A Lounge in the Wind

[Iceman]

so during breaks from daredevil....2 eps left... ive been watching stand up... i never really watched Bill Burr cause i had that idiotic thought of "he can't be that funny hes in breaking bad"...

this dude is ****ing hilarious.

I didn't know the actor's name but just looked up his mug shot and remember now. And that's far too much range for me to be comfortable with so please inform him he has to give up either the comedy or the serious stuff.

 

[2kt09]

Question for the Americans here, what do you guys learn about the Vietnam war in school, if at all? Like is it glossed over with the eventual "we lost" or does the curriculum go into more detail about how it started and what happened?

Asking because I'm in Saigon right now and just left the war museum.

I remember covering the US ramifications.

 

[squeekness]

Question for the Americans here, what do you guys learn about the Vietnam war in school, if at all? Like is it glossed over with the eventual "we lost" or does the curriculum go into more detail about how it started and what happened?

Asking because I'm in Saigon right now and just left the war museum.

If we were taught about it at all, I barely remember it.

 

[Mandon Knight]

For those wanting to know more, found this book to be very insightful.....

Amazon product

 

[Donner]

Based on what I saw at the museum, that war was practically genocide. Seal Rangers actually went into a village and slaughtered 11 people, including pregnant women and children. They disemboweled 6 year olds. 3 million Vietnamese died and 2 million of them were civilians.

The Germans are taught about the Holocaust in great detail with the hope that future generations won't go down the same path. Canadians are taught about residential schools for the same reason. I guess I'm wondering why American kids aren't taught about the atrocities of the Vietnam war, because maybe if they did they might be less likely to support any US military intervention in the future.

 

[Flint Marko]

I went to a private religious school and the atrocities committed by America, Vietnam included, were conveniently glossed over or ignored entirely. College is basically where I had to do a deep dive into American history to figure out we’ve never really been all that great to begin with.

 

[Donner]

That's so unfortunate. I can't imagine what it must have felt like when you learned about all of the **** that went down during the wars. I could tell people at that museum were uncomfortable. The pictures of the Agent Orange birth defects and the graves of the civilians slaughtered by the military made people squirm. They never knew.

 

[Reek]

on another note...daredevil season 3 was absolutely amazing.

 

[squeekness]

Based on what I saw at the museum, that war was practically genocide. Seal Rangers actually went into a village and slaughtered 11 people, including pregnant women and children. They disemboweled 6 year olds. 3 million Vietnamese died and 2 million of them were civilians.

The Germans are taught about the Holocaust in great detail with the hope that future generations won't go down the same path. Canadians are taught about residential schools for the same reason. I guess I'm wondering why American kids aren't taught about the atrocities of the Vietnam war, because maybe if they did they might be less likely to support any US military intervention in the future.

I recall reading about how Agent Orange and/or other contaminants deliberately placed still continue to poison crops to this day.

 

[squeekness]

on another note...daredevil season 3 was absolutely amazing.

I'm watching episode 7 right now.

 

[Marvolo]

Based on what I saw at the museum, that war was practically genocide. Seal Rangers actually went into a village and slaughtered 11 people, including pregnant women and children. They disemboweled 6 year olds. 3 million Vietnamese died and 2 million of them were civilians.

The Germans are taught about the Holocaust in great detail with the hope that future generations won't go down the same path. Canadians are taught about residential schools for the same reason. I guess I'm wondering why American kids aren't taught about the atrocities of the Vietnam war, because maybe if they did they might be less likely to support any US military intervention in the future.

I would take that museum with a grain of salt. It was created by a people that have an obvious bias against the US soldiers. Supposedly the museum fails to present context for its exhibits and knows about and takes advantage of the fact that the vietnamese war isnt known well outside of vietnam. Think about it. The enemy we fought in vietnam won the war and then Vietnam created a museum about that war. Of course they are going to make our soldiers out to be monsters. North Korea did the same with their war museum. Except they took it even farther and basically make the US out to be an army of sadists, masochists, and blood drinkers.

And we're taught about the atrocities of the war. We're taught about the atrocities our soldiers faced in a conflict they never should have been in. Being cooked alive by our own napalm, being exposed to cancerous chemicals, a brutal environment they weren't ready for, a fanatical relentless enemy they didnt entirely understand, an enemy that employed guerilla tactics, an enemy not at all bound by the Geneva convention, little public support, soldiers that felt a deep shame and no support when they returned home, a Congress that wanted to half ass and half fund, a press that more than any other time in history reviled our own military etc.

