Was Vietnam a war crime?
Woke up this morning and wondered:
Was Vietnam a war crime?
The most general public narrative is that it was a mistake. But does it go further than that? Was it a mistake because it should never have been fought, or because it did not succeed in its objective? Vietnam went Communist anyway, and its "fall" did not start a wave of Communism, as predicted by the domino theory. The rest of the region didn't go Communist.
It was a terrible waste of human life: over two million Vietnamese dead, and 58,000 Americans.
If you think it was a war crime, why?
posted by Adam @ 7:24 AM
5 Comments:
Hey evert!
Glad to see that you've joined the blogging
collective/community :)
It's a great tool for public discussion.
On the question of whether or not Vietnam is a war crime?
War itself is criminal.
Unjustified pre-emptive strikes are criminal.
There is no justification for killing innocent people
and the question is important. It calls into question
the moral justification for the war as opposed to
the success/failure dichotomy where we measure it's justification
by it's financial outcome.
The real question is, is war justifiable?
What makes it justifiable?
What's the difference between war and revolution?
The difference between an pre-emptive strike
and self-defense
These are questions that need to be posted in a public
forum, the questions that America needs to ask herself...
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
MLK also quoted JFK in saying that ""Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
what do you think of that?
Diane,
I don't think the U.S. is approaching spiritual death. I think we're past the point.
Saying that war is unjustified avoids the point I'm trying to get to. If Vietnam is a war crime, what makes it a war crime. That it was unjustified? That innocent people died? Etc. What is the difference between a war that is justified -- a defensive war, or an intervention when a bully attacks a smaller nation -- and a war that is unjustified, and are all unjustified wars war crimes?
At Nuremberg it was decided that the Nazis were war criminals. Are LBJ, McNamara and the U.S. soldiers who fought in Vietnam all war criminals?
Evert Commentator
I guess I'm trying to figure where one sets the bar between just war, unjust war and a war that is a war crime.
And are there wars that make all their participants war criminals? Do the soldiers become war criminals when they go to a war that was started by war criminal leaders?
The higher one sets the bar, the more stringent one's criteria for defining a war crime get. What are the most stringent criteria, for example? This is all still very fluid in my mind.
Evert
lol... I agree Evert..we are past spiritual death.
I guess what you are really asking is how complicit
are we as individuals...
how much our inaction means. I have friends in Iraq
that don't believe in the war but are there anyway
because of the consequences involved in being a consicetious
objector. While I'd love to say that I wouldn't fight
and that I would do the time,
A)not everyone is that morally clear
B)willing to take that kind of fall
The majority of the people in the armed forces
are poor/disenfranchised and they are victims
as well....
is the war in a Iraq a war crime? My gut instincts
say yes, however formulating/proving that argument
is beyond me at the moment..
when are you going to post again ;)
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