Vietnam

Ted Rall  My mom had an uncanny ability to size up current events and accurately predict their long-term effects. Fifty years ago, I sat in my mom’s colonial dining room and watched the fall of Saigon on her black-and-white TV with two folds of aluminum foil dangling from the rabbit ears. America was not riding high. A year earlier, gas rationing went into effect and a president reelected in a record landslide resigned in disgrace. As desperate Americans and South Vietnamese scrambled to evacuate, embassy staffers burned millions of dollars in cash to prevent it from falling into the hands of the victorious North Vietnamese. As landing decks on aircraft carriers in the South China Sea became overcrowded, UH-1 “Huey” helicopters, each worth at least $1 million in today’s dollars,...

BY NORMAN SOLOMON Photograph Source: Office of the President of the United States – Public Domain When Joe Biden flew out of Hanoi last week, he was leaving a country where U.S. warfare caused roughly 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths. But, like every other president since the Vietnam War, he gave no sign of remorse. In fact, Biden led up to his visit by presiding over a White House ceremony that glorified the war as a noble effort. Presenting the Medal of Honor to former Army pilot Larry L. Taylor for bravery during combat, Biden praised the veteran with effusive accolades for risking his life in Vietnam to rescue fellow soldiers from “the enemy.” But that heroism was 55 years ago. Why present the medal on national television just days before t...

 By: Fabio G. C. Carisio https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=https://www.veteranstoday.com/2023/03/04/covert-operations-in-vietnam-the-incomplete-history-of-us-norway-collaboration/&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=105&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=21 On the cover image a Norwegian ship  Why Norway? In Seymour Hersh’s account of the Biden Administration’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, why did much of the secret planning and training for the operation take place in Norway? And why were highly skilled seamen and technicians from the Norwegian Navy involved? These questions have been put forward by Pulitzer winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his “From the Gulf of Tonkin to the Balti...

BY MATTHEW HOH Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. A year to the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King publicly and decisively denounced not only the US war in Vietnam but the militarism that enabled the war and undermined American society. King’s Beyond Vietnam sermon, delivered on April 4, 1967, at New York’s Riverside Church, was as predictive as it was powerful and prophetic. Its meaning and value exist today as much as they did nearly 55 years ago. King rightfully tied together the overarching and commanding militarism of the US with the economic, societal and cultural demons plaguing America. Much as President Dwight Eisenhower had done in his farewell&nbs...

BY MARK ASHWILL Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of Hanoi during the lockdown. Photo: Mark Ashwill. The hectic, sun-drenched streets of the capital have fallen silentIn the middle of the dayThe empty parks surrounded by yellow ribbons that exclaim,Keep out!Shuttered stores and barricaded neighborhoodsLivelihoods diminished; plans put on hold; dreams deferredMasked people shuffling around like otherworldly figuresWaiting patiently, resolutely, and with steely determinationHà Nội in the Fourth Wave: A Heartfelt Wish & a Hopeful Prediction (MAA) Known the world over as a bustling country filled with optimistic and hard-working people, Vietnam suddenly became an eerily quiet and serene place after the fourth wave of COVID-19 crashed on its shores. The country and its people w...