Fairy Tale Destinations in the World

[That Guy]

 

[SifuPhil]

Round 3 of verbal jousting preliminary qualifier for entry to Word Wars competition.
Disclaimer: The opinions fired in this game are not necessarily the only ammunition manufactured by the shooter, but are merely the calibre most suited to the target of the moment.

Spoiler

We're shifting the point here, Abu Ghraib is merely the common factor relating to your point of treatment of PoWs. I couldn't let you take the high ground on that one, sorry. There are no squeaky clean good guys there, none.
There are sadists and psychos in everyone's army, and populations. Always has been. There would be no point in awarding medals to heroes if they all were would there? That heroes are relatively rare proves that their ratio to badduns is shaky at best.

I'm not taking the high road - I'm sorry if you perceive it as such.

The personnel responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were court-martialed, dishonorably discharged and given jail sentences. The personnel in the 'Nam camps - far more, by the way - were probably given extra rations of congee and a weekend pass in Hanoi. Big difference.

If you believe that revenge for bringing death and destruction to your neighbourhood justifies ill treatment of captured enemies then you can hardly blame the Viets for taking vengeance on those who had just napalmed their village and fried Grandma can you? Can you? Or don't you think of it from that angle?
Let's get this straight. It's okay for the US citizenry to deem long distance traveling 'bombers' beyond the pale of the 'rules' but it's not okay for those 'liberated' by US/Allied bombs to judge those particular bomb's long distance suppliers likewise?
Have I got it sorted yet?

No, you do not.

If I'm going to make myself responsible for "saving" my village, any prisoners I take are going to be executed quickly and humanely. I'm not going to take pleasure in torturing them - that's beyond the pale and serves no tactical nor strategic purpose. It's a sign of weakness, a certain degree of meanness of character. It shows that you're below animals when you administer anything other than a clean kill.

Remember we're judging the entire population of Nations here. We're basing their worth on the actions of a few either psycho, or 'righteously' vengeful guerillas. Is that an entirely fair way to make an assessment?

I'm judging the entire nation because they had ample opportunity to oppose those in power, to rise up against them, to act like something other than bewildered, frightened sheep. Many villagers were slain because they wouldn't cooperate with the VC - what would have been the outcome if ALL of them had such internal fortitude? The VC would not have had the same level of support for their ops and would not have been quite as successful.

Die standing up, not on your knees.

Would a US vet's granddaughter being sneered at by Vietnamese because her Granddad just might, at a stretch, have been the jock who fried Grandma in napalm be perfectly understandable and acceptable by that reasoning? Would it make you ashamed of her Grandpa?

Sorry, I don't quite understand this paragraph.

Your illustrating minor differing details in circumstances between your 'freedom fighters' and theirs, such as "George Washington wasn't forcing us to work in rice paddies on threat of death. We didn't believe we were descended from dragons and angels. Vietnam had already had hundreds of years of both conquering and being conquered under their belt." doesn't negate the basic analogy. It just proves that you're not standing back far enough to see the whole picture.

The 'founding fathers' had a few strange beliefs about angels and miracles and such, and being descended from European stock had plenty of historical experience in conquering and being conquered too. So what was the difference again? Oh, the rice paddies. That the best you got? layful:

Not by a long shot - you know me better than that.

But you do have me at a disadvantage here. I've never been an especially astute student of history, whether it be local, U.S. or world. It was never one of my specialties. I'm going by what little knowledge I have about a war - sorry, "conflict" - that was ending just as I was getting my high school diploma.

I'm just trying to fit my own personal opinions, beliefs and prejudices into the box known as "World Politics and the Habits of Man", and I'm finding it's an exceedingly difficult thing to do. That may be because of my lack of real-time experience in combat, at least the organized kind; ask me about street-fighting or urban self-defense and I could dance all over your finely-sculpted noggin, but I fear in matters of world affairs I'm going to be a less-than-stellar opponent.

Bringing the M.E. psychos into the picture is just confusing the issue more. ApplesnOranges. The only common connection between the 60s Vietnamese peasants/vietcong and the M.E. 'terrorists' today is the volume of US and Allied ordinance delivered to their doors.

Yet there ARE similarities, mainly in the blind following of orders issued by God-like superiors ...

So what common cause was there to motivate the US (and by extension all we allies of the US, because we were "...all the way with LBJ" to quote our PM of the day, and more recently, the "Coalition of the Willing" ) to 'liberate' both Nam and the M.E. ???

