Category Archives: war

Was the American Revolution about freedom or slavery?

In 1772, Lord Mansfield’s judgment in the Somersett’s Case emancipated a slave in England, and that helped launch the movement that would abolish slavery in the British Empire. If the thirteen American colonies had stayed in the Empire, there would have been no Civil War to end slavery, because slavery in the United States would have ended peacefully without a shot being fired.

Is it a coincidence that this fight for independence from the British Empire followed the beginning of the movement in England to end slavery in the British Empire?

Comparing the two timelines offers a compelling argument that the American Revolution wasn’t about freedom—it was about slavery disguised as a freedom movement.

On December 15, 1773—about one year after the Somersett Case in the UK—the Boston Tea Party signaled a movement for independence in America leading to the formation of the United States of America. Then in April 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired when the Minutemen met the redcoats at Lexington and Concord.

In fact, when the so-called fight for freedom ended in 1783—followed four-years later in 1787 with the signing of the U.S. Constitution—slavery was still an institution in the United States of America.

Meanwhile, the movement to end slavery was growing in the British Empire.

While slavery was unsupported by law in England and Scotland and no authority could be exercised on slaves entering English or Scottish soil, this did not yet apply to the rest of the British Empire.

However, by 1783, an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout the Empire had begun among the British public—the same year, the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution, and slavery would continue in the United States for more than eighty years and end only after the bloodiest war fought on American soil, the Civil War (1861 – 1865).  Even then, discrimination and racial violence would continue unabated and unchallenged in the United States for another century before the Civil Rights era of the 1960s

If you have doubts, then consider the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or the Japanese-American Internment camps during World War II where close to 120,000 American citizens were sent to prison camps (for a comparison, only 11,000 Americans of German ancestry were locked up).

How can any country claim to be a democracy while it discriminated legally at any time in its history? I suspect the answer to that question depends on an individual’s definition of freedom.

When I Googled what America is best known for around the world, the answer in the first hit was interesting: “A freedom fighter, the protector of the weak, generosity.”

Slavery was officially abolished in most of the British Empire in August 1834, and this was accomplished without a war that cost more than 600,000 lives in the United States, a country billed as a freedom fighter and protector of the weak.

The cost of the Civil war did not end in 1865. “In dollars and cents, the U.S. government estimated Jan. 1863 that the war was costing $2.5 million daily. A final official estimate in 1879 totaled $6,190,000,000. The Confederacy spent perhaps $2,099,808,707. By 1906 another $3.3 billion already had been spent by the U.S. government on Northerners’ pensions and other veterans’ benefits for former Federal soldiers. Southern states and private philanthropy provided benefits to the Confederate veterans. The amount spent on benefits eventually well exceeded the war’s original cost. …

“The physical devastation, almost all of it in the South, was enormous: burned or plundered homes, pillaged countryside, untold losses in crops and farm animals, ruined buildings and bridges, devastated college campuses, and neglected roads all left the South in ruins. ” Source: Civil War Home.com

Today, after calculating inflation, the Civil War would cost $181,818,181,818.18 in 2012. That’s almost $200 billion. Source: Dave Manuel.com

I’ve always believed that actions speak louder than words. The United States may have righted many wrongs since 1783, but how many remain and how long will it take to fix them?

For example, one manufacturing sector in the United States is the largest merchant of death in the world and sells weapons to almost anyone. Forty-four percent of global arms sales come from the United States. Second place is Russia with 17% of sales. China only sells 4% beat out by France with 8%, and the UK with 5% of the market.

Another example is the fight to end human trafficking in the United States. “In Fiscal Year 2007, the United States Government spent approximately $23 million on domestic programs to fight human trafficking”—illegal slavery in the United States that is mostly women and children forced into the sex trade. Source: Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

Did slavery really end in the United States at the end of the Civil War or did it just go underground in another form? Meanwhile, the US government pays American farmers more than a billion dollars a year not to grow crops on their land, and spends about $15 billion annually on the drug war. More Americans are arrested for drug crimes than any other offense, and the US has more people in prison than any other country.

