Tag Archives: Vietnam

national news

McCain vs. Cheney on torture

An interesting face-off is occurring within the Republican Party over the definition of torture.

In one corner is Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war and a serious expert on torture.

In the other corner is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who’s never been subjected to torture but who supports the use of what’s called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

McCain says the United States shouldn’t use those “EITs” on suspected terrorists because they aren’t in keeping with American values.

Cheney says he’d do all it all over again if given the chance and says the EITs do not constitute torture.

Let’s see. Who’s more credible? I think I’ll go with McCain.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/gop-heavyweights-mccain-cheney-opposing-203948345.html

I’ll be clear. I didn’t vote for McCain when he ran for president in 2008. Nor did I vote for the George W. Bush/Cheney ticket in either 2000 or 2004. Politics isn’t part of my leaning.

What informs me here is McCain’s stature as a war hero and a POW who endured torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors from 1967 to 1973. The man knows torture. He says without hesitation that waterboarding, rectal feeding, sleep deprivation and stress positions constitute torture.

Cheney’s first-hand knowledge of torture? He doesn’t have any. However, he speaks with an equal lack of hesitation that we gained knowledge from the bad guys by using the EITs.

McCain disputes that assertion, saying that captives will “say anything” to avoid further pain and suffering.

How does McCain know that? Again, he speaks from brutal and intense personal experience.

Yep. I’m siding with McCain on this one.

 

International news

A Thanksgiving to remember … in Vietnam

Thanksgiving is a day we express gratitude for all that we have.

It’s a uniquely American holiday and my friends overseas often are kind enough to extend wishes to my family and me at this time of year.

It also is a time to remember. And today I am remembering a particularly exciting Thanksgiving holiday.

I spent it far from home. I didn’t talk to my family that day. I was traveling in what once was a war zone and the site of one of the 20th century’s most infamous episodes of genocide.

Thanksgiving Day 1989 was spent traveling with fellow editorial writers and editors from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The day ended in grand fashion, for which we all gave thanks at the end of a harrowing overland travel experience.

The day began in Cambodia, where our group of about 20 journalists had toured several chilling locations, including killing fields, the infamous Tuol Sleng prison and where we met with survivors of the Pol Pot’s murderous reign of terror that ended nearly a decade earlier when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted the dictator’s Khmer Rouge regime.

The country had been decimated. Two million Cambodians had been exterminated. The country’s infrastructure was in shambles. The people — beautiful as they are — were still in shock. The capital city of Phnom Penh was virtually empty.

We set out that day in several vans full of people and luggage along a crowded bumpy road. Ho Chi Minh City would be our destination. But first we had to travel several hundred treacherous miles.

The “highlight” of our journey occurred when we reached the Mekong River. We boarded a “ferry,” which in reality was hardly more than a motorized raft. Aboard that so-called ferry we loaded our vans, along with Cambodians traveling with carts, animals, loads of fresh fruit. The river, as I recall, was running fairly swiftly and I began to fantasize about overturning in the middle of the Mekong. I read an imaginary headline in my mind: “U.S. journalists killed in Cambodia ferry disaster.”

We made it across the river and then continued on our way.

Finally, several hours later we arrived at the Cambodia-Vietnam border. The line of traffic getting through the militarized checkpoint was quite long. We had a young guide, who we called Vibol. As with most business in Cambodia, a lot of it is transacted underground, under the table. Vibol collected some cash from all of us and then greased some palms at the gate. Suddenly, without explanation, our party was moved to the head of the line.

We slid on through to the Vietnamese side of the border, where we noticed a vision in the form of the young Vietnamese guide who had escorted us through Vietnam at an earlier portion of the trip. Her name was Mai and she was, as one might say, a sight for sore eyes — if you know what I mean.

Mai then escorted us the rest of the way to Ho Chi Minh City — which, by the way, the locals still refer to as Saigon.

We reached the city. Got to our hotel, unpacked our vehicles and were informed that the hotel staff had prepared a special dinner for us that evening.

We got cleaned up and went down to eat later. Awaiting us in a very nice dining room was a meal of what one of my colleagues called “road kill duck,” mashed potatoes, peas, rolls and a cake for dessert.

Was it the kind of Thanksgiving meal to which we were accustomed? No. But it was served with all the love and good intentions imaginable. Our Vietnamese hosts wanted to recognize our special holiday.

For that we all were thankful beyond measure.

