Vietnam: American Holocaust

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBDKzcjMHEs

The largest bombing campaign in history, 8 Million Tons of Bombs dropped in the "Vietnam War" onto the peoples of Indochina by the United States; Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos all sprayed with chemical weapons. Over 3-5 Million Vietnamese killed by aggressive force, over 100,000 Cambodians killed by american bombs to this day, with defunct bombs regularly exploding. Millions suffered from undernourishment, chemical infestation, mental illness, trauma and coming generations deformed by chemical weapons, over 100,000 Vietnamese humans alive today who were born into an unnatural state of existence by chemical weapons.
http://www.foxriverwatch.com/agent-orange4.jpg

Not a single penny spent, no single dollar spent by the US government to help fight the effect of their monstrosities that haunt over 100,000 Vietnamese and countless Lao, Cambodians, Thai humans. Not a single monument paid for by the US government for the millions of Indochinese killed by their bullets, bombs, knives and fire.



"The more people we killed, the happier our officers were. It got to be like a game, like the optic was to see who could kill the most people [...] Whoever got the most ears, got the most beers; and it got be be like a game."

-- Scotty Camil; 24, Sgt. (E-5) 1sr Bn., 1 Marine Regiment 1st Marine Division; on the Testimony to Winter Soldier hearing 1971

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

A lot of soldiers from the U.S. also were infected by agent orange. In the current, a lot of soldiers from the GWOT have been diagnosed with cancer and have had horrible birth defects from depleted uranium.

My Lai Massacre, Dak Son Massacre, Thanh Phong Massacre etc -- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/Agent-orange-dead-deformed-babies.jpg

About 17.8% (3,100,000 ha) of the total forested area of Vietnam was sprayed during the war, which dramatically disrupted ecological equilibrium. Exposing 4.8 million Vietnamese people to Agent Orange, and resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.

Around 4 million N. and S. Vietnamese civilians combined died during direct combat from the war, with an addition to 400,000 deaths contributed to agent orange after the conflict.

Fuck Western Imperialism!

[Pirx]

Not to forget Korean war, the first Napalm apocalypse

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Not to forget Korean war, the first Napalm apocalypse

Yes, i belive in Korea 7 Million humans died because of the occupation of the USA. But i think that in Vietnam this was comparable to the Nazis, it was racist and completely barbarian, with orders from above to just kill, burn, and murder as many "Untermenschen" 'Gooks' as possible.

[Yuppie Grinder]

While I agree that the Vietnam war was American imperialism at its finest (most barbaric), I don't think comparing it to the Holocaust like that makes a whole lot of sense. While both were tragedies, they were also very different events.

[Yugo45]

Yeah that sort of reminds me of people saying "communisem is worse then hitler he kill 100 billion ppl"

Still, it is a serious war crime, and I doubt the US policies on this changed even today. They always had a fetish for killing civilians, from Japan to Afganistan.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Well, i'm just quoting the name of the documentary i put the link to here "Vietnam: American Holocaust". It certainly is probably the most profound imperialist aggression right after Nazi Germany's attack on the USSR, only the german bourgeoisie really had a huge material and existential reason to invade the USSR and try to cross the Caucases into Iraq. Vietnam is definitely just an act of war for the profits of the bomb making owners.

[Invader Zim]

Over 3-5 Million Vietnamese killed by aggressive force


Now, I agree with the basic point within this thread, and I also agree with the famous Nuremburg prosecutor Telford Taylor who argued that the US war leaders and pilots should have been tried for warcrimes, but the statistics you provide are too high. The lowest estimates place the death toll of the Vietnam war at around 1 million while the highest less than 4 million, and the majority of estimates actually less than 2 million, and of those who cite 2.5 million plus, that covers the entire conflict not just the American phase.

I agree that the truth about Vietnam has to be made clear, but it has to be the truth; not unreasonable over-estimates that exist only for propaganda value. People see through it and it undermines the whole point.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Vietnam is definitely just an act of war for the profits of the bomb making owners.

