I am a Vietnam vet and I agree with the following words written by Mike Walker (Col. USMC, retired) in response to a note from a friend. I was always impressed with the Vietnamese people, their intelligence and sense of family. I've always thought that it would only be a matter of time that they would move to an open society.

Harry,

Thanks for the heads up on the Vietnam-HD show on the History Channel. Cannot imagine a presentation that balanced being made in the 1970's or 1980's.

In an ironic sense, the golf course is a good thing that came from the war. On balance, I think we did leave a mark on Vietnam that has proven to be more positive then negative.

The war, as any war, was horrific. After you get past that then the question for the current Government of Vietnam was to make sense of why we fought against them. 

When I got mobilized in 1990 found myself in Thailand for about a month with the Thai Royal Marines who were defending their border from the Vietnam-backed State of Cambodia (SOC). One of the things brought back to the G-2 was the SOC counterinsurgency structure developed by the Vietnamese to defeat the Khmer Rouge et al. It was an exact duplicate of the US structure used in the RVN, right down to Military Regions and a shoestring CORDS program. Obviously the NVA thought we were doing something right back then.

I think they looked to how we worked with Japan and Germany after WWII and how we stood by South Korea after the war there and then the Vietnamese looked to see how the Soviets and the Peoples Republic of China treated them after the war.

I think they finally concluded that we were wrong in their eyes but for honorable and respectable reasons. I think they realize that the United States is far better and stronger ally than any one else they could hope to find. Today, our military relationship with Vietnam is strong and growing.  As the golf course shows, American values and American concepts of economic freedoms are something to emulate in Vietnam. 

Perhaps in the end, the idea of what the United States was fighting for then in Vietnam proved to be more powerful than what happened geopolitically.

How the worm turns.

Semper Fi,

Mike

http://www.dananggolfclub.com/  

OBAMA’S JOB-DESTROYING MACHINE GRINDS ON

John Hinderaker, Powerline

I can’t figure out whether it is due to malice or incompetence; all I know is, if you wanted to hurt America’s economy, you would do pretty much everything the Obama administration does. Energy policy is the absolute worst. First Obama delayed (and perhaps killed) the Keystone pipeline. Michael Ramirez sums up that decision, which can be explained only as an economically irrational attempt to shore up the president’s liberal base in advance of next year’s election:

It seems that every day brings a new Obama administration outrage. Today, it was the USDA’s decision to delay shale drilling in Ohio:

President Obama’s United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing. …

Speaking of the WNF gas drilling, one environmentalist group spokesman suggested that moving forward with drilling “could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,” even though Wayne National Forest already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation which this study does not affect.

It has been estimated that that drilling in the Utica shale will produce up to 204,500 jobs by 2015. The Obama administration claims that those jobs have only been delayed and are not gone forever. Sure. In the unlikely event that Obama is re-elected, the only constraint on his economically destructive policies will be gone, and we can expect him to do everything possible to kill energy production and destroy job creation.

Contradictions galore.....

Obama ♥ the Big Guys

Big government, big labor, and big business in bed together.

Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard

By his own account, President Obama is the champion and protector of the little guy. He said last week he wants no one left “in a second-class status in this United States of America.” He’s “determined” to “make sure that nobody out there is going bankrupt just because somebody in their family is getting sick.” He’s committed to making Washington “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests [and] not just people who are hurting now, but also responsive to future generations.” Obama identifies himself with the 99 percent.

Yet the winners in the nearly three years of Obama’s presidency are the big guys — big business, big labor, and big government. Corporate profits have reached record levels. The influence of the biggest labor unions has surged in Washington, where it matters most. The federal government has grown in size and reach.

Meanwhile, the weak economy has hurt small business, the country’s number one job creator. Temporary tax breaks haven’t helped, and the threat of new taxes and a fresh barrage of regulations have put a crimp in expansion and hiring. Big business isn’t expanding or
hiring much either. A headline in Slate reflected this: “More Profits, Fewer Jobs.” 