Isn’t it wonderful being a citizen of the greatest country on the planet, a military super power, and the champion of democracy?

Discover Children as Weapons of Death

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

What happened to the America that …

On January 3, 2013, Mark Hosenball writing for Reuters reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman expressed outrage over scenes in the film “Zero Dark Thirty” that imply “enhanced interrogations” of CIA detainees.

Hosenball wrote, “Some of Obama’s liberal supporters are attacking the film and officials who cooperated with its creators for allegedly promoting the effectiveness of torture.”

As I read this piece , I started to think of the brutality of war and what it means to lose and then had a few questions:

During the Vietnam War, what happened to the America that dropped 250,000 cluster bombs on Cambodia?

What happened to the America that firebombed civilians in Germany & Japan in World War II?

PBS reported that in Germany, “The casualty figures reported by German fire and police services ranged between 25,000 and 35,000 dead. However, thousands more were missing, and there were many unidentified refugees in the city. It is probable that the death total approached the 45,000 killed in the bombing of Hamburg in July-August 1943. Some careless historians, encouraged by Soviet and East German propaganda, promulgated figures as high as 250,000. Although David Irving later recanted his claim of 135,000 dead, one can still find that number cited in many history books.”

In Japan, PBS said that in Tokyo, “Before the firestorm ignited by Operation MEETINGHOUSE had burned itself out, between 90,000 and 100,000 people had been killed. Another million were rendered homeless. Sixteen square miles were incinerated, and the glow of the flames was visible 150 miles away. Victims died horribly as intense fires consumed the oxygen, boiled water in canals, and sent liquid glass rolling down streets.”

What happened to the America that dropped A-bombs on two cities in Japan to end World War II?

“Unlike many other bombing raids, the goal for this raid had not been a military installation but rather an entire city. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed civilian women and children in addition to soldiers. Hiroshima’s population has been estimated at 350,000; approximately 70,000 died immediately from the explosion and another 70,000 died from radiation within five years.”

“Approximately 40 percent of Nagasaki was destroyed. Luckily for many civilians living in Nagasaki, though this atomic bomb was considered much stronger than the one exploded over Hiroshima, the terrain of Nagasaki prevented the bomb from doing as much damage. Yet the decimation was still great. With a population of 270,000, approximately 70,000 people died by the end of the year.” Source: About.com

What happened to the America that sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange?

What happened to the America that dropped more bombs on northeastern Laos during the Vietnam War than it dropped in all of World War II?

“As part of its efforts during the Vietnam War, the United States began a nine-year bombing campaign in Laos in 1964 that ultimately dropped 260 million cluster bombs on the country — the most heavily bombed country in history. That’s more than 2.5 million tons of munitions — more than what the U.S. dropped in World War II on Germany and Japan combined. … Of the 75 million bombs that failed to detonate, less than 1 percent have been cleared. At least 25,000 people have been killed or injured by these bombs in the 35 years following the end of the bombing campaign. Today, an average of 300 Lao people are injured or killed every year by these weapons.” Source: Huffington Post

What happens to the citizens of the United States if America loses the war on terror?

Discover A Night at the “Well of Purity”

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Rebuilding Lives

I bought an audio version of The Street of a Thousand Blossoms to listen to while driving (I am an avid reader and listener of books).

Gail Tsukiyama’s novel starts before World War II and concludes years after the war ends. The story is about the violent rebirth of a nation and its people through war and defeat told mostly through the eyes and emotions of two brothers.

Because I served in Vietnam in the US Marines as a field radio operator, my focus has been on what combat does to soldiers—not noncombatants. However, after reading Tsukiyama’s novel, it is easy to see that civilians that experience the horror of war may also suffer from the trauma of PTSD.

