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Guess who is Protesting the War in Iraq?; She is at it again!
Topic Started: Jul 27 2005, 08:30 AM (1,379 Views)
Dr. Noah
Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
My mistake, type I meant 10,000.

Again, I will state that these movements BEGAN in the 50s, but gained strength in the 60s.

As for the rest, it's all in your own mind. :lol:

Enjoy your dellusion. You've got nobody to share it with.
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gvok
Unregistered

Quote:
 
Enjoy your dellusion. You've got nobody to share it with.


I bet Rush feels the same way.


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ImpulseEngine
Admiral
psyfi
Aug 1 2005, 11:54 AM
IE, I am not disagreeing with you that ultimately we can change our emotions, perceptions, and so forth. I am only saying that sometimes that change requires so much it takes a miracle because of the pressure exerted upon the situation from a wide variety of factors. These factors are not so easily overcome in many circumstances. As I pointed out to Min, we can say that Jane Fonda just spoke words (though of course she did far more), but those words can put a tremendous pressure on somebody in a given set of circumstances. The pressure exerted on us so far removed from the situation vs. the pressure exerted on those fighting a war in a jungle who were often the target of her lies can be tremendously different. Consequently, what is needed to just shake off these words can be small for us and HUGE for others. It is insufficient to just say well we are responsible for how we feel or think without realizing what it can sometimes take in order to exert that responsibility and acknowledging that it can take A LOT OF EFFORT, far more than we can even imagine.
Even if you are right, you have not established that this was the case with Jane Fonda and the US Soldiers fighting in Vietnam. How can there be such pressure as to require "a miracle" to overcome from someone expressing words at a distance even if they truly were lies (which I'll grant you here only for the sake of discussion - and that doesn't mean I do or don't think they were lies - it's just not as simple either of those choices so it's a whole other discussiOn) or from someone merely sitting on an enemy vessel again at a distance?

Quote:
 
The foregoing is why you cannot really state that, “Well our guys were prepared.” How do you REALLY prepare for combat, difficult combat in the worst of conditions? How do you prepare for losing friends fighting beside you? How do you prepare for the fact that while you are dodging bullets, killing people, getting shot, grieving the loss of buds, the pin-up girl on your locker back at base is suddenly calling you a baby killer and telling lies about how you are massacring every Vietnamese man, woman in sight. Just what kind of preparation is there for that? You are right, very right, that other factors (and many of them) contributed to low morale. But ask the guys who were there how they felt about Jane Fonda. Ask them what their experience was? You can read exactly how they felt at lots of online sources and they say the effects of her protests and her lies were BAD indeed, angering them and causing them pain. She was a negative influence on them which is to say her words gave them more crap to deal with than they were already undergoing and they were undergoing plenty which is why this airhead should have thought before she spoke.
You're now talking about a whole range of things that are completely different from protests. Combat cannot be compared to someone at a great distance protesting in the manners that Jane Fonda did.

Also, I have no doubt that there are many Vets who claim that the effects of her protests were very bad. I also have no doubt that few if any vets liked what she said and what she did the least little bit. And so, many were downright angry; angry enough to publicly denounce everything that she said and did. Does that make everything THEY had to say true? No it doesn't. And it doesn't mean they were lying either. They might fully believe what they say because, again, we are all too quick to blame others for how we feel. Besides, many of us don't really understand our emotions enough to accurately portray them. It's quite possible that they felt discouraged and disheartened by the nothing more than the war itself, yet when Jane Fonda and others came along and made them angry by their protests, they blamed those feelings on them - and truly believed it. But sorry, that doesn't make the blame accurate.
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psyfi
psyfi
ImpulseEngine
Aug 1 2005, 11:32 AM
psyfi
Aug 1 2005, 11:54 AM
IE, I am not disagreeing with you that ultimately we can change our emotions, perceptions, and so forth. I am only saying that sometimes that change requires so much it takes a miracle because of the pressure exerted upon the situation from a wide variety of factors. These factors are not so easily overcome in many circumstances. As I pointed out to Min, we can say that Jane Fonda just spoke words (though of course she did far more), but those words can put a tremendous pressure on somebody in a given set of circumstances. The pressure exerted on us so far removed from the situation vs. the pressure exerted on those fighting a war in a jungle who were often the target of her lies can be tremendously different. Consequently, what is needed to just shake off these words can be small for us and HUGE for others. It is insufficient to just say well we are responsible for how we feel or think without realizing what it can sometimes take in order to exert that responsibility and acknowledging that it can take A LOT OF EFFORT, far more than we can even imagine.
Even if you are right, you have not established that this was the case with Jane Fonda and the US Soldiers fighting in Vietnam. How can there be such pressure as to require "a miracle" to overcome from someone expressing words at a distance even if they truly were lies (which I'll grant you here only for the sake of discussion - and that doesn't mean I do or don't think they were lies - it's just not as simple either of those choices so it's a whole other discussiOn) or from someone merely sitting on an enemy vessel again at a distance?