I make no excuses for the country I was born and live in. I'm only too well aware of its shortcomings. That we see ourselves (or, more accurately, that the PTB see themselves) as the Great Defenders of Freedom for the world isn't my look-out; that they kill in the name of Democracy and Righteousness isn't exactly my idea of honorable battle, either.

If they would have come out and plainly said "Yo, we're going head-hunting for the guys who we think are behind this", then I would have had no problems with it. But to make a long, dragged-out war out of it shows a lack of contemporary thinking. Take out the bastards responsible and then leave - don't hang around and teach the locals about The Right Way To Live, because they've been doing it a lot longer than we have.

Do the job, then leave. Don't do the job then spend a few years letting your own people die in the pursuit of a chimera named Freedom or Democracy. You aren't going to change an entire population, so don't bother trying. Just take out the bad guys and go home.

Their 'politics' are totally different. Can't get much further apart than Communism and Shariah Law really. So ideology doesn't apply. We weren't rescuing them from that alone then. Their religion? Nup, not too sure what the Viets in general believed but most of the Christian ones were R.C.s so doubt we were saving them from that either. What exactly were we saving them from that necessitated bombing the bejeezus out of the countries they were trying to make a living from? What imminent doom was worse than napalm and daisy cutters that awaited them if 'we' didn't rush in to rescue them?

Again, I cannot speak for my country's thinking, because it's as foreign to me as it is to you.

Personally flowery phrases including democracy, liberty, freedom and human rights just don't cut it for me as good reasons to inflict punishment on the people who don't have them. Logic doesn't live there. Only propaganda does.

Agreed.

Should we judge an entire people for the actions of their Government is question. Especially when it's a Government they didn't elect. We're not talking about despots being allowed to run things as they please, but why do we blame the 'peasants' for them?
Why do 'we' expect that every single person in a country like 60s Vietnam would have the knowledge and fortitude to decide to die for some philosophically minded ideology of Democracy? How many had a clue what the hell the powers that be were fighting over at all? Their lives in the paddy fields hadn't changed for a thousand years despite whatever politics or beliefs the Kings, Despots,or Governments in charge had held.

It doesn't take a PhD to figure out when something is basically wrong. When your neighbor is beheaded because they didn't give enough rice to the visiting VC, you should be able to figure out how the land lays. That's when you have a choice between two courses of action: submit or die.

That the prevailing decision was (and I dare say still is for the majority of the world) to submit, since one's own life and that of their family is so precious to them, it is no wonder that it did indeed happen that way. It only takes one person to stand up to evil - the guy in front of the tanks in Tienanmen, for example - to change the world, even if only a little bit. Get enough people doing that and soon a wave will appear.

But the Vietnamese people showed their sheepitude by going along with the demands of their overlords and being cowed by those with guns, so I have no respect for them as a people. There may well be exceptions, and to them I would extend honor, but to the rest? Nothing but scorn.

It's the same way I feel about the Jews and Germans in WWII - they both had ample opportunities to fight against what was happening in their respective worlds but they all held back, hoping that someone would save them from their fates. History proves that that help came far too late.

The U.S.? The U.S. has reacted to the threat of terrorism in their typically myopic fashion - they do full-body cavity searches on civilian travelers and capture the occasional nail clipper or hair dryer, instead of targeting the profiles of known terrorists, because by God that would be un-American and against our concept of truth and justice for all.

How many US/Allied citizens, even with the access they have to deeper levels of information and education can sit down and detail exactly what they and their Governments stand for? How many understand the sometimes very subtle differences between all the 'isms?? How many have any more clue than the paddy workers about what exactly the Vietnam War was really about? How many of us have a clue what the hell anything is really about?
How many though seem to think that the Vietnamese should have been smarter than them and have been fighting for freedom from their own Government instead of fighting who they could only see as a foreign invader?

Again, it boils down to survival. If you can be swayed by a man with a gun, then you don't deserve to live free. Multiply that by an entire country and you have Vietnam.

We get to the point where we just toe the line, salute whatever's waving, and get on with life at 'peasant' level and leave the power junkies to run things. We can't all know everything about everything and there comes a point where you just have to rely on pretence and propaganda to salve the conscience, retain sanity and still have enough time to go to work to earn a living doing whatever we have to do. The World's 'peasants' simply don't have the leisure time to spend in coffee shops discussing the finer points of Democracy versus all the other isms.

