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[microsound] [ot] Sorry everybody



1954:

"Thousands of letters and telegrams opposing U.S. intervention deluged
the White House.  An American Legion with 78,000 members demanded that
'the United States should refrain from dispatching any of its Armed
Forces to participate as combatants in the fighting in Indochina or in
southeast Asia.'  There were public outcries against 'colonialism' and
'imperialism.'  Senators from both parties rose to denounce any
contemplationn of sending U.S. soldiers to Indochina....  Democratic
Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado declared on the Senate floor: 'I am
against sending American GI's into the mud and muck of Indochina on a
blood-letting spree to perpetuate colonialism and white man's
exploitation in Asia.'

By mid-May, Gallup poll revealed that 68 percent of those surveyed were
against sending U.S. troops to Indochina."


"One of the most widespread fantasies about the Vietnam War blames the
antiwar movement for losing the war by not supporting the government,
thus forcing the military to 'fight with one arm tied behind it's back.'
But this stands reality on its head.  Right from the beginning, the
goverment understood that the American people did not and would not
support a war in Vietnam.  Therefore, when Washington decided to replace
France in the war against the DRV, it necessarily committed itself to a
covert war, a policy based on deception, sneaking around, hiding its
actions from the American people.  Each administration, from Eisenhower
through Kennedy and Johnson to Nixon, was aware that whenever bits and
pieces of the truth about this war leaked out, opposition to the war
would build.  Every administration was also aware that each escalation
of the war would intensify forms of opposition.  It was the U. S.
government that thus created the internal nemesis of its own war.
Eventually that nemesis of necessity would also emerge inside the army
and navy fighting that war."


H. Bruce Franklin "Vietnam and Other American Fantasies"

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