Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

I don't remember it, but anything would make more sense than his Satan ramblings.

I wondered how and when Voight became so religiously minded. That led to

Cowboy

The movie star Jon Voight, once an icon of the counterculture, is now among America’s loudest conservative voices supporting Israel

by Marc Trac

[...]

“When the left walked away from the murder that took place when we pulled out of Vietnam—all the millions of people who were massacred when we pulled out—it should’ve awakened anybody that was on the other side, who was against the war,” he told me.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/cowboy

Seems his childhood and Israel. He also looks an avowed Onward Christian American Nationalist Soldier.

That Vietnam reference led to, Five myths about the Vietnam War

No, Viet Cong guerrillas weren’t scrappy underdogs battling inept South Vietnamese forces.

By Lan Cao
Lan Cao, a professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, is the author, most recently, of the novel “Lotus and the Storm.”
September 29, 2017

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick say their multi-part PBS documentary about the Vietnam War, which concluded this past week, was intended to unpack a complex conflict and to embark upon the process of healing and reconciliation. The series has catapulted the Vietnam War back into the national consciousness. But despite thousands of books, articles and films about this moment in our history, there remain many deeply entrenched myths.

which led to the comments, summed up pretty well i think in these two

kbrook2
10/3/2017 6:37 PM EDT

this article itself tries to create some myths itself--as if the National Liberation front (NLF)--not the derogatory " vietcong" which was used throughout Burns' doc-- -- were better equipped than the u.s and its puppet forces--yeah, especially those NLF helicopter squadrons and jets.
in fact , "At first the NLF used hand-made weapons such as spears, daggers and swords. However, over a period of time, it built up a large supply of captured weapons. A US army survey of weapons in 1964 discovered that 90% of weapons taken from the NLF had previously belonged to the ARVN and the US army."
http://spartacus-educational.com/VNnlf.htm.

and the piece continues to frame the u.s. war ON vietnam as if the uprising in the southern part of one country, Vietnam, was not indigenous by saying
"in reality, the Viet Cong, the pro-North force in South Vietnam, was armed by North Vietnam — which planned, controlled and directed Viet Cong campaigns in the South — the Soviet Union and China.
As others have clearly pointed out, that while the Burns doc is a mixed bag, it rests on the "foundational lie" that the war was a civil war. it was the u.s. that refused to allow election in 1956 that would have reunited the country, knowing as eisenhower stated that ho chi minh would have won with 80% of the vote. [my emphasis]

Desultory Fool
10/3/2017 4:13 PM EDT

What impressed me about Burn's Documentary was the history of Vietnam. The years of attempted domination and colonization by the Chinese, French, Japanese and French again and then the USA. It was with particular interest I noted the French begging the US to get involved to bail them out of a bad situation later working against U.S. interests in Vietnam, then criticizing the US involvement. Now that takes a big nerve. What a resilient people. After thousands of years of war and rebellion you have a generation living in peace for the first time. Amazing. I in no way wish to minimize the U.S. involvement but it was the equivalent of a minute of an hour compared to the other countries which tried to dominate Vietnam.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-the-vietnam-war/2017/09/29/467ef3e0-a474-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html