50 Years After the End of the Vietnam War (and Other News).

 

This time is the fiftieth year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War after the Fall of Saigon. 50 years is a long time. The Vietnam War is one of the most emotional wars in human history lasting for about thirty years from 1945 to 1975. Back centuries ago, the Vietnamese people wanted to have independence against Chinese rule. By the time of the end of World War I, Ho Chi Minh desperately wanted American support to endorse the independence of Vietnam (during the meeting at Versailles). America refused to do so because of racist and xenophobic reasons. While Ho Chi Minh has been vilified as an anti-American communist, Ho Chi Minh opposed lynching of black people in America, and he visited Harlem, NYC to condemn anti-black racism. He had a nationalistic motivation to see Vietnam as an independent nation and only became a Stalinist Communist after WWI by ca. 1920. During WWII, the Japanese imperialists dominated and oppressed Vietnam and other places in Asia and Oceania. American forces and other Allied forces worked with the Vietnamese people to liberate Vietnam from Japanese rule. Once again, Ho Chi Minh cited the American Declaration of Independence to urge America to support Vietnamese independence. America refused. Even when the French imperialists dominated Vietnam, America refused to oppose French imperialists. 

The Vietnamese people defeated the French at the Battle of Dien Bein Phu in 1954, and the Geneva Accords came about to decide the fate of the Vietnam peninsula. Eisenhower knew that Ho Chi Minh had a great chance to win elections, so the USA government disregarded the elections in Vietnam. The 1954 Geneva Convention divided Vietnam into North and South. Eisenhower (not Kennedy) was the first U.S. President to send military advisors to Vietnam to fight North Vietnam. After that pressure, Ho Chi Minh later attacked South Vietnam after giving up on U.S. support. The Vietnam War existed in stages with complexity. President Kennedy expanded military advisors in Vietnam, but he had a plan to withdraw all U.S. military troops from Vietnam by 1965, as confirmed by Robert McNamara in the Fog of War documentary. Diem was the leader of South Vietnam for a time. Diem was supported by America, but his problem was that Diem suppressed dissent, persecuted the Buddhist population, and was a far-right extremist. He was assassinated by the end of 1963. Both sides committed war crimes with the Hanoi Hilton, where American soldiers were tortured with brutality in an evil fashion, and Operation Phoenix, when the U.S. government assassinated Vietnamese forces, including civilians, in cold blood. 

Napalm was used in Vietnam, harming Vietnamese men, women, and children. The usage of napalm was vehemently opposed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (he saw Vietnamese people being victims of napalm running for their lives in the Ramparts Magazine). Many U.S. soldiers had Agent Orange. Protests were in the streets in America (led by doctors like Dr. Spock, the SDS, the Black Panthers, other political leaders, clergy people, etc.) in trying to end the Vietnam War. Political polarization grew. All of this would have been solved by a negotiated settlement that LBJ refused to do so. After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, LBJ expanded the military presence in Vietnam War. There was as high as 536,000 American troops in Vietnam by 1968. Nixon supported a peace plan under certain conditions. Dr. King opposed the Vietnam War because he wanted U.S. troops to go home and force a solution where there is peace and improvement in the Vietnamese peninsula (where non-Communists and Communists are represented in a possible coalition government). Muhammad Ali opposed the Vietnam War courageously as he viewed it as an unjust war. The Vietnam War was an unjust war as Vietnam was no direct threat to America, imperialism played a role in the war, it was a war that stripped resources that could have been used to rebuild America's urban and rural centers, the involvement of America into Vietnam War was based on a lie, and alternatives could have been made to end the war fairly plus peacefully among all sides. The USA government, in many cases, called Dr. King falsely as a traitor and other names (even the so-called liberal New York Times plus TIME magazine condemned Dr. King's stance including moderate members of the NAACP. Many in the NAACP would later oppose the Vietnam War when Nixon was President), but Dr. King never backed down in his commitment to peace. The Tet Offensive, the destruction of the city of Hue, the anti-war protests, the 1968 Presidential election, the illegal bombing of Cambodia, the Kent State Massacre, and other events are all connected to the Vietnam War. Nixon promoted Vietnamization (i.e. the U.S. soldiers trained South Vietnamese military forces to defend South Vietnam after American troops completely left Vietnam), but North Vietnamese forces were too strong after American troops left Vietnam. Many U.S. troops coming home from Vietnam suffered and continued to suffer homelessness, being spat upon (which was wrong), and mental health anguish. The Vietnam War was the first modern war when the world public saw the reality of war on live television. War is not for the faint of heart. It's real. Today, ironically, the nation of Vietnam is a large trading partner with America. Both Americans and Vietnamese people created documentaries, reconciliation tours, and other programs to deal with the multifaceted nature of the Vietnam War.

A Trump-appointed judge has barred the administration from removing migrants under the Alien and Sedition Act, saying Trump's invocation of the law in the context of Ren de Aragua was illegal. This tells me that even some judges appointed by Trump realize that the disastrous policies from the Trump regime have no legal rationale in any context. On this first day of May, we are clear to use our power to defend our labor rights, have a decent standard of living for the working class, and advance economic justice. We have an epidemic of economic inequality in our world. The Federal Reserve said that as prices increase, corporate profits have reached an unprecedented share of national income and that profiteering is driven by an increase in dividends rewarding shareholders while worker compensation declines.

The Supreme Court endorsing endorsement of a country's first religious public charter school is illegal and a violation of church and state. I believe in God, but I don't want my religious beliefs to be forced on people who may disagree with my religious beliefs. The First Amendment says that there shall be no establishment of religion in society. Religious freedom is permitted in the First Amendment, but the country can't establish a national religion in American society. The state has no right to publicly establish a specific religion for citizens to adhere to. Centuries ago, in my state of Virginia, the Church of England governed affairs in government. The Baptists during the 1700s were persecuted and jailed by the Church of England in Virginia for refusing to baptize infant babies. That is why Baptists and Thomas Jefferson formed the Religious Liberty law in Virginia to promote the separation of church and state. Many religious dissidents came to America centuries ago to escape theocratic regimes that violated individual liberties and religious freedom. We must protect religious freedom in America without theocracy.

By Timothy