TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Surveillance and National Security During Nixon Years and Today

Re: Surveillance and National Security During Nixon Years and Today

AES (siegman@stanford.edu)
Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:18:24 -0800

In article <telecom25.18.9@telecom-digest.org>, John McHarry
<jmcharry@comcast.net> wrote:

> legitimate or otherwise. You don't understand to this day the economic
> and social harm inflicted by Nixon's continuation of a war he went
> into office pledged to end. Yes, the VC and NVA were pretty ruthless,

Not to argue with this (or anything else in your message), but to ask
a question (to which I've never, in many decades, gotten a straight
answer):

At the time of the Vietnam War, that whole area had a complex, messy
history involving lots of colonial and foreign involvement, as a
result of which Vietnam ended up divided. Vietnam had once been and
should have again become a single country; but it was in fact divided
into two de facto countries, each with de facto but more or less
functioning and more or less legitimate (and more or, generally, less
admirable) governments.

The Vietnam War then resulted, not because the North Vietnam
government was threatened with invasion by the U.S., but because the
NV government was simply determined to obtain sovereignty and control
over South Vietnam, and to do so initiated an aggressive (and quite
vicious) war to do this -- right? (And were willing to commit
genocide on their own citizenry to accomplish this, not so?)

The U.S. of course then got involved on the South Vietnam side, which
it perhaps should and more likely should not have done. The initial
aggression by North Vietnam was, however, in *either* case, clearly
illegal -- right? It may not have justified our involvement, or our
conduct once involved, but it *was* illegal on their part and deserved
international condemnation, not so?

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