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The Vietnam War — Commentary

A pre-war commentary- President Johnson said to U.S. National Security advisor, McGeorge Bundy May 1964, (2 months before his election, and a year before his troop build-up in Vietnam). "What is Vietnam to this country? ------- I don't think it is worth fighting for." Yet   in 1965-7 he sent in about a half million ill-fated American soldiers.  Was fear of losing the next el . . .

The Vietnam War

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read - Vietnam," wrote Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 in Where Do We Go From Here?

In 1964, over 57,000 American servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were about to die, due to the insidious river of 'Forrestal paranoia’ that had infected the U.S. government's foreign policy decisions . . .

Part 2: PARANOIA — Cause of the Cold War

Anti-Communism was the focus in the Forrestal years, 1946 to 1949. All of the following were introduced: the Marshall Plan, NATO, the World Bank, Radio Free Europe, the National Security Act, the National Security Council to run it. Forrestal upgraded the CIA and cooperated with J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Joe McCarthy to build the Black List. Forrestal coordinated Pentagon 'loyalty checks', a . . .

Paranoia — Cause of the Cold War

Seneca, The Younger, over 2000 years ago, "Worse than war, is the fear of war."  President Franklin Roosevelt concurred 90 years ago, "All we have to fear, is fear itself." Paranoia is described as "delusions of supposed hostile intentions of others."  Three individuals with that mind set appear to have been the prime architects of the Cold War, which being 'cold' did not have specific batt . . .

Cooperation

I believe that cooperation, not individualism, will be vital for the survival of our home called 'earth', and its millions of specialized species including ourselves. Hold that thought.

I was born in 1922 into a remote part of rural western Canada and was raised on a farm in the rainless era of the 1930s Great Depression.  Independence, NOT individualism, was a gut level requirement for s . . .