To get an idea of the destruction and suffering, more people may have been killed or injured in the firebombing of Tokyo than from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki near the end of the war.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department reported that almost a 100,000 were killed in addition to a million injured with 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. There were a million left homeless.

In comparison, it is estimated that 150,000 – 246,000 were killed from the atomic bombs, and if Japan hadn’t surrendered when it did, the US would have had seven more atomic bombs ready to drop on Japan’s cities before October 1945.

What led to the war in the Pacific?

Some of Japan’s leaders wanted to rule over East Asia, including China, and that quest for power cost Japan dearly and the nations it invaded.

However, in defeat, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Japanese civilians were killed in addition to 2.12 million military. In comparison, in all of World War II, the US lost 1,700 civilians and 416,800 military. At Pearl Harbor, the US lost 2,402 military and 57 civilians.

What is not well known is that the decision to attack the United States was not unanimous in Japan’s government or military.

“Military control in prewar Japan was exercised by the War and Navy Ministers and the General Staffs of the Army and Navy, not by the civil government.” Source: ibiblio.org

In fact, “Higher Navy officials in Japan were against bombing Pearl Harbor, but the fleet commander, Yamamoto, threatened to resign unless given permission to launch the strike and the Navy staff reluctantly permitted it.” Source: Thornley.net

“To the conservative admirals of Japan’s Naval General Staff, a direct confrontation in the central Pacific Ocean between their navy and the Unites States Navy was unthinkable.” Source: Pacific War.org

In addition, Emperor “Hirohito said he was powerless to stop the militarists because any dissent on his part would have led to his assassination.” Source: Net Places.com

Then Japan’s Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoe attempted to avoid war with the United States, and when he failed, he resigned from office on October 16, 1941 – six weeks before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.”  Source: Wikipedia.org

Hiroshi and Kenji are the main characters in The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, and what they experience during the war is often worse than that of soldiers in combat. The sense of helplessness is acute because the characters in the novel cannot fight back as bombs are dropped on them or as Japanese police force them to comply with harsh wartime regulations.

Hiroshi dreams of becoming a sumotori (a Japanese form of wrestling) while his younger brother, Kenji, is obsessed with the craft of carving wood masks worn by the actors of Noh Theater, a classical Japanese theatrical form—one of the world’s oldest.

Before the war, the brothers’ parents drowned in a boating accident, and they are raised by their grandparents in the Yanaka district of northeastern Tokyo.

The war interferes with the boys’ dreams and rationing leads to hunger and the struggle to survive.

Because we are either with Hiroshi or Kenji during the horrific fire-bombing of Tokyo, and they also experience the iron fist of the city’s police to control the people while Japan is losing the war, we discover what it must be like to live in a nation that is being defeated.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ends the war, but the emotional wounds are slow to heal. However, Hiroshi and Kenji renew their passions and through them we see the healing of a defeated nation. It is a bitter sweet story that I highly recommend—a story of resilience and rebirth.

 

Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing.

Discover Stanford Study shows effect of PTSD trauma on brain

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Unwanted Heroes

Many unwanted heroes defend our nation and fight its wars—right or wrong. When America’s leaders declare wars based on lies (for example: Vietnam and Iraq) or the truth (World War I, II, Afghanistan and Korea), unwanted heroes do the fighting and pay the price.

On the side of a bus at the VA medical clinic that I go to, it says, “All gave some; some gave all.” I have a credit card sized VA Department of Veterans Affairs ID card.  It says below my photo: “Service Connected.” That means I have a disability connected to my service in Vietnam in 1966 when I was serving in the US Marines.

What is the price many unwanted heroes pay for trusting their leaders?

This post has the same title of a novel that was recently released, and I had the privilege of editing Unwanted Heroes by Alon Shalev.

In Unwanted Heroes, Shalev brings together a long suffering, battle weary Chinese American Vietnam veteran suffering from the trauma of PTSD and an idealistic and somewhat pretentious young Englishmen, who both share a love for San Francisco, coffee and wine.

