[Peace-discuss] Presidential lies...

[C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

On this date in 1977, President Carter, on his second day in office, fulfilled a campaign promise by pardoning all Vietnam draft evaders.

American media, then and now, covered up a principal reason for the ending of the Vietnam war: the army of draftees whom the US sent to kill peasants in Vietnam revolted, refused to fight the organized Vietnamese resistance to the American invasion, and fragged their officers. That army had to be withdrawn (Nixon had done so in 1973), and air power had to be substituted for it.

Carter was just recognizing facts and attempting to forestall further revolution at home.

"The U.S. achieved its major war ends. Its major concern was to ensure that Vietnam would not take off on a course of independent development that, horror of horrors, might even be a model for [other countries - i.e., remove itself from the economic control of the American 1%]. That goal was achieved. When you've destroyed a country, it's not going to follow a course of independence. And it's certainly going to be no model for others ... But the U.S. didn't achieve its highest aim. It didn't turn Vietnam into the Philippines, a colony. So that's called a loss. But in fact it achieved its major aim. And now we go home. The attitude has been quite astonishing. Jimmy Carter, for example, in what must count as one of the most incredible comments from any head of state anywhere, told a news conference that we owe no debt to Vietnam because 'the destruction was mutual.'" [Noam Chomsky]

Right. By 1977, we could see all the damage that Vietnamese bombing had done to American cities...

--CGE

In memory of my late friends Nick Krimont and Jimmy Hunter, killed by the Democrats' war in Vietnam. Requiescant in pace.