Try to understand the other side of America's many wars of aggression

In every war, you have to look at both perspectives. To Americans, the Vietnamese were evil commies that hate us for our freedom. To the Vietnamese, Americans were barbaric invaders trying to destroy their country.

In reality, the Viet Cong were heroes defending their homeland from foreign invasion. the USA was the aggressor, just like in every war it has fought in my lifetime. The US went all the way around the world to invade a tiny country in Southeast Asia.  To kill, rape, loot, and spray their food crop with Agent Orange. Yet Americans labeled the Viet Cong as evil. The lack of self awareness is absolutely stunning.  The hypocrisy of it is unescapable.

Was Vietnam really a threat to the United State? Did Vietnam invade the American homeland? The answer is obvious. The sad part is Americans praise their veterans as war heroes but they are actually war criminals. Yeh ... thank you for your service war crimes. Thank you for allowing others to control your actions and make you perform evil deeds.  That took real guts.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Americans should understand that better than anyone else ... not because they studied what their country did in Indochina ... but because the spirit of the Vietnamese who opposed them should resonate with their own.

In 1945, when the Vietnamese established the new constitutional and democratic Republic of Vietnam, they used the US Declaration of Independence as a model, and quoted it directly in their own Declaration of Independence. (read it) Why? Because the United States once set a standard by which most of the world wanted to live ... a belief that there are certain natural rights that we all possess from birth. The Vietnamese were claiming that promise. They were claiming the rights that the Americans told them were theirs.

For thirty years, the Vietnamese fought the United States for the very rights the US claimed were the "inalienable rights" of all men, everywhere, of every race, culture and creed. And the United States steadfastly refused to uphold the rights claimed by the Vietnamese; the very rights that Americans had proclaimed the "universal rights of man." I'm not saying America betrayed the Vietnamese. I'm saying Americans betrayed themselves in Vietnam.

It is a basic American belief that we are all entitled to the same basic rights (at least to the extent that our societies can protect those). Most importantly, Amercians are to believe that the best possibility of a better life, the best hope of a just society, lies in the vital trust we place in the premise that a free self-governing people are the best diviners of their collective destiny; the best government is that which is "of, by and for the people." Not a government that attempts to restrict liberty using the excuse of security.

And that belief lies on the foundation of another important belief:  that we protect our own rights by defending the rights of others.

You want to live free? You want your rights respected? Then respect and defend the rights and freedom of others.

    Saigon, 1966

All I need to know about WikiLeaks

http://collateralmurder.com

All I need to know about WikiLeaks is that if it wasn't for WikiLeaks, we would never have known about the US military attempt to hide an incident in which civilians (including two journalists) were machine-gunned from helicopters while the gunners laughed.  That attack occurred three years before WikiLeaks released the "Collatoral Murder" video.

If not for WikiLeaks, that airstrike would have been completely covered up; it simply would never have happened.  Because the government would have decided what truths we have a right to know, and which we're best kept from knowing.  Reality or history would become what they choose it to be.

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past" 

– George Orwell, 1984

If not for the brave people who have risked everything to bring truth to light, we would never have known about the 2009 Granai Airstrike in which as many as 140 civilians (mostly children) were killed, we would never have known about Abu Ghraib, the waterboarding of detainees, the secret prisons in which people are held indefinitely without legal recourse, the program of secret renditions, Guantanamo Bay.  Hell, go further back ... we would never have know about the massacre at My Lai in 1968.

Sometimes willful ignorance is not a suitable choice.  And it is never an honorable one.  Should it really require a major act of courage simply to accept the truth and to deal with it?  Something is terribly wrong in a society that prefers lies to the truth. Vast stockpiles of WMD, anyone?

Why has the United States government tried so hard to discredit WikiLeaks?  To prevent more embarrassing releases?  Yes, of course. Protect corporate secrets?  Yes.  Frighten truth-tellers into silence?  Yes.  All of these things, yes; but mostly the US government wants to preserve its control over our access to the truth.  They want the power to make the truth whatever they choose it to be.  They want to control reality (or our perception of it, which is the same thing).  Does that sound sinister?  Paranoid?  Then so be it.  Because it's also the truth.

If the U.S. government is successful in silencing WikiLeaks; they will have struck a blow at truth.  Ultimately, though, they want to strike a blow, not at those who would publish truth ... but at those who would read it.  People like you and me.  They want you to choose ignorance.  Ultimately, their target is a public that is empowered and informed by the truth.  That's why they are dead serious about assaulting your right to know.  What about you?  How serious are you about defending it?

All I need to know about WikiLeaks is that we need it.  We need it badly.