives who seem to think that you are going to change the minds of the kool-aid drinkers.  What is the point of the ping-pong style of arguing over minutae with stubborn, ignorant folks on the right?  You are wasting your time trying to reason with people who don't believe in science (global warming, evolution), don't have any religious values (killing is good, arming drug dealers is in the Constitution), don't want to pay any taxes regardless of what it goes for (the troops), don't care if 20 million children have no health care, think Wall Street should get their greedy hands on your social security . .  and etc. and etc.  Energize the base.  Talk to young people.  Register someone to vote.  Give money to your candidates (alas, In America, this is how we really vote, with our checkbook$).