No doubt there is profiteering in every war, but I don't think this was a motivation for the US. It was cold-war imperialist competition and an attempt to keep the lid on national liberation movements after WWII in my view. Of course the stronger US imperialism is, the more US-based or aligned companies have the ability to call the shots in trade-deals and acess to resources and ports and whatnot so US companies benifit, but in general, not directly. It's the same with Iraq: some US companies in security, infrastructure construction, energy and so on made a killing, but these are spoils of war, not the driving force.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Now, I agree with the basic point within this thread, and I also agree with the famous Nuremburg prosecutor Telford Taylor who argued that the US war leaders and pilots should have been tried for warcrimes, but the statistics you provide are too high. The lowest estimates place the death toll of the Vietnam war at around 1 million while the highest less than 4 million, and the majority of estimates actually less than 2 million, and of those who cite 2.5 million plus, that covers the entire conflict not just the American phase.

I agree that the truth about Vietnam has to be made clear, but it has to be the truth; not unreasonable over-estimates that exist only for propaganda value. People see through it and it undermines the whole point.

Well, the Vietnamese government said 4 Million citizens were killed during the US occupation and 1 Million combatants. The US government never debated those numbers officially and McNamara never released the US numbers. It was plain and simple a war to kill people, plain and simple, soldiers got rewarded for killing humans. "Ears for Beers"

[Invader Zim]

Well, the Vietnamese government said 4 Million citizens were killed during the US occupation and 1 Million combatants. The US government never debated those numbers officially and McNamara never released the US numbers. It was plain and simple a war to kill people, plain and simple, soldiers got rewarded for killing humans. "Ears for Beers"
The Vietnamese State is hardly an impartial or even valid source. And it is no supprise that historians have proposed figures of 50%+ less. As for your second point:

"It was plain and simple a war to kill people, plain and simple, soldiers got rewarded for killing humans. 'Ears for Beers'"

I whole heartedly agree.

[OnlyCommunistYouKnow]

Pretty sure the native American genocide was more like the United States' holocaust.

[Invader Zim]

Pretty sure the native American genocide was more like the United States' holocaust.


Except it held none of the hallmarks of the Holocaust, in that it was not industrialised and the bulk of deaths were the result of pathogens as opposed to Zyclon-B and bullets. That isn't to dismiss the brutality and murderous nature of European imperialism in the New World, which was indeed genocidal at times, but America's holocaust? No. Just no.

People talk some right shit on this forum.

[Prairie Fire]

I was listening to a Ward Churchill talk on my Ipod recently, where at one point he made mention of Jean Paul Sartre's attempt to classify the American involvement in Vietnam as a Genocide.

Prof.Churchill made an excellent point, and that is that "Genocide", in it's legal definition, is not a synonym for mass murder. While a Genocide may entail killing on a large scale, this is not the definition that is recognized in international law. Genocide, in application, is "...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. "


This is an excerpt from Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and this is the understanding of Genocide in international law.

So, in this sense, Sartre (and anyone else,), could quite feasibly argue that the American invasion and occupation of Vietnam (as well as the neighbouring countries, i.e. Cambodia and Laos,) did constitute an act of Genocide.

Intentional crop destruction in Vietnam (as well as Cambodia,) by American forces is a genocidal act under Article II, part C.

http://www.pinkyshow.org/videos/students-against-rice-eaters

This is not to mention the millions of claims under parts A and B.

While perhaps the way that the "Workers-Control-Over-Prod" presents things here is emotional, it is not hyperbole to charge the United States (and it's allies) with acts of Genocide in Indochina (or Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter,).

About a year or so ago (maybe two years now,), I had an argument on Revleft here with another persyn who was a proponent of the "It's awful what we did to the Indians and shit, but like, it wasn't Genocide, y'know?" school of thought.

I meticulously pointed out to him that a total of 5/5 of the criteria established by international law were met in the United States (as well as Canada, and the other countries of North and South America), and this seemed to have little effect on his reasoning, because the stated objectives of those carrying out the Genocide in the US were not as overtly geared towards extermination as those in the Third Reich, or some other such nonsense (I then provided numerous quotes from generals, state governors all the way up to Presidents of the United States, calling for the total extermination of specific nations, or of all "indians" in abstract; this made no impact on his outlook,).