Dont get me wrong. Some of our soldiers lost themselves over there. Committed atrocities against the natives. Some paid for that and some got away with it. But our general military and the average soldier weren't a bunch of SS officers exterminating a race of people.

And you've got to remember the environment and the enemy were farms and farmers and an army of poor people using villagers and civilians to hold, smuggle, and move weaponry and supplies for the enemy army. Everywhere our soldiers looked they saw a potential enemy or someone helping the enemy. And a lot of our soldiers were drafted and young. It's really no wonder that many civilians were killed. The whole thing was perfect storm. A nightmare scenario.

And frankly I dont think any army can effectively fight a war in that type of environment without high civilian casualties. The enemy is within and literally under the civilian population and infrastructure. Its thick jungle. I think youd have to employ a Roman tactic to actually win. Burning entire jungles down, displacing most villages, and moving across the country like a relentless brutal tide to actually win. Obviously we couldn't do that so we never had a chance of winning. And when soldiers sent to die in a hopeless brutal war and surrounded by the enemy that's so very different from us...well like I said it's really no wonder some of our soldiers went so wrong over there.

Again, it doesnt make it right, but the context is important.

 

[SniperHF]

Question for the Americans here, what do you guys learn about the Vietnam war in school, if at all? Like is it glossed over with the eventual "we lost" or does the curriculum go into more detail about how it started and what happened?

Asking because I'm in Saigon right now and just left the war museum.

It was taught in high school for a bit but not in-depth.

We learned about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. How the various presidents handled it during their tenures. The different strategies they came up with for trying to wind down the conflict. The policy of containment. Some of the weapons used. I don't remember much focus on the protests, probably because there was some overlap with the civil rights protests which was taught separately.

 

[flickchick85]

on another note...daredevil season 3 was absolutely amazing.

Yikes, we agree on something. The end is nigh.

 

[Teelie]

It was taught in high school for a bit but not in-depth.

We learned about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. How the various presidents handled it during their tenures. The different strategies they came up with for trying to wind down the conflict. The policy of containment. Some of the weapons used. I don't remember much focus on the protests, probably because there was some overlap with the civil rights protests which was taught separately.

Pretty much this only even less detail than that, and without a lot of discussion because most of my history classes barely reached WWII let alone the Korean War or Vietnam.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Based on what I saw at the museum, that war was practically genocide. Seal Rangers actually went into a village and slaughtered 11 people, including pregnant women and children. They disemboweled 6 year olds. 3 million Vietnamese died and 2 million of them were civilians.

The Germans are taught about the Holocaust in great detail with the hope that future generations won't go down the same path. Canadians are taught about residential schools for the same reason. I guess I'm wondering why American kids aren't taught about the atrocities of the Vietnam war, because maybe if they did they might be less likely to support any US military intervention in the future.

As Marv said the Vietnamese would naturally present a very skewed version of events, which isn't to say that American military action nor American government policy should be given a moral pass for the waste that was the American involvement in Vietnam. There were terrible actions taken by the U.S. military and the policy of multiple presidential administrations was wrongheaded and counterproductive in the extreme. But to use the words "genocide" is in my view out of bounds by several magnitudes and I have no doubts that for popular consumption at home that the current Vietnamese government or elements within probably use a **** metric ton of hyperbole on any subject concerning the war to maximize American wrongdoing and venerate the North Vietnamese actions.

I would very much recommend the recent documentary series PBS did on the Vietnam War done by Ken Burns that goes very in depth into the causes of the war even before the Americans set foot in country, the further involvement of the U.S. and the POV of not just American soldiers and the divisive politics of the war domestically in America but also the nature of the war as essentially a civil war between a two sides within Vietnam, both of which committed their own terrible actions on one another with the United States injected itself because of idea that communist influence was the number one geopolitical threat to the Western allliance. It is quite even handed and the people of Vietnam on both sides are given a voice so as to expand the historical narrative we usually get in the West by quite a lot. If you haven't seen it and you are interested in learning much on the nature of that period of history the series covered a prodigious amount of territory.




I believe it is available via Netflix as well as through the PBS website. It's quite long but very even handed and very insightful with input from America, North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese veterans.

The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

 

[Marvolo]

Yeah it is available on Netflix. Might be on Amazon Prime Video as well. All major digital hd retailers carry it: Vudu, Amazon Video, Google, Fandango etc. On DVD, bluray, and digital it's less than $60 and worth every penny. There is also a companion book that goes with the series. It available in ebook format, physical format, and as an audible audiobook.

 

[C. Lee]

I lived through the Vietnam war. It was on TV every single day. It was in the newspapers every single day. As I grew older into my teens I worried about being drafted into it. Not sure if anything is being taught about it in schools today.