Labor leaders have entrée at the White House and federal departments and agencies as never before. The most frequent visitor to the White House in Obama’s first year was Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union. The president delayed trade treaties with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia until they were altered to satisfy labor officials. If Obama understands that higher levels of unionization are associated with greater joblessness, he’s never let on.

Big government is a cliché that’s all the more true in the Obama era. Federal employment grew by 140,800 in Obama’s first two years, and the clout of federal officialdom has increased substantially. The Environmental Protection Agency has mounted a regulatory offensive the business community and Republicans have challenged but failed to halt. Obamacare, scheduled to go fully into effect in 2014, would give Washington control over the way health care is dispensed, financed, and regulated — not a takeover, but close to it.

“If you are big in today’s Washington, you lead a charmed life,” Washington consultant David Smick says.

In Obama’s case, there’s more to the gap between what he professes and what his administration has produced than meets the eye. Yes, his hypocrisy is breathtaking. But it represents the way he prefers to govern. Dealing with a few big institutions, even if they are dinosaurs, is easier than consulting more widely. So is relying on government to remedy every national ill, rather than letting markets, private groups, and individuals play pivotal roles.

“What an irony for an administration that claims populist roots,” Smick says. “Policy prescriptions for the most part use the top-down approach. Bring out the GE guy and various big labor bosses to deal with the jobless nightmare when the bulk of the solution involves fostering small business start-ups.”

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s CEO, happens to be chairman of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. GE is famous for having paid no corporate income taxes in 2009 and 2010 and shipping thousands of jobs overseas. The council’s membership consists of 23 corporate chiefs, two labor leaders, one economist, one biologist, and zero representatives of small business.

For contributions to his reelection campaign, Obama has tapped the segment of big business he’s referred to as “fat cat bankers”: Wall Street. According to the Washington Post, he has raised more from financiers and bankers than all of the Republican presidential candidates combined. He’s raised more at Bain Capital than Mitt Romney, who cofounded the firm.

Wall Street has reason to be grateful. “During Obama’s tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled,” Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post wrote last week. “Wall Street firms .  .  . earned more in the first two and a half years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration.”

Smaller community banks haven’t fared as well. Wall Street banks have the manpower to comply with new restrictions endorsed by Obama and passed by Congress. Small banks don’t. Big banks are thriving while interest rates are near zero. The loan business of small banks suffers because of these rates.

At the same time, corporations are sitting on nearly $2 trillion amassed during the Obama era. If invested, the money would surely stir economic growth and job creation. But Obama has refused to remove impediments to investment, chiefly future tax hikes and regulations.

Organized labor is also a big-time funder of Obama’s campaign, as you might expect given the president’s sensitivity to every need of big unions. He’s turned the National Labor Relations Board into a knee-jerk advocate of the most extreme pro-union positions. And his Labor Department no longer requires labor leaders to disclose many specifics of their expenditure of union money. This hamstrings government oversight and leaves union members in the dark.

In Obama’s strengthening of big government, the biggest beneficiaries are unelected bureaucrats. They’re unleashed. The new health care law would create 159 new boards, commissions, or programs, including the Independent Payment Advisory Board with power to decide what Medicare pays for and, by extension, what private insurance companies cover. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created with sweeping authority over how money is loaned to consumers. The bureau is empowered to write its own rules and decide its budget without depending on Congress for funding. The Federal Reserve delivers the money.

Last week, Obama veered from his top priority with unemployment at 9 percent: more jobs. A Canadian company plans to hire as many as 20,000 workers to build an oil pipeline from the province of Alberta to Texas. Its application, pending since 2008, has sparked growing protests by environmental activists. Obama promises to decide personally whether to approve the pipeline. And last week, he took a preliminary step, delaying the decision until after the 2012 election. So for now, the little guy lost. The winner: big green.