Bernie Sanders Applied for 'Conscientious Objector' Status During Vietnam, Campaign C

It was JFK who signed off on the CIA backed regime change of Diem with a military coups. When the coup backed fired and Diem was murdered, from that day on the United States owned Vietnam, it became America's problem and JFK knew it.

The world watched, what would JFK do. If America pulled out of the RVN, SEATO would collapse and NATO would soon collapse Three weeks later JFK would meet the same fate that Diem did. .

The war in Vietnam could have been won in 1965 if LBJ hadn't micromanaged the war.

Again in 1968 after the VC and NVA were defeated during the Tet Offense, they got their butts kicked a bloody red,. The light was at the end of the tunnel, Gen. Giap and Hoe Chi Minh were about to throw in the towel then Walter Cronkite lied to the American people. This is when North Vietnam changed their strategy, they still can win the war, on the streets of America.

Again when Nixon became President in 1969, the war could have been won but Nixon had inherited LBJ policies.

 

I don't have any personal issue - conscientious objection I'd a real thing and shouldn't be scoffed at. And I want a candidate who is unlikely to send our lads off to uneccessary wars - but I don't think I could tolerate the thought of a conscientious objector ordering troops into combat - that's the job of the commander in chief, when the need arises.

 

That be correct !!!

 

I hate to inform you but I'm a Vietnam War veteran and I have extensive knowledge about the war not just from books but based upon actual experience and I even know what the attitudes of the South Vietnam people were during the war.

I wouldn't even mention Eisenhower's policies. While, as a military man, he opposed US military involvement he was instrumental in creating the Vietnam War by using US influence to prevent the UN monitored national vote of reunification that was to take place one year after the 1954 peace accord when the Vietminh, under Ho Chi Minh, kicked the ass of the colonal French. Had Eisenhower not brought US international might to bear the country of Vietnam would have been united in 1955 based upon a UN monitored national referendum election. Of course if the US hadn't intervened in the peace accord in the first place that divided Vietnam there wouldn't have been a war either.

Of course Kennedy was in the process of getting the US out of Vietnam when he was assassinated. Kennedy wanted to bring the US military advisors home. It was LBJ, that was sucked in by warmongering "anti-communists" at the Pentagon, and not JFK that decided to transition from military advisors to an all-out US military war in Vietnam.

 

No, a person that believes in the non-aggression principle has a moral conviction against wars of aggression. That's a moral conviction against involvement in wars of aggression of any kind and not an opinion based upon any political ideology.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to understand that Vietnam never attacked or invade the United States and never had any intention of doing so. Generally speaking not even the South Vietnamese soldier believed in the Vietnam War because they were fighting their own countrymen. They didn't have the murderous "anti-communist" zeal of the American warmongers at the Pentagon that lead LBJ into a war of aggression that sacrificed the lives of over 50,000 American soldiers and slaughtered about two million innocent Vietnamese.

 

No an objection to the VN war was a POLITICAL objection and not a CO status. CO is ALL war.

But then the left/progressive/Democrats said Bush should not have been elected because he joined the NG and the assertion he did so to avoid going to VN. Well based on that rational Sanders should not be elected.

 

Conscientious objector status is not conflict specific, its an objection to war. How can someone who will not serve send young people who do into combat?

 

You have been exposed to revisionist history.

It's true that Eisenhower told JFK more than a few times not to get involved in the RVN, that the Diem regime was to corrupt.

Eisenhower told Kennedy if he wanted to stop communist expansion in South Vietnam it has to be done in Laos not at the 17th parallel. Prevent North Vietnam access to the Ho Chi Minh trail and the PLA can't be supplied.

Eisenhower being a five star general studied all of the mistakes France made in French Indochina. Eisenhower conclusion was that a conventional war in Vietnam could NOT be fought and won in Vietnam but could be won in Laos.

Eisenhower also told Kennedy, if you refuse to take my warnings and advice and you find yourself in a shooting war in the RVN, it has to be fought as total war.

As usual with JFK, he ignored his elders and instead listened to his Harvard buddies who were known as the "Young and Brightest."

Kennedy was planning to pull out of the RVN ? Revisionist history to protect the Kennedy legacy. As soon as classified information began to be released during the 80's through today that no longer could Eisenhower be blames which the left tried to do for over three decades or even LBJ but it all comes back to JFK.

LBJ kept everyone on board from the JFK administration including McNamara except for Bobby, LBJ brought in a new AG.