Alon Shalev, the author, grew up in London, and has been a political activist since his early teens. He strives through his writing to highlight social and political injustice and to inspire action for change.

Moving to Israel, he helped establish a kibbutz where he lived for 20 years and served in the Israeli army.

Shalev then moved to the San Francisco Bay area and fell hopelessly in love with this unique city. Being new to the US, however, he was shocked to see so many war veterans on the streets. He regularly volunteers at initiatives such as Project Homeless Connect and the San Francisco Food Bank where he meets and talks with war veterans. These experiences lend authenticity to the novel.

In fact, according to NIH (the National Institute of Health) Medline Plus, “PTSD affects about 7.7 million American adults” … and “members of the military exposed to war/combat and other groups at high risk for trauma exposure are at risk for developing PTSD.

“Among veterans returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, PTSD and mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) are often linked and their symptoms may overlap. Blast waves from explosions can cause TBI, rattling the brain inside the skull.

“The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that PTSD afflicts almost 31% of Vietnam veterans; as many as 10% of Gulf War (Desert Storm) veterans; 11% of veterans of the war in Afghanistan, and 20% of Iraqi war veterans.”

NIH says, “PTSD is often accompanied by depression, substance abuse, or other anxiety disorders.”

In addition, “between 529,000 and 840,000 veterans are homeless at some time during the year, and on any given night, more than 300,000 veterans are living on the streets or in shelters in the US. … About 33% of homeless males in the US are veterans and veterans are twice as likely as other Americans to become chronically homeless. One of the primary causes of homelessness among veterans is combat-related mental health issues and disability.

The incident of PTSD and suicide rates among veterans is also climbing and 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness including PTSD. Source: Veterans Inc.org

The New York Times reported, “Suicide rates of military personnel and combat veterans have risen sharply since 2005, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified. Recently, the Pentagon established a Defense Suicide Prevention Office.”

“The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. …

Why? “The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter.” Source: History.com – Statistics about the Vietnam War

I did not seek help for my PTSD for thirty-eight years, because I did not know the VA offered counseling.

Discover A Prisoner of War for Life

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Destroying an Enemy at the Speed of Light

The US Navy announced it is two years away from active laser weapons on its warships.

 ABC News reported, “The weapons are designed to track and fire on threats to a warship that could include anything from armed drones and small ‘swarm’ boats to incoming missiles and aircraft.”

A directed-energy weapon, such as a laser, shoots energy in an aimed direction without using a projectile such as a missile or a round fired from a cannon.

Laser weapons usually generate brief high-energy pulses. A one megajoule laser pulse delivers roughly the same energy as 200 grams of high explosive, and has the same basic effect on a target. The primary damage mechanism is mechanical shear, caused by reaction when the surface of the target is explosively evaporated

In May 2012, Scientific American.com said, “In a grainy, black-and-white video that looks like a home movie of a UFO attack a sleek aircraft streaks through the sky one minute, only to burst into flames the next and plummet into the sea.  … The Phalanx—a rapid-fire, computer-controlled, radar-guided gun system—used electro-optical tracking and radio frequency sensors to provide range data to the LaWS, which is made up of six solid-state lasers with an output of 32 kilowatts that simultaneously focus on a target.”

This weapon, of course, will make China’s aircraft carrier killer missile obsolete only a few years after China developed it. On December 27, 2010, Washington Times.com reported, “China’s military is deploying a new anti-ship ballistic missile that can sink U.S. aircraft carriers.”

The country with the most advanced weapons usually rules the battle field. The Chinese, for example, did it for centuries with rockets, napalm and the simple stirrup for riding horses. Once China’s northern enemies, the Mongolians, had these weapons too, China was conquered and Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty that ruled China 1279 – 1368 AD.

