Guest post: This issue of Trump vs McCain is a hard one

Originally a comment by Omar on McCain and Palin.

Despite having intelligence that 80% of the Vietnamese people supported Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh army, US Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy favoured the most unheroic and antidemocratic minority side, leading to a war in which there were about 5 million Vietnamese killed overall, and probably about 15 million injured. So this issue of Trump vs McCain is a hard one.

Does one support Trump, the man McCain calls “Captain Bonespurs” for his Vietnam draft-avoidance on somewhat dubious and debateable medical grounds, or does one support McCain: the man who fought heroically for the totally rotten cause of the murderous neo-colonial puppet regime of the Saigon Mafia? You know, the war that killed about 10% of the then 38 million Vietnamese? And given the extra dimension that the said McCain got taken prisoner by the heroic fighters for Vietnamese independence, and endured all they inflicted on him as a captured enemy and fighter for Vietnamese neocolonial subjugation; while The Great Orange Pussygrabber was sitting out the war in his New York luxury penthouse and grabbing every passing pussy that took his fancy?

Philosophers and theologians could have a hard time sorting through all the issues in that, particularly if there was a diversion like some gripping drama on the TV, and they had at the same time fallen victim to an influenza plague, and their water pipes had all frozen and burst, and their prize poodles, Alsatians and Chihuahuas had all turned rabid and savage. Stuff like that.

While post-WW2 Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh guerrilla army was fighting the French colonialist bastards who had originally invaded Vietnam and overthrown its government in the 1860s, the US was aiding the French. To put that another way, the US either fought for Vietnamese colonial French subjugation, or for a US-cooked up puppet regime. (By which I mean that of Ngo Dinh Diem, whose little ways became a trifle more that the US could stand, and so good old JFK gave the green light for his assassination. Considerable irony in that, given subsequent events in Dallas, Texas.)

Like all colonialists, imperialists and invaders down through history, those French ones the US supported early on did not give a damn for Vietnamese democracy, and were dead-set against it, because they only had eyes for Vietnam’s resources, like its rubber and minerals. And McCain fought on the anti-democratic side in the murderous 10,000-day Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s, and Trump perhaps unintentionally and incidentally, aided the cause cause of Vietnamese national liberation and democracy by avoiding the US draft and getting on with his more favoured activities.

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