To me, it's basic instinct. You protect you and yours, damn everyone else and try to survive. When someone aims a gun at you, whether it be your own country's troops or some "foreign invader" you take them down as savagely and effectively as you can. You don't torture them - you do the quick kill and move on to the next target, until there are no more targets left to engage. If you die in the attempt at least you died doing something noble, not just laying down and getting your throat slit like a passive sheep.

Are we entitled to blame Joe Public for being hoodwinked by his various Governments? Mea culpa all round in that case I would think.

Yes, I DO blame JP, because if he had his eyes on something other than his own insignificant life he would wake up and see what was being done to him.

 

[Diwundrin]

Spoiler

If I'm going to make myself responsible for "saving" my village, any prisoners I take are going to be executed quickly and humanely. I'm not going to take pleasure in torturing them - that's beyond the pale and serves no tactical nor strategic purpose. It's a sign of weakness, a certain degree of meanness of character. It shows that you're below animals when you administer anything other than a clean kill.

I agree entirely, I don't even believe in the lethal injection farce, a .38 to the temple is quicker and less traumatic. But again, you're judging all by the level of the lowest.

I'm judging the entire nation because they had ample opportunity to oppose those in power, to rise up against them, to act like something other than bewildered, frightened sheep. Many villagers were slain because they wouldn't cooperate with the VC - what would have been the outcome if ALL of them had such internal fortitude? The VC would not have had the same level of support for their ops and would not have been quite as successful.

Die standing up, not on your knees.

But they weren't all massed together to stand up to anyone. We're not talking all young, fit, educated Ninjas with cell phones here.
They were ordinary peasants in small family villages which had no communication with other small villages to know if there was rebellion brewing or not. You can't expect a few villagers at a time to buck the system, it simply doesn't work that way. It just gets the villages and families wiped out. They didn't have cell phones and twitter to keep in touch.
The 'Arab Spring' wouldn't have happened without social media linking people either. Not that the standing up and shrugging off the 'frightened and bewildered sheep' thing seems to have gone all that wonderfully for them but .....another topic.

But for the sake of argument say they had all developed telepathy and marched enmasse on VC headquarters and despatched the lot of them with shovels.... what then? Who among those freedom fightin' villagers would know how to run the Country? What would they do next?

Oh, and how would they go about stopping yet another foreign power swanning in to liberate them from their newfound confusion?

Those villagers were living at literally grass roots level, they didn't have the nous we armchair experts have access to from books and Google.
It's like blaming a 5 yo for not understanding the stock market. It's just not fair. Like the 5 yo they'll hug whoever isn't hitting them at the moment. Or at least whoever seems to hit lightest.
It would be really hard for them to tell that the commos with machines guns were a worse option than the choppers dropping napalm on the village from where they stood. Just sayin'.

I know I wouldn't have liked to be standing in a straw village making that snap decision. But I think the machine gunner would have gotten the hug for short term survival reasons. I guarantee I wouldn't have been pondering Confucius or Socrates to help with the decision either.

Would a US vet's granddaughter being sneered at by Vietnamese because her Granddad just might, at a stretch, have been the jock who fried Grandma in napalm be perfectly understandable and acceptable by that reasoning? Would it make you ashamed of her Grandpa? Sorry, I don't quite understand this paragraph.

Just trying to draw a parallel between the reasons for why you don't like Vietnamese and why they may not like us either, that's all.
e.g. Am I supposed to dislike my cousin's DiL because her grandfather may have taken a shot at a Huey? Should I expect her to be ashamed of her Grandpa? .. sorry, too long a bow I guess.

But you do have me at a disadvantage here. I've never been an especially astute student of history, whether it be local, U.S. or world. It was never one of my specialties. I'm going by what little knowledge I have about a war - sorry, "conflict" - that was ending just as I was getting my high school diploma.

I'm just trying to fit my own personal opinions, beliefs and prejudices into the box known as "World Politics and the Habits of Man", and I'm finding it's an exceedingly difficult thing to do. That may be because of my lack of real-time experience in combat, at least the organized kind; ask me about street-fighting or urban self-defense and I could dance all over your finely-sculpted noggin, but I fear in matters of world affairs I'm going to be a less-than-stellar opponent.