 

[Lily Adler]

So I've been binge watching Kimmy Schmidt and it is hilarious. I still cannot get passed the Meemaw and Jacqueline Ghost parody.

 

[Donner]

I would take that museum with a grain of salt. It was created by a people that have an obvious bias against the US soldiers. Supposedly the museum fails to present context for its exhibits and knows about and takes advantage of the fact that the vietnamese war isnt known well outside of vietnam. Think about it. The enemy we fought in vietnam won the war and then Vietnam created a museum about that war. Of course they are going to make our soldiers out to be monsters. North Korea did the same with their war museum. Except they took it even farther and basically make the US out to be an army of sadists, masochists, and blood drinkers.

And we're taught about the atrocities of the war. We're taught about the atrocities our soldiers faced in a conflict they never should have been in. Being cooked alive by our own napalm, being exposed to cancerous chemicals, a brutal environment they weren't ready for, a fanatical relentless enemy they didnt entirely understand, an enemy that employed guerilla tactics, an enemy not at all bound by the Geneva convention, little public support, soldiers that felt a deep shame and no support when they returned home, a Congress that wanted to half ass and half fund, a press that more than any other time in history reviled our own military etc.

Dont get me wrong. Some of our soldiers lost themselves over there. Committed atrocities against the natives. Some paid for that and some got away with it. But our general military and the average soldier weren't a bunch of SS officers exterminating a race of people.

And you've got to remember the environment and the enemy were farms and farmers and an army of poor people using villagers and civilians to hold, smuggle, and move weaponry and supplies for the enemy army. Everywhere our soldiers looked they saw a potential enemy or someone helping the enemy. And a lot of our soldiers were drafted and young. It's really no wonder that many civilians were killed. The whole thing was perfect storm. A nightmare scenario.

And frankly I dont think any army can effectively fight a war in that type of environment without high civilian casualties. The enemy is within and literally under the civilian population and infrastructure. Its thick jungle. I think youd have to employ a Roman tactic to actually win. Burning entire jungles down, displacing most villages, and moving across the country like a relentless brutal tide to actually win. Obviously we couldn't do that so we never had a chance of winning. And when soldiers sent to die in a hopeless brutal war and surrounded by the enemy that's so very different from us...well like I said it's really no wonder some of our soldiers went so wrong over there.

Again, it doesnt make it right, but the context is important.

I find your use of the word bias interesting because, as it sounds like here, American kids don't learn about the atrocities committed by American soldiers during the war, only the suffering that they themselves experienced. Is that not propaganda? You can say that the museum is biased and it probably is, but you can't say that the American school system doesn't do the exact same thing.

It's funny you bring up the Geneva convention since the US went against it in starting the war. Vietnam was not their fight and they had to lie to go in there.

Monsanto and Dow Chemical paid out lawsuits to the soldiers affected by Agent Orange, but not to the Vietnamese. At least Obama tried to rectify that by sending in help to Vietnam in getting rid of the last traces of the ****.

Actually, the Americans did burn down villages and displace the people. Or kill them. I think that was easiest. They lost because they were facing an enemy in their own backyard and their backyard was as vicious as they were. They had no chance.

I get that the soliders probably didn't want to be there. But the point of all of this is that the US government uses ****ty tactics to get Congress to approve going to war and ruins entire countries (see Iraq) to get what they want. It would be nice if people learned more about how horrible war is for both sides so maybe they would avoid supporting war in the future.

 

[flickchick85]

Admittedly it's been a while, but I do recall that in my school, our involvement in Vietnam was painted in quite the negative light. Basically that we should never have been there and the whole thing was one giant cluster****. And that the horrific nature of it was magnified because it was our first time seeing that stuff televised.

 

[Marvolo]

Ruh roh...did a mod delete mine and Darth's rogue one posts or did they just disappear? Are we hacked again?

 

[flickchick85]

I see no evidence of any deleted posts. Batten down the hatches!

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

So I am deep into Man In The High Cadtle and check the news to see a WWII replica German fighter crashed in California. It was the sign I needed to stop watching for a bit.

 

[Marvolo]

I see no evidence of any deleted posts. Batten down the hatches!

Odd. I posted two gifs of KS0. Darth was talking about Rogue One reshoots and 3 characters dying by grenade. Could just be a random glitch. If it happens again I'll let yall know.

 

[MewMewTwo]

Hello, this seems like the proper place to ask: i havent been here in some weeks and i had some alerts, but it seems that i clicked on them and they are gone now and i cannot answer the comments that i left hanging out, how can i see them?