58,000 Unnecessary Deaths . . .

[redcliffsw]

A few years ago at a conference I was unfortunately seated at a table full of warmongering FOX News Channel-watching dittoheads who where shocked — shocked !! – to learn that I was opposed to all the aggressive and offensive military intervention in the Middle East by the U.S. government.  One 60-ish looking guy who still wore the same "high-n-tite" military haircut that he first got when he was 18 thought he had the clinching argument:  "Do you know how many Americans died in Vietnam?!" he screamed.  I answered "Yes, I believe the number is around 58,000, every last one of them in vain."  His assumption was that because many Americans died in Vietnam, no one should ever question any future American military intervention.

He then came up with what he apparently believed was the super-clincher:  "Have you ever been in the military?!, he screamed.  My response was "No, and I've never had cancer either, but that doesn't stop me from understanding that cancer is a very, very bad thing to have.  And I've never met Abraham Lincoln either, but I still know quite a bit about him."  His assumption here was apparently that if one has not been in the military, one should just shut the hell up about current military interventions.  This of course would include about 99% of all women and a large majority of the entire population.

He changed the subject when I said that no one in America was ever threatened with being forced to speak Vietnamese or become a communist, and that even though North Vietnam won the war, there was no "domino effect" as our government promised.  He obviously concluded that I had no capacity for logical thinking.

Here's a chart that allows you to look up who and how many people from your own cities, towns, and states died in vain in the Vietnam war.
-Thomas DiLorenzo

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/58000-unnecessary-deaths/

Chart:
http://www.virtualwall.org/iStates.htm

[redcliffsw]

Individual or Collective Costs?

Tom:  Thank you for including that wonderful list of the thousands of individual American soldiers who died in Vietnam.  Recognition should also go to the person or persons who spent so much time and dug through so many records to demonstrate the personal costs of governmental behavior.  It is individuals who live, bleed, suffer pain, and die in war, never collective figures. Like the differences between micro-  and macro-economics, real human beings get lost and destroyed in numbers that have meaning only as fungible, faceless collectives that those in power presume to rule, exploit, and consume for their own ends.  The contrast was no better expressed than when George W. Bush's Press Secretary, Tony Snow, was asked if the White House had any response to the enumeration of 2,500 American soldiers who had thus far been killed in Iraq. "It's a number," Snow replied.

To family members whose children are listed on the enormous Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, their losses are not just part of a dehumanized, collective statistic. To the psychopaths of Snow's persuasion, the totality of such victims remains just "a number."
-Butler Shaffer

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/individual-collective-costs/