The eve of destruction
Sunday musical excursion #19
Sometimes, one feels the need to protest, but, of course, all protest is futile. Everything will be just hunky dory, if we all just stay at home and don’t protest. Hunky dory.
After President Richard Nixon promised the American people peace with honour in Vietnam, he embarked on a secret bombing campaign: just how long he expected it to remain a secret, I’m not sure, but war criminal Henry Kissinger is at least to be credited with dissuading Mr Nixon from his big thinking, for Christ’s sake, of dropping an atomic bomb on Vietnam. It was not Vietnam but Cambodia (and the Ho Chi Minh supply trail) that would be—secretly—pounded with 7.3 million tons of ordinance in the space of one month, without a word being mentioned about the campaign to either the American people or their parliamentary representatives in Congress (the US did not deign to declare war on Cambodia—it was secret, after all). More bombs were dropped on Cambodia in one month than were dropped on Germany and Japan combined over the entire Second World War.
Nixon—he was the one—would be dishonourably hounded out of office for a burglary. That takes some crediting. Hunky dory.
Eve of Destruction
Written by P. F. Sloan
Performed by Barry McGuire
From his 1965 album Eve of Destruction
You are so right, Graham, nothing about the Vietnam War was honorable or honest. It was a civil war to start with by the 'common' people against the 'aristocratic' and very corrupt regime set up by France to protect their colonial interests. Then France decided they really couldn't afford to 'protect' their rotten regime so they asked Eisenhower if he'd help their puppets fight to protect themselves because even the southern peasants couldn't be counted on to protect their overlords.
So Eisenhower sent between 500 and 700 "advisors to help train the troops. John Kennedy upped the advisors to around 1500.
I didn't strongly object until after the 1964 election when Johnson had promised to pull the advisors back and instead started rattling the sabers. I couldn't vote in '64 since I wasn't a citizen until 1967, but I had campaigned for LBJ thinking he was honest. Barry Goldwater, his opponent, was promising to nuke North Vietnam. The rest is history.
I was never sufficiently interested in the Korean war to look into it so I have no idea if it was justified or not. But the only two justifiable wars of any size we've fought since were Bosnia and the Ukraine. And perhaps Desert Storm. We should never be the aggressor in a battle. Aggression and democracy are not compatible.