Discover War – the Waiting

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Missing John Wayne

I was not there when John Wayne dropped by the Battalion CP of the 1st Marine Division’s Tank Battalion in 1966 at Chu Lai, Vietnam. Instead, I was in the field. I don’t remember what I was doing in the field. I was on a night patrol, a recon, an ambush or a field operation but I wasn’t there.

I was in the field getting shot at—a walking target with a radio on my back or driving a radio jeep with no armor.  The jeep I drove in Vietnam was more than twenty years old and had a canvas top with open sides (no doors). Today, it would be unthinkable to send our troops into combat in one of those.

I was told Wayne drove in by himself in a 1945 Willys Jeep and walked around talking to Marines, drank a few warm beers with enlisted men then ate with the officers in their mess tent.

Years later, I wondered if Wayne really visited US troops in Vietnam and discovered, thanks to Google, that he did.

 “Once again, John Wayne found himself in the midst of a heated political controversy. It started in June 1966, when Wayne visited Vietnam to cheer American troops on the front and wounded soldiers in hospitals. The mission of the tour was twofold: It was a good-will trip, and at the same time provided him the opportunity to gather first-hand material for a film.

“It is unclear whether the idea to make a film on Vietnam originated before or during the trip. Before he left for the three-week tour, sponsored by the Department of Defense, Wayne said he was “going around the hinterlands to give the boys something to break the monotony.” “I can’t sing or dance,” he said, but “I can sure shake a lot of hands.” Source: Emanuel Levy Cinema 24/7

If anyone instilled a sense of patriotism in me for the US (not its political leaders), it was growing up watching John Wayne movies.

As a child, I knew nothing of politics but too much, thanks to my mother, of God and the Bible.

My father didn’t believe in God, didn’t vote and didn’t belong to any political party. He deeply distrusted politicians and said they were all liars and couldn’t be trusted. Today, I suspect that what he believed came from having survived the Great Depression (1929 to mid 1940s). At fourteen, he dropped out of school to find a job to survive. He would work for forty-six years before he retired on a union pension.

It doesn’t matter if I agree with Wayne’s conservative, hawkish, right-wing politics, because his screen image did more to instill my sense of patriotism than anything else did. In fact, he may have agreed with my father’s political beliefs.

Wayne’s attitude toward politics was at best ambivalent, considering it a necessary evil. “I hate politics and most politicians,” he repeatedly declared, and “I am not a political figure.” At the same time, he conceded that, “When things get rough and people are saying things that aren’t true, I sometimes open my mouth and eventually get in trouble.”

“About the only thing you have to guide you,” he said, “is your conscience.” One should not let “social groups or petty ambitions or political parties or any institution tempt you to sacrifice your moral standards,” but he conceded that, “It takes a long time to develop a philosophy that enables you to do that.” Integrity and self-respect were his most cherished values, “If you lose your self-respect, you’ve lost everything.” Source: Emanuel Levy Cinema 24/7

 

Good for Wayne. I respect him for being true to what he believed and standing up for it. To this day, I wished I’d been there at my base camp in 1966 the day he drove in to visit the troops, so I could shake his hand and listen to what he had to say.  Two years later, his movie, Green Berets, came out the same year as the Tet Offensive—considered by many to be the turning point in the war that led to the defeat of US goals.

What does patriotism mean to you?

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

One Never Forgets

It has been forty-six years since I fought in Vietnam, and watching two movies rebooted my PTSD interrupting my sleep pattern. For years, I usually wake at least once a night and listen. However, since watching the movies, I wake every hour and listen to the night sounds.

In Brothers, one of the two brothers, a captain in the US Marines, goes to Afghanistan on his fourth tour of duty and becomes a tortured and abused POW.  After he is liberated and his captors killed, he returns home suffering from severe PTSD trauma. Tobey Maguire plays Marine Captain Sam Cahill and does a convincing job playing a veteran that is severely damaged by PTSD symptoms.