After the experience we had endured that day, and in the previous days in a country decimated by war and untold inhumanity, we felt almost at home in a faraway land.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

International news, military news

Iraq has 'Vietnam' feel to it

Iraq is beginning to look a little like Vietnam to me.

Why? It’s the performance of the Iraqi army in the face of a relentless enemy that brings about the comparison.

It’s making me more than a tad uncomfortable.

Iraq’s army, the one trained and equipped by the United States of America under two presidential administrations, isn’t performing worth a damn on the battlefield against the Islamic State. Sound familiar? It should.

Army chief ‘somewhat’ confident Iraq can defend Baghdad

Nearly 40 years ago the United States ended its war in Vietnam, leaving the defense of South Vietnam to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. ARVN then had to face the invaders from North Vietnam, who in early 1975 launched a massive offensive against the south. By April of that year it all ended when North Vietnamese army troops rolled into Saigon, stormed the presidential palace, hoisted the communist flag and renamed Saigon after the late Uncle Ho, Ho Chi Minh City.

Fast forward to the current day and we’re seeing the Iraqi army performing badly against ISIL.

U.S.-led airstrikes reportedly are slowing ISIL’s advance a bit, but so far it hasn’t stopped taking the fight to the Iraqi forces.

Now we hear from U.S. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno say he is “somewhat confident” the Iraqi government will beat back ISIL. Somewhat satisfied? How confident can we be in that prediction? Not very.

I’m having a flashback at this moment and it’s making me very uneasy as this desert fight continues to play itself out.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Let's debate this war declaration notion

Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, is quite correct to call attention to whether the United States of America has gone to war under the rules set forth by the U.S. Constitution.

He was speaking this morning on ABC-TV’s “This Week” and said the debate should have commenced 30 years ago.

The Constitution states in Article I, Section 8 that Congress has the power “To declare war.”

There it is. No argument. No qualifier. The power to declare war rests exclusively with Congress.

And yet …

We’ve been to war in Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea — am I missing anything? — without Congress voting on a declaration of war.

The discussion this morning comes just as the United States is gathering a coalition of allies to bomb the Islamic State into oblivion as it seeks to destroy what’s been called “an existential threat” to this country. Congress has authorized the training and arming Syrian rebels, but hasn’t yet debated whether to send American aviators into hostile air space to bomb ISIL forces.

That’s warfare, as I understand the meaning of the term.

Shouldn’t we be having this debate? Shouldn’t Congress declare war on ISIL if that is what the commander in chief says is occurring as we seek to “degrade and ultimately destroy” this terrorist cult?

International news, national news, political news

Obama deserves unified nation

The late great Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan had it right.

Partisanship, he said, should “stop at the water’s edge.”

Put another way: When a president takes a nation to war then it becomes imperative for a nation to rally behind the effort.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/obama-un-address-111287.html?hp=l1

President Barack Obama went before the United Nations today to tell the world body that it’s time for the world to step up in the fight against the Islamic State. He didn’t sugar-coat it. He said the fight well could take years. He said ISIL is a tough and resilient foe. He also said that dozens of nations have lined up as part of a growing coalition to fight the terrorists.

But can the commander in chief perform his duty to protect Americans without much of the partisan carping that has plagued him to date? If his Republican foes choose to heed the words of one of their predecessors — the late Sen. Vandenberg — then there might be a unified nation rallying to fight a determined enemy.

Unity, of course, isn’t always the norm.

President Bush was able to rally the nation initially when he took us to war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Much of the support evaporated when he expanded that fight into Iraq in March 2003.

President Clinton had his critics when he started bombing fighters in Bosnia and Kosovo.

President Truman heard the critics when the Korean War dragged on.

And Vietnam? Well, we know what happened there.

Barack Obama received congressional authorization to arm and train Syrian rebels. He’s consulted with political friends and foes in advance of launching the air strikes. Some critics will continue to say the strikes are too little too late.

Let us not undermine this necessary effort to destroy the Islamic State, however, with partisan carping.

Uncategorized

Iraq terrorists 'beyond anything we've seen'

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has laid it out there.

The monsters who killed journalist James Foley comprise a group that surpasses any terror organization Americans have seen since the war on terror began.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/chuck-hagel-isil-defense-james-foley-110241.html?hp=t1

We’re in for yet another fight for our lives. We’d better get ready.

