Firstly I went with my dad to the firs Thai restaurant I have ever been to. My Mindipedia tells me that my former references to Thailand include America's Next Top Model when they visited there... and that's about it. Essentially a few mental images of architectural styling, clothes, and culture. Now I can add food.
Thai food is spicy and places lots of emphasis on coconuts. Thailand is a place in betwen China and India, making it a sort of hybrid of these two countries (with more leaning towards India's). There food is bostly veggies, noodles, curry, rice, onions, peppers, spices, chicken, beef, tofu, some fish, soup... You get the idea. I had catfish. It tasted great, but the sauce was kind of spicy -which sucks.
Then I went to visit my sister Emily. Then I got a call from my step-mother's friend Nancy. Nancy is either a Gemini or a Leo. Possibly an Aquarius -but I'm betting more on the first two. She's spunky, very talkative, artistic, friendly, outgoing, spiritual, loves luxury and travel, adventurous... She's pretty cool. She just moved to the area from Palo Alto, which is awesome. She needs to get rid of some stuff, so Emily and ventured to a new Land of Plenty and I got: Candles, Tablecloth/mats, a lamp, and serving tray, some cookies Em made for me... And Em got a new lamp, new plates, a serving dish, some table cloth, some fancy perfume bottles... and we both got to split beautiful crystal wine glasses. Score.
Later I was talking to Emily and discovered she is even more Open-Minded about aliens than I am. And that's saying something. I was like, "Em... you need to talk to Alex. He would lllllove to talk to you." I look forward to any subsequent conversation that may come of this between Alex and Emily. Oh. My. Godzilla.
Then Emily and I talked bout the Vietnam War. I was confused on the difference and location of Vietnam and Korea -if the wars were seperate or referred to the same one. Here's what I found out:
From 1950-1953 North Korea invaded South Korea (North was Communist and South wanted Democracy). The United Nations -especially the U.S.A. -came into the rescue for the Democratic South. The Chinese came to the rescue of the Communist North. The war went back and forth -with the North gaining and losing as much as the south. It ended -of course -in the middle. Which is why today there are American troops chilling in South Korea and Communist Dictator Kim Jong il is blowing up his own people in the North.
Then there's Vietnam...
This was part of the Cold-War area when everyone was paranoid everyone was going to blow everyone up with missiles. There was an arms race between the Soviet Union, China, and it's allies and the U.S. You can call this the fall-out of reprecussions of World Wars 1 and 2. I mean, the Russia and china had supported Hitler trying to take over the world and commit genocide against an entire people. Their death tolls ranged on the millions. The U.S. was rightfully a little paranoid. This is also the era of the "Witch Trials of Communists".
Anyway, as with Korea, Vietnam was divided into a Communist North and a Pro-Democratic South. The U.S. supported the south, and guess who supported the north? It is also important to note that geographically Korea is to the south of China and Vietnam is to the east of China near Japan (who had bombed a certain harbor belonging to a certain country of many states that were not big fans of Japan at the time because of that little incident).
Obviously war ensued. 60,000 U.S. troops died. Cambodia and Laos (neighbors of Vietnam) were also attacked by the U.S. Between 1-3 million Vietnamese soldiers died.
Nixon was leader at this time -trying to make peace with the forces the U.S. most feared. JFK took over from 1961-1963. During thi time the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba occured because Fidel Castro and Russia were best friends. The Berlin Wall was also created.
After Kennedy was assassinated Lyndon B. Johnson took over the mess for the following 6 years. The war grew more intense at this time as more and more men were being sent to the battle scene -from both parties. Guerilla war tactics, gases, bombs, air strikes, land mines, machine guns, revines and forrests... Then Canada and the U.K. started backing away their support of the war. Then Johnson refused to send more U.S. troops to the war. These mixed signals led to unrest and depletion of faith in American citizens towards whether the war could be won.
By 1968 Johnson was attempting peace talks with Vietnam. Another U.S. election was around the corner and since Johnson had lost favor with the people, his Vice President Hubert Humphrey who was running to be current president, lost to Richard Nixon.
From 1969-1972 Nixon started withdrawing troops from Vietnam. The plan was to let the South Vietnamese fight and win the battle themselves. Nixon also wandered over to the Soviet Union with some B-52s pointed right at them and said, "I would really like to end this war, wouldn't you?" Nixon was going around negotiating and initiating peace talks -when all Hell boke loose. The My Lai Massacre was brought to people's attention -U.S. troops had raped and murdered innocent Vietnamese civilians. The Green Beret Affair didn't exactly help things either.
The Anti-War sentiments went into full-swing as the hippie-revolution swept over America. People had grown tired of the undaunting, endless, violent, tragic, convoluted war in a country they knew very little about all the way on the other side of the world. Then the Pentagon Papers were leaked showing the top-secret involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam. Australia and New Zealand then backed out of the war.
In 1972 Henry Kissinger - Nixon's National Security Advisor- begain negotiations with North Korea. When an agreement was made, South Korea opposed it and demanded some changes be made. Knowing this, North Korea publicly announced the agreement to show that the U.S. supported North Korea instead of the South. Pissed off by this tactless tactic, Nixon then initiated Operation Linebacker II or as I like to call it Massive Bombings to Destroy North Korea's Remaining Economic and Industrial Centers What Now B*tch Plan.
After that the Paris Peace Accords were signed and the U.S. could officially remove its involvement from Korea.
Well, if Emily's ideas are crazier than yours, then they are also more easily proven to be crazy. You have to understand that extremism is very easily cooled by logic. I call you extreme about the issue and if she's worse than you? I can tell you that my talk with her would last about 10 minutes max. =)
ReplyDeleteNice write up about the Korean/Vietnam War. I so wished that I could answer so many of those questions in Toastmasters (which was an embarrassment in terms of how dumb people are in terms of history, sorry. I was also reminded of just how painfully awkward and embarrassing (for the people I watch struggle) those meetings are...brrr).
The assumption that we lost the Vietnam War is just that --- an assumption. But I once heard Colin Powell speak and he said that looking at the world now, we WON the war. You have to understand that that war was one of idea-ology, which is just as important as a war over material things. We won that war.
Terrorism is also a war of idea-ology, a war that we are also winning.
Wars aren't all about who killed more people over a period of time and who backed out --- it's also about the ripple effects throughout the years which change societies and peoples. We won that war.
I like your "WHAT NOW B*ITCH" plan.
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"I can tell you that my talk with her would last about 10 minutes max. =)"
ReplyDeleteEm's studying to become a genetisist. She has plenty of logic on her side. Good luck.
"Wars aren't all about who killed more people over a period of time and who backed out --- it's also about the ripple effects throughout the years which change societies and peoples. We won that war."
True true :)