I see a side conversation developing here between Invader Zim and onlycommunistyouknow. This departure from the original subject of the thread is actually another expression of the logical fallacy when it comes to common perceptions of Genocide.

Zim has imposed his own arbitrary criteria on a "holocaust" (that it must be imposed by an industrialized society and that the "Bulk" of the deaths must be imposed by lethal methods of humyn invention.). If such a definition of "Holocaust" exists from any source that Zim himself was not the originator of, this is likely a reflection of the political uses to which the German Holocaust has been put, and the more or less prime directive of accepted Academia to find details and semantics that emphasize the singularity and uniqeness of what transpired in Germany under the third Reich.

International Genocide Law, on the other hand (assuming that "Holocaust" here is a synonym fo Genocide,), actually makes no mention what-so-ever of the petty details of how the victims were killed, or even if literal murder took place at all. As I said, Genocide in it's legal and binding definition is not simply a synonym for mass killing (nor is mass killing necessarilly Genocide). Perhaps this is the reason that proponents of the "there was no genocide in the US" line never invoke or even address the internationally legislated definition of Genocide, and instead opt for their own definition that is more suitably tailored to their argument.

I am fortunate that someone from Revleft re-printed my argument and all of it's sources verbatim on the American indegenous Genocide, as my original post on the subject had been erased from this board. I will reprint it now for your convenience:

Genocide defined under International Law (http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm): Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group:
Mystic Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Massacre)
Bear River Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_River_Massacre)
Keyesville Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyesville_Massacre)
Sand Creek Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Creek_Massacre)
Battle of Washita River (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Washita_River)
Marias Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marias_Massacre)
Camp Grant Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Grant_Massacre)
Fort Robinson Tragedy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Robinson_tragedy)
Wounded Knee Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre)http://www.eaglesnestcenter.org/wounded-knee.jpg (http://www.eaglesnestcenter.org/wounded-knee.jpg)
http://members.aon.at/calvin/wknee/images/wknee_01.jpg (http://members.aon.at/calvin/wknee/images/wknee_01.jpg)
http://www-tc.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/images/wimg680/wkgrave.gif (http://www-tc.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/images/wimg680/wkgrave.gif)
http://www.danielnpaul.com/BritishScalpBounties.html (http://www.danielnpaul.com/BritishScalpBounties.html)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/oldfolks.html (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Scalpin/oldfolks.html)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_tears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_tears)
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
http://www.pimatisiwin.com/online/?page_id=381 (download the PDF)
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part:
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html (http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html)
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/206157/history_of_the_buffalo.html?cat=37 (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/206157/history_of_the_buffalo.html?cat=37)



General Philip H. Sheridan was the commander of the United States forces at that time and he had plans of exterminating the buffalo. He thought this would kill the Plains Indians. “Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians” he said.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2056/bisonskullpile1870ks.jpg (http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2056/bisonskullpile1870ks.jpg)
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/sterilize.html (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/sterilize.html)
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system)


Any one of these acts in itself is enough to constitute genocide; the US Governments official policies towards aboriginal peoples, even with the "Germ cop-out" that unapologetic colonialists rely upon, constitutes Genocide on every concievable point in the 1948 legal definition drafted and adopted by all nations.

For your information, here is also a link to Sartre's testimony:
http://tamilnation.co/humanrights/sartre.htm

[Invader Zim]

While a Genocide may entail killing on a large scale, this is not the definition that is recognized in international law. Genocide, in application, is "...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. "


This is an excerpt from Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and this is the understanding of Genocide in international law.

And of course the legal definition is so vague and flawed that it is of no practical use anymore, and was designed with prosecuting Nazis, on various levels of the regimes heirarchy, in mind.

For example, "(a) Killing members of the group" implies that a single racially motivated murder could theoretically result in the murdered tried for genocide. Yet basic intuition tells us that it is not genocide when we consider the kinds of criminality that the law is actually used to prosecute.


When trying to actually understand what genocide is that law is not merely irrelevent, but down right piece of legal obfuscation.

[Sputnik_1]

It happened on many occasions that large groups of people were targeted on economical or political basis. Let's take South America for exemple.