This, I submit, is what we got when we declared war on international terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“They’re beyond just a terrorist group,” Hagel said. “They marry ideology, sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess, they are tremendously well funded. This is beyond anything that we’ve seen. So we must prepare for everything. And the only way you do that is take a cold, steely, hard look at it and get ready.”

Hagel is referring to ISIL. They’re fighting in Syria against an enemy government and in Iraq against a friendly government. They’re vowing to bring the fight to the United States, which prompted Texas Gov. Rick Perry to suggest this week that the terror organization might already be lurking in this country.

I’m not going to suggest that we shouldn’t have declared war on terrorists after 9/11. They struck hard at us on that Tuesday morning in New York and Washington and we responded as we should have done.

Matters worsened when we invaded Iraq in March 2003 on the false premise that Iraqis possessed weapons of mass destruction that they would use against us and Israel.

What now? Do we re-enter the fight in Iraq with ground troops? Absolutely not. Do we invade Syria? Again, no.

President Barack Obama is deploying significant air power against the terror organization in Iraq. Reports indicate the strikes are working. Yes, the war must continue for as long as monsters keep killing innocent people.

Critics of the current strategy should recall the lessons of Vietnam. We fought tooth and nail there for nearly a decade. We left eventually and the communists took control of the country we fought to defend. We can commit ground troops in Iraq until hell freezes over, leave that country and the chaos we’re witnessing today will erupt.

What’s the solution?

Intense vigilance here at home against forces that seek to harm us. Yes, keep up the attacks on the Sunni extremists whom Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey describes as “an organization (that) has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision, and which will eventually have to be defeated.”

The question remains: How will we know — in this new age of open warfare — when our enemy is beaten?

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That slope is slippery, Mr. President

The Vietnam Generation remembers a time when U.S. military assistance overseas went from “advisory” to engaging in bloody combat. It didn’t take terribly long for our role to change in Vietnam.

It is that memory that’s been stirred in recent days as President Obama has announced the return of U.S. advisers to Iraq to aid the Iraqi military in its fight against Sunni insurgents seeking to take back the government Americans overthrew when it went to war there in March 2003.

http://time.com/2901449/obama-iraq-isis-troops/

The president has declared categorically that the United States will not send combat troops back into Iraq. I and no doubt million of other Americans will hold him to his word on that.

I just watched an interesting segment from CNN’s series “The Sixties” that dealt with the Vietnam War. President Kennedy was killed in November 1963 and by then our advisory role in ‘Nam had grown to several thousand troops. President Johnson fairly quickly granted military requests for more troops, ratcheting up our involvement to a level where Americans were shouldering the bulk of the combat operations against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.

By the time I arrived at Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang, South Vietnam, in March 1969, American troops strength was at its absolute peak: 543,000 of us were deployed there. But soon the drawdown began as President Nixon implemented his “Vietnamization” program of turning the combat responsibility over to those who had the most skin in the game.

Surely, the wise men and women at the White House and perhaps even at the Pentagon will remind the current president — who was not quite 8 years old when I arrived in ‘Nam way back when — of the folly of resuming a ground combat role in Iraq.

Listen to them, Mr. President. Please.

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Time to end the Afghan War

President Barack Obama said it succinctly today: It is harder to end a war than to start one.

With that, the nation’s longest war now appears to be drawing to a close.

I’m glad about that.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/obama-afghanistan-troops-stay-9800-stay-2014-west-point-107115.html?hp=l2

The president’s critics were quick — as they have been all along — to blast him for setting a well-chronicled timetable for withdrawal. The United States, Obama said, will leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in an “advisory” capacity by the end of this year; we’ll draw down to that level from the current level of 30,000-plus.

Our combat role will end. Afghans will be responsible for their own country’s security. Our war effort will be over.

The critics say the timetable gives the Taliban time to plan, strategize and hit back hard at the Afghan government that seeks to cement its control.

That’s an interesting view, to which I have a single-word response: Vietnam.

President Nixon did not set a timetable for the “Vietnamization” effort he began shortly after taking office in 1969. But by the time he left office in August 1974, our combat role had diminished to near zero. Fewer than nine months later, in April 1975, the North Vietnamese communists had mustered enough firepower to overrun South Vietnam.

My point is this: With our without a timetable, the other side is going to keep fighting. The task, then, is to prepare our allies in power to defend themselves adequately against an enemy that’s been degraded significantly over the course of the past dozen years.