Quote:
 
The foregoing is why you cannot really state that, “Well our guys were prepared.” How do you REALLY prepare for combat, difficult combat in the worst of conditions? How do you prepare for losing friends fighting beside you? How do you prepare for the fact that while you are dodging bullets, killing people, getting shot, grieving the loss of buds, the pin-up girl on your locker back at base is suddenly calling you a baby killer and telling lies about how you are massacring every Vietnamese man, woman in sight. Just what kind of preparation is there for that? You are right, very right, that other factors (and many of them) contributed to low morale. But ask the guys who were there how they felt about Jane Fonda. Ask them what their experience was? You can read exactly how they felt at lots of online sources and they say the effects of her protests and her lies were BAD indeed, angering them and causing them pain. She was a negative influence on them which is to say her words gave them more crap to deal with than they were already undergoing and they were undergoing plenty which is why this airhead should have thought before she spoke.
You're now talking about a whole range of things that are completely different from protests. Combat cannot be compared to someone at a great distance protesting in the manners that Jane Fonda did.

Also, I have no doubt that there are many Vets who claim that the effects of her protests were very bad. I also have no doubt that few if any vets liked what she said and what she did the least little bit. And so, many were downright angry; angry enough to publicly denounce everything that she said and did. Does that make everything THEY had to say true? No it doesn't. And it doesn't mean they were lying either. They might fully believe what they say because, again, we are all too quick to blame others for how we feel. Besides, many of us don't really understand our emotions enough to accurately portray them. It's quite possible that they felt discouraged and disheartened by the nothing more than the war itself, yet when Jane Fonda and others came along and made them angry by their protests, they blamed those feelings on them - and truly believed it. But sorry, that doesn't make the blame accurate.

IE, have you ever heard the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Sometimes things pile on and what might seem like a tiny straw, a little, almost weightless thing can be the downfall of the camel. You don’t kick a guy when he is down for the same reason. This and more is what Fonda did. This is why sitting on an enemy vessel at a distance and, at minimum, distorting the truth, can greatly harm the emotional state of those she was talking about. This is what her words did when PILED ON to their combat experience and that is not so hard to understand.

We can blame others for how we feel to a certain extent. Even if all they do is reinforce our existing problems, they do reinforce them! Words reinforce, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. This is why it is important to be sensitive to what others are going through and ask ourselves questions like, “Am I adding to the misperception, or helping to change it?” or “Am I adding to this person’s pain or helping to alleviate it?” She added on to pain.
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ImpulseEngine
Admiral
psyfi
Aug 1 2005, 12:49 PM
IE, have you ever heard the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Sometimes things pile on and what might seem like a tiny straw, a little, almost weightless thing can be the downfall of the camel. You don’t kick a guy when he is down for the same reason. This and more is what Fonda did. This is why sitting on an enemy vessel at a distance and, at minimum, distorting the truth, can greatly harm the emotional state of those she was talking about. This is what her words did when PILED ON to their combat experience and that is not so hard to understand.

We can blame others for how we feel to a certain extent. Even if all they do is reinforce our existing problems, they do reinforce them! Words reinforce, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. This is why it is important to be sensitive to what others are going through and ask ourselves questions like, “Am I adding to the misperception, or helping to change it?” or “Am I adding to this person’s pain or helping to alleviate it?” She added on to pain.

I will grant you that, in theory, that's possible. But so is what I'm saying. I don't know that there even can be evidence that concretely proves either side of our discussion.

However, even if you are right (and obviously I disagree), one must understand the perspective of Jane Fonda and the other protestors. If you go back and read what I said to AB above about the reasons why people protested that war, it's not too hard to see that trying not to be the last straw simply wasn't an option. They believed that the good of the whole country was at stake. That's why they did it.

The real value in freedom of speech isn't about being able to use it only when it doesn't step on anyone's toes. It's in being able to use it even when it does...
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
Dr. Noah
Aug 1 2005, 10:24 AM
My mistake, type I meant 10,000.