Watching Maguire act his part reminded me of my first decade back from Vietnam when I drank too much and often woke once or twice and carried a loaded weapon around the house checking the doors and windows.  More than once, when overwhelmed by a burst of anger, I punched holes in walls with fists.

The anger comes fast—one moment you are calm as a rusty doorknob and an instant later an exploding fragmentation grenade.

In the Valley of Elah, Tommy Lee Jones plays a father, who was also a Vietnam combat veteran, searching for answers to explain his son’s death soon after returning from Iraq. In this film, we see how war strips young men of their humanity—that thin veneer that comes with so-called civilization.

From Brothers, I was reminded of the homeless Vietnam veteran I met in an alley in Pasadena, California one early morning. He had been a prisoner of war and similar to the character Tobey Maguire plays, was severely traumatized with PTSD symptoms.

The VA rated the homeless vet I met in that Pasadena alley as 100% disabled by PTSD possibly explaining why he was homeless—not because he could not afford an apartment.  The disability from the VA was more than enough to support him.  However, most of that money went for drugs and booze for him and his homeless buddies.

Then there was another vivid image of a Vietcong POW being tortured by South Korean troops during a field operation I was on.  The South Koreans hung that Vietnamese POW by his heels from a tree limb and pealed the skin off his body while he lived.

In the Valley of Elah reminded me of an ambush where a team of Marines I was a member of went out in a heavy rain at sunset and after an hour or so of slogging through the gloomy downpour, we stopped in a rice paddy with water to our necks and stayed there for more than an hour waiting for complete darkness before moving into position. We shared that rice paddy with a very large king cobra.

In the Marines, one does not question orders—we do or die—so we stayed in that paddy knowing a king cobra was in the water with us.

Both of these films are dramatic examples of what war does to young men and their families.

Some combat veterans avoid seeing films such as these two. However, I do not. I do not want to return to that time where I avoided talking and thinking of my part in the Vietnam War, because at night when we struggle to sleep there is no escape. We cannot hide from the monster that came home with us living inside our skin as if it were an unwanted parasite.

Discover A Prisoner of War for Life

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

The Blood Price – Part 4/4

Granted, World Wars I and II, and the Korean Conflict were unavoidable, and it could be argued that the War in Afghanistan was justified. However, we did not need to send American troops to Vietnam or Iraq and both of these wars were based on lies.

One reason for these needless wars may be linked to corporate profits while keeping unemployment down.

The Great Depression originated in the U.S. and had its start around September 4, 1929 and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday).

The Great Depression devastated countries around the globe. In the United States, industrial production dropped by 46%; foreign trade dropped 70% and unemployment reached 25%—in some countries it was as high as 33%.

The wartime economic boom during World War II caused a dramatic increase in employment, which paralleled the expansion of industrial production. In 1944, unemployment dipped to 1.2 percent of the civilian labor force, a record low in American economic history.

In 1954, after the Korean Conflict unemployment in the United States went up to about 6%. Then the economy turned down in the summer of 1957 and reached a low point in the spring of 1958. Industrial production fell 14%, corporate profits dropped 25% and unemployment reached 7.5%

The US needed another war to stimulate the economy. The US had already unofficially been in Vietnam since 1953 and in 1964 the war became official with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

In 1960, unemployment in the US was 6.1%, but by 1964, unemployment dropped to 4.8% and then 3.4% by 1968. However, a year after the Vietnam War, unemployment was up again to 7.2%—a 212% increase since 1968.

It is now obvious that war is another option to keep Americans employed. Since the end of the Korean Conflict in 1953, the United States has been involved in thirty-two wars/conflicts. Source: List of wars involving the United States

I started to add up all the months and years US troops have been fighting somewhere in the world since 1953 and gave up—just Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (three of the thirty-two conflicts) add up to more than forty years of combat.