As the president noted, al-Qaida isn’t extinct. Its leadership has been decimated, Osama bin Laden has been eliminated, its organization has been scattered. Is it still operational? To a large degree, yes. Our forces, though, continue to hunt down and kill bad guys when and where we find them. That effort will — and should — continue.

It’s time to end this war.

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R.I.P., my fellow soldier

This blog post is adapted from a column I wrote for the Beaumont Enterprise; it was published on Aug. 24, 1990. With the country set to commemorate Memorial Day, this essay pays tribute to one young man who died in service to his country.

It took me eight years to make a journey to The Wall and to learn for myself what so many Americans have been talking about since it went up in 1982: the sight of those 58,000-plus names identifying each of the men and women who died in the Vietnam War; the array of keepsakes and tributes lined up at the base of the stark monument; the looks in people’s faces as they touched the name of a loved one while etching it on a sheet of paper pressed against the black stone.

I took my family to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., to look for a name I remembered only as “De La Torre.” He wasn’t a buddy exactly. We weren’t close. He was an Army helicopter mechanic and a door gunner I knew in Vietnam. We did not serve in the same company; mine was a fixed-wing aircraft unit, his was a Huey company next to ours at a place called Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang.

And yet, I saw him on his last day on Earth and the memory of his happiness at flying his final mission that day in June 1969 stayed with me long after the shock of his death had worn off.

De La Torre popped into my work area full of excitement. “Hey man,” he said to no one in particular, “I’m going home!” He had one more mission to fly — aboard a Huey on a troop lift into the mountains near Da Nang. De La Torre was a gung-ho guy, I guess, because he had extended his tour several times in Vietnam. I recall him saying he had been in-country for 32 months, well past his allotted one-year obligation.

Now he was going home, he declared quite proudly that day.

We learned later that evening that our guys weren’t prepared for a “hot landing.” Intelligence reports said enemy soldiers were nowhere near the landing zone. It was to be a “routine mission”: Drop the troops off and leave. The reports betrayed De La Torre and the rest of the men on the mission. They were met with intense enemy fire. I then was left to ponder the death of someone I didn’t know well but whose ebullience at the prospect of going home remains burned into my memory.

What I learned at The Wall, quite simply, was De La Torre’s first name, which I knew once had forgotten. In truth, we were on a last-name basis.

I knew little about Jose Manuel De La Torre when our paths crossed briefly in Vietnam. I don’t know much about him now, except for his full name, that he was about five years older than me and that he came from Fullerton, Calif.

Still, De La Torre seems a bit more like a friend now than when we both served in Vietnam. Granted, I don’t know what he liked or disliked, his favorite sport, food or movie actor. I don’t know how he coped with the fear of flying all those missions or if he was just too crazy to be scared.

I will settle gladly for merely relearning this young soldier’s full name. It was a small, but significant moment of discovery at The Wall, a place of profound sadness. Yet I came away feeling happy and satisfied that I got to know, a little better, a soldier whose last words to me were that he was going home.

Rest in peace, Jose.

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U.S. primed to pick fight with China?

You have to hand it to the brass at the Pentagon, not to mention the commander in chief.

With foreign policy crises either erupting or about to erupt in places like Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, North Korea and sub-Saharan Africa, the folks at the Pentagon decide to provoke China by flying B-52 bombers into airspace the Chinese claim as their own.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/27/21641914-china-deploys-only-aircraft-carrier-after-us-sends-b-52s-over-disputed-islands?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1

China has declared ownership of space over some mineral-rich islands near the coast of Japan. The Japanese also claim that territory. Who’s right is just about anyone’s guess.

Now comes the United States, with its immense military presence in the region. The Air Force launched a couple of B-52s over the disputed area. The Chinese responded by sending their only aircraft carrier into motion, along with a couple of guided-missile frigates.

Nothing happened. No shots were fired.

I’m betting the United States isn’t going to let China bully Japan — our key ally in East Asia. Heaven knows the Chinese have done a number on Taiwan for many years, claiming that the now-independent nation remains part of the mainland empire, given that Taiwan created a separate government after fleeing the mainland in 1949 after losing a bloody civil war with the communists who now run China.

I also should add that Vietnam, another ancient foe of China, is worried about Chinese aims on the region. Vietnam and China fought a fierce border war in the late 1970s after the United States withdrew its forces from Vietnam in 1975.

What are the Chinese up to remains anyone’s guess.

They do understand the showing of force, which is the United States did with the B-52 flyovers. Yes, the birds were unarmed — but there’s plenty of firepower nearby.