If JFK was planning to pull out of the RVN in 63 or 64 why didn't we hear about it back then ? Why didn't we hear about in in 1965, 68, 70, 73, 75, 78 ???

One problem.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge--and more."

Was Kennedy just another liar ? No way would Kennedy have abandoned Vietnam. If he did, SEATO would have collapsed and soon NATO would have collapsed.

 

Um no learn some history

 

Most who served in Vietnam were volunteers not draftees.

SOme wealthy did get out of serving but do did many NOT wealthy.

In fact the wealthy served in Vietnam in very good or even greater proportion to their % of the population as a hole.

Sanders is consistently wrong

 

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Um no learn some English

 

I understand it fine your revision is false

 

ummm, Tonkin oil... gooood!

 

There's a logical disconnect here. Communism in Vietnam was not an expansion from any other country but instead was indiginous to the political ideology of Ho Chi Minh that was responsible for the defeat of French colonialism in that nation. Had Eisenshower wished to draw the line in Laos he wouldn't have employed US political power to prevent the brokered unification vote that had been agreed to in the Paris Peace Accords. It was the denial of the right of self-sovereignty in being allowed to vote on reunification that was responsible for a divided Vietnam and the Vietnam War.

Eisenhower left Kennedy with two significant foreign disasters with one being a divided Vietnam and the Cuban policy where the Eisenhower adminstration's CIA planned invasion of Cuba, where the CIA lied to Kennedy claiming it was going to be exclusively a Cuban rebel group action, ultimately lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Eisenhower's drawing of a line in the sand related to communism was a disasterous foreign policy often aligning the United States with some of the most tyrannical regimes the world has ever seen.

 

This is true but of the 2,594,000 US soldiers that served in Vietnam War about 881,960 were draftees but this didn't reflect the number of actual draftees, Perhaps half of all draftees were not sent to Vietnam but to other locations in the United States and around the world to serve their out their enlistment. After being drafted most generally hoped that they might get lucky and be sent to Germany which also had a very signficant US military presence. Even being sent to S. Korea was preferable to being sent to Vietnam.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/vietnam-war-statistics/

Not exactly accurate.

While the total number of wealthy wasn't available when I did a search the fact was that if they did serve they were probably volunteers and not draftees. Money was a very effective way of avoiding the draft because they could buy deferments such as being able to afford beind drafted by going to college that the poor couldn't afford to do. Effectively a person that turned 18 in 1967, like I did, could have avoided the draft for up to eight years, possibly more, by staying in college while working on a PhD and by then the Vietnam War was over. They could also use their money to fund other possible deferments in addition to the college deferment which is what Mitt Romney did where he could afford to do (religious) "charity" work after college that provided a deferment from the draft. We can also note that the wealthy were far more likely to be officers than "cannon fodder" for the war because they were generally college graduates.

So when we address draftees Sanders is accurate because overall the wealthy could easily avoid the draft and even when they volunteered they were almost always officers as opposed to enlisted men. They rarely served in combat because "rank and money" has it's privileges and if they had political influence they didn't even go to Vietnam. They'd get a cushy desk job or an assignment to Germany as opposed to being sent to serve in the ground war where US soldiers were dying in Vietnam.

 

So Bernie was prescient about the stupidity of the Vietnam war. Another good reason to vote for him.

 

Same way that a draft doger like Bush could send young people into combat. But given America's recent record a reluctance to go to war might just be a good thing in a President..

 

No he stood up for what he believed in, better then people like bush who pretended to support it but had daddy pull the strings so he never saw any combat.

As fo the socialist bit : read what he actually proposes not the PR BS from decades of rallying against communists and socialists.

 

On the day just before Kennedy took the oath of POTUS, when Eisenhower and Kennedy were following tradition of having coffee at the White House, Eisenhower informed Kennedy of the CIA led invasion of Cuba and told Kennedy not to sign off on the invasion until there was a popular Cuban government in exile. He also said after there was a popular Cuban government established in exile and if you sign off on the mission you (U.S. military) must provide air support for the mission.

As usual with Kennedy he ignored Eisenhower and instead turned to his Harvard buddies. Kennedy signed off on the mission without a popular Cuban government being in exile and when the mission took place (Bay of Pigs) the U.S. Navy was off shore, the Marines were on amphibious ships and the Navy and Air Force aircraft were armed and ready but Kennedy didn't use them.

The only airsupport there was were CIA aircraft like the B-26 (A-26)

 

The upper income groups did not serve in less proportion nor did they die in less proportion that the lower income groups.