In fact, before World War II, the allocation of resources to military purposes was typically no more than 1 percent of GNP, except during actual warfare, which occurred infrequently. Wartime and peacetime were distinct, and during peacetime—that is, almost all the time—the societal opportunity cost of “guns” was nearly nil.

However, following the Korean Conflict, military purchases reached an unprecedented level for “peacetime” and, despite some fluctuations, remained at or above this elevated level permanently. During 1948-86, military purchases cumulated to $6.316 Trillion, averaging about $162 billion per year, or 7.6 percent of GNP. Source: Cato Institute

In conclusion, after the Korean Conflict, the US capitalist consumer economy added war to its financial formula, and the price has been decades of spilled blood all over the world. The last question is, “Who benefits the most?”

Return to The The Blood Price – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

The Blood Price – Part 3/4

The excuse for the wars in Southeast Asia was to protect Western democracy from the possible spread of Communism. To do this, the United States dropped over 7 million tons of bombs in Vietnam. In Laos, the US dropped 270 million cluster bombs and more than 20,000 Laotians have been killed by these bombs since the war.

In Cambodia, the US dropped 2.75 million tons of bombs.

For a comparison, in World War II a total of just over 2 million tons of bombs were dropped.

The Vietnam War lasted 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day. The number of military dead numbered in the millions. There is no way to count the number of civilian dead.

It is estimated that in Vietnam 411,000 – 2,000,000 civilians were killed; 20,000 – 200,000 in Laos, and 200,000 – 300,000 in Cambodia.


The United States is a peace loving nation!

What about government and religion in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia?

Vietnam has a Communist government. According to the CIA Factbook, 80.8% of the population belongs to no religion; 9.3% are Buddhists and 6.7% are Catholic (that’s almost seven times the ratio of Christians in Japan and we won that war).

In addition, Laos is still a Communist state. The predominant religion is Theravada Buddhism (67%). Animism is common among the mountain tribes. Buddhism and spirit worship coexist easily. There also are small numbers of Christians and Muslims—only 1.5% of the population is Christian.

Cambodia, however, is a multiparty democracy under a constitutional monarchy. It is no longer a Communist/Socialist state, and 96.4% of its population is Buddhist while 2.1% is Muslim. Despite the French colonization in the 19th century, Christianity made little impact in the country. There are around 20,000 Catholics in Cambodia which represents 0.15% of the total population and less than 2,000 Protestants.

If we use the result of America’s wars in Southeast Asia as an example of what is to come, what will the Middle East look like fifty years after the war in Afghanistan ends?

Continued on August 4, 2012 in The Blood Price – Part 4 or return to Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

The Blood Price – Part 2/4

For the United States to defeat Japan, the Japanese suffered tremendous loss of life. Before the two atomic bombs were dropped that ended the war in the Pacific, Osaka was hit hard suffering more than 10,000 civilian casualties in March, June, July and August 1945.

Total dead on both sides of World War II is estimated to be more than 73 million. The majority of deaths took place in the Soviet Union and China (about 85%). Japan lost more than two million troops and 500,000 – 1,000,000 civilians.

In comparison, the United States only lost 1,700 civilians.

The result today: The government of Japan is a constitutional monarchy where the power of the Emperor is limited, a ceremonial figurehead—a symbol of the state and the unity of the people. Power is held mostly by the Prime Minister of Japan and other elected members of the Diet (Japan’s parliament).  The Diet is made up of two legislative houses.

How about religion in Japan? Shinto (practiced by 83% of the population) and Buddhism (92 million Japanese identify themselves as Buddhists) are Japan’s two major religions. The Muslim population is about 115,000 – 125,000 and there are about 5,000 Hindus in the country along with 2,000 Jews.

About one to two million Japanese are Christians (1% of Japan’s population) and many live in Western Japan where Christian missionaries were active during the 16th century.

Then there is Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos where the United States failed to achieve its goals—maybe!

Continued on August 3, 2012 in The Blood Price – Part 3 or return to Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”