No history buffs live here either, I just Google anything that rings a faint bell.
I was prime conscription age and exceedingly grateful for being female at the time so perhaps I remember more of the images and lies than you, that could be a good or bad thing for the sake of the argument though.

We're all trying to fit our "own personal opinions, beliefs and prejudices into the box known as "World Politics and the Habits of Man"
And we're all having trouble with making much of it fit at all. That's what's great about hypotheticals and changing fence sides for debates, it motivates us to look at things a little differently and from other angles. Mostly we just get more confused but sometimes a light bulb comes on and that's always a great moment. Oh and btw, the last thing I need is a "stellar opponent". I'm already strugglin' here.

Yet there ARE similarities, mainly in the blind following of orders issued by God-like superiors ...

Yeah, those damned POTUS' and Prime Ministers eh?. Tch.

Again, it boils down to survival. If you can be swayed by a man with a gun, then you don't deserve to live free. Multiply that by an entire country and you have Vietnam.

No, what you have is every Country that was ever invaded by a better armed force, don't single out poor li'l Nam.

I make no excuses for the country I was born and live in. I'm only too well aware of its shortcomings. That we see ourselves (or, more accurately, that the PTB see themselves) as the Great Defenders of Freedom for the world isn't my look-out; that they kill in the name of Democracy and Righteousness isn't exactly my idea of honorable battle, either.

If they would have come out and plainly said "Yo, we're going head-hunting for the guys who we think are behind this", then I would have had no problems with it. But to make a long, dragged-out war out of it shows a lack of contemporary thinking. Take out the bastards responsible and then leave - don't hang around and teach the locals about The Right Way To Live, because they've been doing it a lot longer than we have.

Do the job, then leave. Don't do the job then spend a few years letting your own people die in the pursuit of a chimera named Freedom or Democracy. You aren't going to change an entire population, so don't bother trying. Just take out the bad guys and go home.

Bingo! Mossad don't muck about with that frilly crap.

Except 'we' aren't really there to protect chimeras, we're protecting oil supplies in Iraq, andor those lithium deposits in Afgho. (No not from the Taliban, from China getting their hands on them) well that's the theory closest to my suspicions anyway... call me cynical.

Nam was a very convenient gateway to the Asian market and produce and they didn't want China getting control of that either. Is it really that simple? Are we getting caught up in the frills and propaganda and missing the bleeding obvious in all this?

Are we entitled to blame Joe Public for being hoodwinked by his various Governments? Mea culpa all round in that case I would think. Yes, I DO blame JP, because if he had his eyes on something other than his own insignificant life he would wake up and see what was being done to him.

So how many dead Syrian rebel's families have moved into your living room??? Bet they're happy that Dad put his political ideals ahead of their lives.

Oh wait, that'd be religious ideals... or if as is the case there, religion is politics then what do we call what it was he chose to nobly die for? Hard to take care of a family from a coffin Phil however nobly you defended that 'chimera of freedom' you mentioned earlier.
___________________

That's it for now. Thanks for helping me lose weight, it's 2:30pm and I haven't had breakfast yet!

 

[SifuPhil]

Spoiler

 

[Diwundrin]

The Cross Country Pun award. :lofl:

 

[Katybug]

OMG, FORGET I MENTIONED CUBA AND VIETNAM!......lol

I read all of it, Phil, and can't say I don't agree the Cuban crisis was botched. I don't have the mental capacity to be a valid part of this interesting argument, nor do I want to, but easy way out.... I agree with both of you on some aspects.

Fact is, and all I need to know about Cuba, Russia was using it as a storage shed and it's just too damned close to us. Our being dumped with the human dredges of Cuban earth was a HUGE mistake, along with many others that were made.

Poor, Seabreeze, such a beautiful thread just morphed to hell.....

That was was one of the prettiest pictures of China I've ever seen. I know I'm probably way off base, but I've never imagined China as pretty, and I can't say what I want to say without sounding somewhat prejudiced....but I can say that the local restaurant ratings are posted each wk in my lil neighborhood newspaper. I can't remember a time when a Chinese restaurant wasn't at the bottom of the list and closed for lack of proper hygiene. NUFF SAID on that, you get my point!

Back to the OP, if you/we had the energy and $$, which of those posted would be your choice to visit?

 

[nan]

Lovely photos SeaBreeze,I would like to see all of Australia first before going overseas we have so many beautiful places here to see.