This is heavy.
In this article, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick start out with this list of U.S. “unpopular wars and repression that includes Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.”
And then they make this poignant statement about American exceptionalism and the Vietnam war memorial.
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From: USA Today
Oliver Stone: The myth of American exceptionalism
As a nation, we need to drop the notion that we are outstanding.
Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick
[…]
The U.S. invasion of Vietnam is the most egregious case of external aggression by any nation in the post-WWII era. Martin Luther King, America’s greatest moral voice since the Second World War, said, “If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam.” However, a recent Gallup poll found that 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 believe the war was “not a mistake.” In May 2012, Obama announced a 13-year “commemoration” of the Vietnam War, honoring those Americans who fought “heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans.”
We wonder which ideals, exactly, Obama was referring to. A few years before his death, former secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told students at American University that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in that war. Most college students, when asked in informal surveys, place the number at a quarter of that amount or less. The Vietnam Memorial Wall in D.C. contains the names of 58,272 Americans who died in the war. Its message is that the tragedy of that wretched war was that 58,000 Americans died. The wall is 146 feet long.
Imagine a wall that also contained the names of all the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and others who died. Such a wall would be over 4 miles long. It would not only be a fitting memorial to all the victims of “American exceptionalism,” it would be a perfect tombstone for that most dangerous of American myths.
Peter talks about Vietnam at minute-13[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=395D_YfGivQ]The Untold History of America with Dr. Peter Kuznick
Published on Oct 30, 2013
Alex is joined by famed historian and nuclear expert Dr Peter Kuznick to discuss his collaboration with director Oliver Stone on the Untold History of the United States, a series on Showtime.
http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/k…
Related:
Ron Paul’s Christlike Attitude: Love, Peace & Hope – No *Initiation* of Aggression!
‘Just War’ Doctrine Abandoned in America — U.S. Foreign Policy Now Reverse-Christian
Ron Paul: Jesus is the Prince of PEACE, Not Preemptive War
Ron Paul: “Fascism Comes Wrapped In A Flag, Carrying A Cross”
Palin: ‘In MY WORLD,’ ‘it is OBVIOUS to me who the GOOD GUYS…and who the BAD GUYS are’
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