"The judge on the case (torturing and killing people in order to create a massive regression in Argentina) , fifty-five-year-old Carlos Rozanski of Argentina's
federal court, found Etchecolatz guilty of six counts of homicide, six counts
of unlawful imprisonment and seven cases of torture. When he handed
down his verdict, he took an extraordinary step. He said that the conviction
did not do justice to the true nature of the crime and that, in the interest of
"the construction of collective memory," he needed to add that these were
"all crimes against humanity committed in the context of the genocide that
took place in the Republic of Argentina between 1976 and 1983."

The waves of shocks that shook Southern Cone was often described as genocide but on ideological/political basis. Trying to kill an idea by killing people is a kind of genocide.
So yeah, definitions are pretty vogue.

[Prairie Fire]

And of course the legal definition is so vague and flawed that it is of no practical use anymore,

To the arguments of unapologetic Imperialist? No, I suppose not.

So, as I said, you do the same thing that everyone who is a denier of Genocide in the US does: You reject all of the established, internationally defined criteria for a Genocide because it does not reinforce your argument, instead adopting a criteria for Genocide that (shock and amazement,) you yourself are the author of!

Your song and dance is practically text-book in it's execution:

-Attribute "the bulk"of aboriginal deaths in the US to the germs and diseases cop-out, and all others therefore not worthy of mention somehow. Avoid any scenario where germs and diseases were intentionally sewn among a population, or any scenario where aboriginal peoples contracted germs and diseases while within the custody of a state institution ( ie. the residential schooling system, which in Canada had a 50% mortality rate).

- Reject all international law and evidence that is devastating to your case.

- Define genocide only within the perametres that you yourself have established, that are thoroughly tailored towards reinforcing your own argument on every concievable level.

In doing my research for the last time this perrenial non-argument came around, I stumbled upon a website of a man who claimed to thoroughly "debunk" claims of Genocide against the indegenous people of the US. A few paragraphs into his rant, he is forced to aknowledge that according to international law, all of the Genocide critieria are met by the circumstances of the American genocide.

Immediately following that, he predictably does the exact same thing that you have done here, and proceeds to try and denigrate the internationally established legislation available on Genocide itself. His nonsensical argument was something along the lines of " according to that definition of Genocide, a man killing his wife could be considered Genocide!"

Now, aside from the disturbing glimpse that this statement offers into this man's psyche (that "killing your wife" was his go-to hypothetical example,), what he is advancing here is only a less polished, more tactless version of what you are doing, Zim.

No, the wording is not so vague that it could be used to prosecute an individual murderer. Every aspect of Article III aludes to masses of participants in a clearly orchestrated manner, from Pogrom to State policy:



Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.


Even in the hypothetical example that you are giving, I think you are splitting hairs. If an individual did attack (and perhaps kill,) another individual, specifically within the framework of a broader program of wiping out all individuals of that type, then yes, that would qualify as Genocide. If you have a problem with this, it is only because you are looking for a defining exceptionalism to Genocide that perhaps isn't there.

What is this metaphysical conception of "basic intuition" that you are advancing, and why do you assume that it is something universal? All of the sudden your point of view is the innate perception inherent to all Humans, without exception?

Law is a social construct, even Genocide law; if it is the popular consensus that the legislation should punish acts of Genocide in microcosm, then so be it.

[Invader Zim]

So, as I said, you do the same thing that everyone who is a denier of Genocide in the US does

I realise that you aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as I said:

"that isn't to dismiss the brutality and murderous nature of European imperialism in the New World, which was indeed genocidal at times,"

Which rather puts paid to your entire long winded pretentious fart of a post.

PS. And I note the irony that you, who are a true bonafide genocide denier when it comes to the Soviet Union would accuse anyone else of genocide denial.

[x359594]

The word "holocaust" is a generic term used to describe the mass slaughter of people, any people. The fact that the most investigated and discussed holocaust is the one know as the Shoah doesn't mean that the term can't be applied to other mass slaughters.

