The battle of Khe Sanh is memorialized generously by U.S. military fanboys as an example of courage, determination, military acuity, and patriotism. These were marines! These were real men! They were heroes!
In it’s simplest form, a large group of American boys equipped with every piece of deadly military hardware available at the time flew over to a foreign country half-way around the world, landed in the jungle in the middle of nowhere, set up a base, and then courageously stopped the people who lived there from driving them out. They fought on behalf of a corrupt, intolerant, dictatorial South Vietnamese government that was unwilling and unable to fight for themselves.
Let us salute the flag and sing the national anthem in respect of the wonders of foreign policy and the wit and wisdom of President Lyndon Johnson!
These were draftees, by the way, not volunteers. They had no choice. At the age of 18, these young men became eligible for the draft. If drafted, they had to go or they would be sent to prison. They were trained and then flown over to this undeveloped nation half-way around the world and told to fight off the young men who lived there. Kill them. Bomb them. Blow up and burn their villages if necessary. When you come back, we’ll hold a parade in honor of what you did (it turned out, there were no parades as American journalists didn’t understand the necessity of this war either and told the people).
This video talks about payback for the casualties inflicted on the marines by the Viet Cong and the NVA. Payback! As if the NVA had invaded Iowa. As if the battle of Khe Sanh had had an actual strategic value in the war against communist tyranny.
It ends with some of the marines who fought there revisiting the scene in 2000.
There is a bit of a tone of “fuck the politicians” who sent us, but let’s have great reverence for the soldiers who fought there. I always feel ambivalent about that. Yes, they had no choice, really, but without willing combatants and parents and veterans who keep talking about the glories of military service, none of these stupid wars could happen. They urge us to be proud of our fighting men but it is that pride that lines them up to be slaughtered as a result of idiotic and corrupt politics.
And how brave are you, really, when you are dropped into the circumstances these men were dropped into? They were fighting to protect their friends and themselves from those unreasonable people who didn’t want them there.
President Lyndon Johnson admitted that he knew the war was lost but couldn’t pull out because the Republicans would have called him yellow. That’s why your son, your brother, your husband, your father died at Khe Sanh.
[whohit]Khe Sanh[/whohit]