I'm angry at war criminals because my family was victimized in Viet Nam

[Selatius]

If there's one thing I see in both wars, it's that ordinary people suffer.

I remember hearing stories from my parents who are Vietnamese about how atrocious the VC was. They used to come down when US forces left and round up the elders. They'd execute one of them in front of us and then demand obedience and support, or they'd execute more each night as punishment. During the day, there was the worry of US forces coming in and torching and destroying everything because they believed we were VC supporters or helped the NVA. Yes, the Americans, too, committed their share of atrocities. So many of us died in a war that wasn't our own. I've never known people to declare war, but I know governments declare war.

I don't know what it's like on the ground in Iraq, but I can't imagine it being too much different than what it was in Viet Nam. I feel sorry for that little girl in Haditha who survived, while her whole family was gunned down. I know there are many more children like her without families now. I know it was the same in Viet Nam as well.

Yes, I'm angry at the people who pull the trigger; I can't deny that. If I watched my whole family die, I can't say I wouldn't pick up a gun and seek revenge. If you were occupied and watched everyone you love die, would you not understand why perhaps so many Iraqis are fighting US troops right now?

But in the end, there is one participant in war that truly enrages me. It's the war profiteers, the men who make the guns and bombs. It's the men who never run for office, the men who support candidates in elections, but they're the ones who reap the benefits in the end, and they never went to trial neither at Nuremberg or any murder trial over Viet Nam.

How sick is it that you could become a millionaire or a billionaire off the blood of innocent men, women, and children? How could any person in good conscience support a system that allows one to make obscene profits because one is greedy like Cheney or that guy who just retired from Exxon-Mobil? How could any person tolerate a businessman doing business with dictators and regimes that slaughter untold numbers because they ask too much when they ask for a little bit of freedom?

Do poor victims like my parents or that girl in Haditha have to lay down and die just so a few can make themselves rich? It's always the poor and the weak who die first.

You know what I think will go a long way to stopping war? It's not peace conferences or disarmament talks or treaties or conventions or anything of that sort. If you want to stop war, then maybe you should take the profit out of war.

[madokie]

1. So many of us died in a war that wasn't our own.

So sad to read this, the warmongers are the profiteers for the most part. We are the gullible in our part.

[stellanoir]

2. wow that's powerful

The conundrum as I see it is that if we are to take the profit out of war it requires oversight. There is no oversight

The * "misadministration" has been systematically disempowering all oversight from the get go in an outrageously calculated manner. They think they have impunity. They've arranged it.

They've diminished the ICC, the UN, the Red Cross, Amnesty International, in every way they possibly could and rather effectively. Would that it were they dealt with the so called liberation of Iraq thusly so.

What they ultimately can't diminish is the will of the people over time though. I swear.

In a heart rending post from Sunday, the author of the Vagina Monologue's wrote something to the effect of:

"America, you are now controlled by those who have changed and ended law."

In that sentence she summarized what we have all been droning on about for so long amazingly succinctly.

We so desparately need a reawakening.

[Nostradammit]

3. War profiteers are the lowest form of life that there is

They are a cancer on the body of the species. How does one take the profit out of war?

Will it take a war to remove the government that won't take the profit out of war?

My family was victimized by the war profiteers as well when my father, who had signed up to defend the country found himself destroying the lives and futures of people who had never harmed him nor his nation. He never truly recovered from it.

[deFaultLine]

4. Westmoreland

I've always felt that Westmoreland should have taken more heat than he ever got. He got away with a lot of what he did and the war dragged on for much longer than it should have.

BTW, my shoes are made in Viet Nam. Kinda nice how things can change, given enough time. :)

[pnwmom]

5. Thank you, Salatius, for your wise words.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I hear you

as a medic for a national red cross society I got to debrief the refugess from Central America. Different war, same story. Replace NVA for Sandinista, and US Army for Government troop (for example) and the language spoken... same different war, and difreent decade. So I hear you... and the contractors, as well as the Bechtels are the lowest form of scum on the earth.

[HereSince1628]

7. In the words of Condi Rice, there are always opportunities

and as every capitalist has known since before the age of nation-states began, war and even rumors of war are great rackets to be in on.

[no_to_war_economy]

8. kick ..