Again, I will state that these movements BEGAN in the 50s, but gained strength in the 60s.

As for the rest, it's all in your own mind. 

Enjoy your dellusion.  You've got nobody to share it with.

Your ignorance of history is appalling.
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gvok
Unregistered

The number of US service men killed in Vietnam was approximately 58,000. That's still a large number of people to die for an illegitimate cause. Here's an interesting article I found comparing the death tolls in Iraq and Vietnam.

source

Quote:
 
US death toll in Iraq versus that in Vietnam
( 2003-11-14 10:14) (Reuters)


The US death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over US affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of US Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.

By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where US forces number about 130,000 troops + the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.

The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a US soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.

Larger still is the number of American casualties from the broader US war on terrorism, which has produced 488 military deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Southwest Asia and other locations.

Statistics from battle zones outside Iraq show that 91 soldiers have died since Oct. 7, 2001, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which US President George W. Bush launched against Afghanistan's former Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington killed 3,000 people.

The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized Americans a generation ago with a sad procession of military body bags and television footage of grim wartime cruelty.

Recent opinion polls show public support for the president eroding as he heads toward the 2004 election, partly because of public concern over the deadly cycle of guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings in Iraq.

On Thursday, heavy gunfire and explosions echoed across Baghdad as US troops pounded rebel positions for a second night, and administration officials sought ways to accelerate a transfer of power to the Iraqi people.

US COMBAT POWER

Because US involvement in Vietnam increased gradually after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, there is little consensus on when the war in Southeast Asia began.

Some date the war to the late 1950s. Others say it began on Aug. 5, 1964, when Lyndon Johnson announced air strikes against North Vietnam in retaliation for a reported torpedo attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

However, the Army's start date for the Vietnam War has been set by its Center of Military History as Dec. 11, 1961, when two helicopter companies consisting of 32 aircraft and 400 soldiers arrived in the country, an Army public affairs specialist said.

"It was the first major assemblage of US combat power in Vietnam," explained Army historian Joe Webb.

Vietnam casualties, which amounted to 25 deaths from 1956 through 1961, climbed to 53 in 1962, 123 in 1963 and 216 in 1964, Pentagon statistics show.

At the time, the US presence in Vietnam consisted mainly of military advisers. President John F. Kennedy increased their number from about 960 in 1961 to show Washington's commitment to containing communism.

But not until 1965, after Congress had approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, did Washington begin its massive escalation of the war effort. With a huge influx of soldiers, casualties in Vietnam soared to 1,926 in 1965 and peaked at 16,869 in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, data show.

In a major revision of US military history in 1995, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said he believed the Gulf of Tonkin torpedo attack never occurred.

More than 58,000 US military personnel died in Vietnam before the war ended in the mid-1970s.

In another comparison, British forces that created Iraq in the aftermath of World War One suffered 2,000 casualties from tribal reprisals, guerrilla attacks and a jihad proclaimed from the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, before conditions stabilized in 1921, according to US military scholars.

Reuters included military deaths both on and off the battlefield for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, for comparison with Vietnam War statistics that made no distinction between hostile and non-hostile casualties.

On Thursday, US combat deaths totaled 270 for Iraq and 28 for other battle zones, including Afghanistan.

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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
Wow, went all the way to a Chinese newspaper to get a Roto-Reuter's hit piece. Way to go!

Who says that the goal of keeping Communism from expanding around the world was an illegitimate cause?

The comparison between Vietnam and Iraq is meaningless, except for those who still think this is Vietnam redux (probably to salve their guilty consciences for running away to Canada). An apt comparison (and I've said this before) would be Germany after WWII.
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Dr. Noah
Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
Right back at you AB. :kiss:
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gvok
Unregistered

AB, it's not at all surprising that you would feel that way. The facts speak for themselves.
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24thcenstfan
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Something Wicked This Fae Comes
Moderator Comment

One reply deleted for accusation of baiting.
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
gvok
Aug 1 2005, 03:18 PM
AB, it's not at all surprising that you would feel that way. The facts speak for themselves.



No, the "facts" don't say jack squat. You are trying to pass off a logical fallacy as fact, in typical fashion. Tell me how the war in Vietnam during our arrival was fought like Iraq. Tell how the Soviet Union and China are aiding alQueda and islamofascist terrorists? Tell me the similarities between Ho Chi Minh and Osama bin Laden. THERE AREN"T ANY and you know it.
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
Admiralbill_gomec
Aug 2 2005, 07:17 AM
Wow, went all the way to a Chinese newspaper to get a Roto-Reuter's hit piece. Way to go!