"The charge that the "poor" died in disproportionate numbers is also a myth. An MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) study of Vietnam death rates, conducted by Professor Arnold Barnett, revealed that servicemen from the richest 10 percent of the nations communities had the same distribution of deaths as the rest of the nation. In fact his study showed that the death rate in the upper income communities of Beverly Hills, Belmont, Chevy Chase, and Great Neck exceeded the national average in three of the four, and, when the four were added together and averaged, that number also exceeded the national average."

If you true point is that the higher earners volunteered and the lower classes had to be drafted then what does that say?

 

So people who volunteer for service and even put in for service in Vietnam were draft dodgers because they didn't wait to get drafted?

And before you answer keep in mind that the TANG unit Bush signed up for had units serving in Vietnam under the "Palace Alert" program and after Bush finished his two years of training he volunteered for that program but did not have the required flight time hours and the Air Force was pulling the F-102's out of combat service in Vietnam. That being said he served the country in a VERY dangerous duty, flying a single engine, supersonic, delta wing, all weather interceptor. The F-102 proved to be one of the most dangerous jet aircraft the Air Force ever flew. It took a LOT of guts to strap one on in bad weather conditions, at night and fly it 200 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico

So who has the higher standing to be CnC, someone who volunteered or someone who was drafted?

 

Unfortunately when Kennedy took office the CIA lied to him. The CIA stated that the US was only going to provide logistical support and limited training the Cuban nationals and that the Bay of Pigs was going to be a "Cuban only" affair without any US involvement at all. While Eisehower outlined the criteria for US involvement in an invasion to overthrow Castor, and Kennedy heeded that criteria, the Bay of Pigs was exclusively a Cuban rebel initiative without any US involvement (according to the CIA). When the invasion failed then the CIA went to Kennedy demanding US involvement which, based upon Eisenhowers previous advice, Kennedy refused.

But that wasn't the real problem after WW II. Instead of the US addressing "Tyranny" as the enemy it targeted "Communism" instead. Communism, as a political/economic ideology is not inherently tyrannical but because of it's structure it's quite easy for the leaders to become tyrants. I remember the 1950's where the USSR was condemned for being those "god-less communists" as opposed to being condemned for being a "tyrannical nation" as it should have been. Because we didn't target "tyranny" as opposed to "communism" it lead the US to support numerous "anti-communist" dictators and governments that were highly tyrannical, often more tyrannical than many communist regimes.

Batista, the Cuban dictator before Casto, was a far more tyrannical dictator than Castro but few today want to acknowledge that fact. Batista was in bed with the Mafia and only "Bastisa" favorites prospered in Cuba while the average Cuban was an economic slave of the Batista dictatorship. Why people seem to forget that is beyond me. Perhaps they never knew but the fact that Batista was a tyrannical dictator was the ideological basis for the revolution lead by Casto.

Had the US not backed Batista then there probably wouldn't have been a Cuban revolution in 1959. The same is true for Iran. If the US hadn't backed the Shah of Iran, another tyrannical dictator, there wouldn't have been the Iranian revolution in 1979. Everytime we've backed a tyrant because they weren't a "communist" it's turned out bad.

Tyranny is the enemy of the United States and not communism but the politicians, including Ike, ignored that fact. Kennedy was far less disposed to viewing communism as the enemy because he was a very well educated and intelligent leader. Kennedy wanted normalized relations with Cuba and he didn't support the US involvement in Vietnam. We know both of those to be facts today.

 

While it might sound a bit funny this is more true than not. The draft only applied to the US Army while the US Navy, US Air Force, US Marines, and the National Guard all remained volunteer services. Upon notification of being drafted, or if the person had a low number once the lottery began, they would often run off and enlist in one of the "volunteer" services to avoid being in the Army where it was far more likely they would be sent to Vietnam.

So in a very real sense, by volunteering for another branch of the service, they were evading the draft in many cases. It was a very common practice to avoid being sent to fight in the Vietnam War (that didn't always work out). If nothing else it typically prevented the person from being a "ground pounding grunt" that was the most dangerous assignment in Vietnam.

 

So Bush wanted to go to Nam. You aren't really that naive are you. The only dangerous duty Shrub did was riding a bar stool. Just like most rich kids he dodged the draft. If he wanted to be a man there were plenty of ways he could have been stupid enough to get involved in that particular immoral war. Staying out of it was probably the most intelligent thing he did in his career. Course he made up for it by his two moronic wars in Iraq and Afganistan, but then he didn't actually have to risk anything other than other peoples lives so I guess it was OK.