I'm currently reading The Spanish Holocaust (2012) by Paul Preston, and in the preface he he writes that, "I thought long and hard about using the word 'holocaust' in the title of this book...my use of the word 'holocaust' is not intended to equate what happened in Spain [during and after the civil war] with what happened in the rest of continental Europe under German occupation but rather to suggest that it be examined in a broadly comparative context..."

I think that's the same intention of the filmmakers when the named their movie Vietnam: American Holocaust.

Concerning the genocide of Native Americans, the best book on the subject happens to be titled American Holocaust (1992) by David E. Stannard, an historian who specializes in studies of cultural imperialism and racial domination.

[seventeethdecember2016]

It is odd how Vietnam and the US are on mutually good terms now. Oh wait, I forgot how Imperialism works for a second there.

So many lives lost, on both sides, yet these guys trade and do military drills of sorts (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hzLxNE5D_AuAyjgoJBmgJT9Zpo5A?docId=CNG.1a428 5e8688f8f6f1f65608228528b6f.121), as if no one died in all those years of fighting. Apparently the more Contemporary threat posed by China is more important that the memories of all those who had fallen.

Of course, I'm always for better relations and less hostility, but this is just absurd!

[Invader Zim]

The word "holocaust" is a generic term used to describe the mass slaughter of people, any people. The fact that the most investigated and discussed holocaust is the one know as the Shoah doesn't mean that the term can't be applied to other mass slaughters.

I'm currently reading The Spanish Holocaust (2012) by Paul Preston, and in the preface he he writes that, "I thought long and hard about using the word 'holocaust' in the title of this book...my use of the word 'holocaust' is not intended to equate what happened in Spain [during and after the civil war] with what happened in the rest of continental Europe under German occupation but rather to suggest that it be examined in a broadly comparative context..."

I think that's the same intention of the filmmakers when the named their movie Vietnam: American Holocaust.

Concerning the genocide of Native Americans, the best book on the subject happens to be titled American Holocaust (1992) by David E. Stannard, an historian who specializes in studies of cultural imperialism and racial domination.

Actually the term 'holocaust' is used near exclusively with the Holocaust, and has been for around 50 years. The way you approach the term is anachronistic, it used to be used to denote massacre - but given the scale, single mindedness and inustrialised nature of the Holocaust (and indeed method of disposing of the remains of millions of victims) the term now denotes that one historical instance of mass genocide. Indviduals who now talk about other genocides, and describe them as 'America's holocaust' are not refering to the event they describe as a holocaust, rather they are attempting to draw symbolic comparison (if not direct comparison, to associate one with the other) between the event they describe and the Holocaust. I.e. 'x' event was terrible, it had the hall marks of genocide; the Holocaust is the most famous example of genocide thus to emphasise the point it is "y's holocaust".

But it is, of course, a flawed description; because it implies that the compared genocide is actually more than tangentally similar to the Holocaust. While on a basic level it might well be (as in it is an episode of unspeakable cruelty, marked by the attempted physical destruction of a massive goup of people) that does not mean that it shares the physical, industrial, bureaucratic and ideological hallmarks of the Nazi 'final solution' of the 'Jewish problem'.

Given the images that are drawn in the mid of the reader it is extremely misleading for a historian, whose job in to create a clear and accurate representation of the past to the reader, to describe any genocidal slaughter as a holocaust - because if you describe something with that term it creates images of emaciated people being led from trains into squalid death camps where they were then gassed and their bodies incinerated. The reality is that most, in many cases comparatively brutal, genocides may well be of a comparable scale but operated in very different ways. For example, the primary method of destroying the indigenous population of the Americas was not industrialised, production line, slaughter. It was via slavery, starvation, sterilisation, warfare, forced marriage, and mass slaughters of individual communities, among others.

That is the point I'm making, not that the destruction of the indigenous population of the Americas was not brutal, and certainly at times genocidal in nature, but it was not the same as the holocaust. For a start the destruction of the indigenous Americans was chillingly successful, more so than the holocaust. While disease played the greatest role in that (80%+ of the deaths) the Europeans virtually wiped out the remaining population completely.

[What would Lenin do]

Yet, they expect full respect on 9/11 Remembrance but these people who are murdered get no recognition.