Who says that the goal of keeping Communism from expanding around the world was an illegitimate cause?

The comparison between Vietnam and Iraq is meaningless, except for those who still think this is Vietnam redux (probably to salve their guilty consciences for running away to Canada). An apt comparison (and I've said this before) would be Germany after WWII.

Well - actually , my dad did , my uncles do , and lots of ex-diggers at my dad's old RSL Club do, and I agree with them that keeping Communism from expanding around the world was/is an illegitimate cause.



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captain_proton_au
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A Robot in Disguise

psyfi
Aug 1 2005, 09:38 AM
You saw maybe, one or two black faces on television and that was it and usually these were the faces of servants.

I find the level of racism in the US between 1930 and the 60's hard to gauge.

I see comments like this, but then see other things to the contary.


Martin Scorcese's Documentary on the Blues has been showing on TV here the last couple of weeks.

In it you see some of these African American music stars being adored by (some white) fans. Things like seeing the fans go crazy when Bo Diddley was on the Ed Sullivan show in the 50s or how popular Louis Armstrong was. Or 100,000s of fans flocking to Blues revival concerts in the early 60s.


The fact that some of these fans brought these artists albums and went to their concerts, but then had trouble seeing an African American at the front of a bus, seems hard to understand :shrug:

Then again the difference between music stars and film stars is also apparent, and confusing, you had all these big African American music stars, but up till the end of the 60s , Sydney Pointier was the only big African American film star - confusing


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psyfi
psyfi
captain_proton_au
Aug 1 2005, 09:41 PM
psyfi
Aug 1 2005, 09:38 AM
You saw maybe, one or two black faces on television and that was it and usually these were the faces of servants.

I find the level of racism in the US between 1930 and the 60's hard to gauge.

I see comments like this, but then see other things to the contary.


Martin Scorcese's Documentary on the Blues has been showing on TV here the last couple of weeks.

In it you see some of these African American music stars being adored by (some white) fans. Things like seeing the fans go crazy when Bo Diddley was on the Ed Sullivan show in the 50s or how popular Louis Armstrong was. Or 100,000s of fans flocking to Blues revival concerts in the early 60s.


The fact that some of these fans brought these artists albums and went to their concerts, but then had trouble seeing an African American at the front of a bus, seems hard to understand :shrug:

Then again the difference between music stars and film stars is also apparent, and confusing, you had all these big African American music stars, but up till the end of the 60s , Sydney Pointier was the only big African American film star - confusing

It's not hard for me to gage. I grew up in the 1950s. I was a very young teen in the late 50s and an older teen in the early sixties. I remember that when I was a rather young girl, maybe six or seven, we got a television and I watched that thing constantly, children's shows like the Howdy Doody and Pinky Lee and Captain Zoom shows. I watched all sorts of cowboy series and old movies from the 40s and the various "prime time" shows like Milton Berle's TEXACO HOUR and Sid Cesar's SHOW OF SHOWS and THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, and THE HIT PARADE. I also watched series like I LOVE LUCY and so forth. I was a tv watching fool (still am) and in all those years, the only black series I remember were AMOS AND ANDY show and the BEULAH show, both of which were actually great but didn't portray blacks in the best light. I remember seeing Rodchester in THE JACK BENNY SHOW and some black stars once in a great while on Ed Sullivan. In the old movies, all I ever saw were blacks as servants and/or slaves singing happily on plantations or in comedic roles in which they played dumb cowards afraid of ghosts or anything else that went bump in the night.

I remember going to school dances where there were no black people because they lived in their own neighborhoods and had their own dances and nobody even thought twice about that and would feel offended if somebody black had the nerve to show up at one of "our" dances. I remember all the stupid and insane things my family and family friends believed about black people. I remember talking with a nun when I decided to marry my ex-husband (who is black) and how she tried to explain to me about these people's "bad blood." I remember the local priest telling me that if I decided not to marry my husband, he would get me in one of the best Catholic schools in the country and get the church to buy me a car! I remember the therapist I had gone to when I was 16 after having a nervous breakdown, talking to me about how wrong it was for races to mix and that my desire to do so was really a sign of neurosis. No, it is not hard for me to gage at all. It was an era in which most were racist and most of them re-evaluated and thank God changed their views during the 60s and into the early 70s.



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