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