Medved: Vietnam and the Rise of the New Left

"Every point Mr. Medved makes is factual"

His points are opinions and hardly "factual."

"since (Medved) was one of the major antiwar activists of the time, he most certainly has the qualifications to analyze and dissect the antiwar movement."

Major? That's entirely laughable. Cite a source detailing Medved's actions during the war. He was a "major" activist in his own mind, perhaps; not in anyone else's mind or historical account.

"He is funny and reasonable in his manner, not remotely unctuous."

Considering the subject matter of his talk, I'd say Medved is uber-unctuous. I suggest looking up the word, friend.

"Accusing him of being "an apologist for imperialism" is ridiculous"

Vietnam was and is a nation that had done nothing to the United States, a nation that wanted only to be free of foreign domination. Anyone saying the United States' reason for invading Vietnam was anything but criminal is living in the realm of fantasy. The horrors visited upon the Vietnamese people -- the slaughter of more than a million, the environmental degradation and that degradation's ongoing legacy today, are acts that only imperialist America and its apologists would or could condone. Robert MacNamara, the man responsible for orchestrating the fucking war, stated in his memoir that the war was based on a lie, the entire episode a mistake. So who the fuck's word are you going to take? Medved with his smarmy, odious commentary? Or the man who was actually responsible for the war's existence?

"(I) served in Nam in '68, and attended various demonstrations from '69 on"

And now what? You're a smarmy pro-war conservative standing alongside scum such as Medved? Do the conservative whackyfucks appeal to your sense of anger and frustration? They're good at redirecting your anger toward those who aren't responsible for the way things are in America. They own a well-oiled propaganda machine which Medved feeds.

America is an imperialist nation. It has been the aggresor in dozens of countries around the world, particularly post-WW2 (pre-WW2 mostly in our own hemisphere). Anyone who says otherwise does not know American history, or has bought into the sanitized "approved" version of it. The Vietnam War was a part of the paranoid anti-commie fantasies that fueled everything from the McCarthy hearings to Ronald the Senile Reagan's funding of the Contras and death squads of Central America in the 1980s, actions which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans.

So what? Are you waiting for some conservtive jackball to come along and lie to you telling you America means well around the world with its foreign policy? Even while it murders thousands of people by support of dictators, torturers, and despots around the world who are friendly to American financial interests? If so, you've found your man in Medved and all of the conservative apologists who continue to stoke the fires of imperialist capitalism across th world. Why the hell did you protest the Vietnam War? Are you looking for someone to justify what you did in the war? Are ideals only for the young? If so, then grow young, my friend. Grow young.

...So being a peace activist is a rationalization of the fear to go to war?
It's only fear if it's resisting the inevitable, and I thought we humans have grown up enough not to accept war as a part of life.
This is despicable. I'd love to hear conservatives like him make sense, I'd like to cross the divide, but this talk was mostly a pack of ad-hominem attacks, which are all these guys have to work with. It's the same way preachers and rabble-rousers like Ray Comfort or Dinesh D'Souza make bold-faced, superficial jokes to get everyone to join in their view; the way a bully appeals to the crowd by calling a victim names in front of them without leaving room for defense or logical discussion.
He cites polls of how people felt supporting the war, for example, instead of directly dealing with the complaints about the war that humanitarians like "crotchety" Howard Zinn were trying to get out in the open. "It was fun!" he says about the reason for protests, but I'm suspicious how this applies to Kent State...
People hate the war because they hate Bush? I had no reason to hate him before his blunders, I was a supporter myself. He relies on the inherent separateness of the state and its detractors, who he can't imagine to be anything but disagreeing out of selfishness. He says our enemy in the Middle East is "implacable" as if they were not human, yet he supports himself by the unwaivering loyalty he shows to God and the state. He also claims that all these movies that we hippies get our ideas about the war from are promoted by nostalgic professor-types, but Oliver Stone was a veteran himself as the character in "Born on the Fourth of July." The state is the people, and the people must come before the projection they compose.

"bapyou" is so dead wrong on so much. The VVAW never had more than 1000 members (if that many were really Vietnam vets), and did more to upset and irritate Congress than anything else. Every point Mr. Medved makes is factual, and since he was one of the major antiwar activists of the time, he most certainly has the qualifications to analyze and dissect the antiwar movement. He is funny and reasonable in his manner, not remotely unctuous. Accusing him of being "an apologist for imperialism" is ridiculous, and says much more about the accuser's mindset than anything else. I was in college as the war started, served in Nam in '68, and attended various demonstrations from '69 on, and can attest to Mr. Medved's accuracy in describing the history of those days.

I'd like to see this vapid apologist for imperialism in a discussion with William Blum ... America's foremost historian of CIA/US Military misdeeds around the world since WW2. Medved is odious. Blum would set his head spinning with something Medved lacks: Perspective.

The entire Vietnam anti-war movement was a response to the draft? Get off your high horse, Medved: The anti-war movement was spearheaded by VETERANS OF THE VIETNAM WAR YOU JACKASS!

More unctuousness. This guy oozes unctuousness. He himself, of course, although a member of the generation for which he presumes to speak, did not serve in Vietnam of course. Yep, there's no other motivation for protesting a war other than the fact that you don't want to fight in it. There's no morality other than self-preservation. That is what you are asking us to believe, Medved. Did you go to Yale to escape the draft like four-deferement Cheney Medved? Ha ha ha. Any school that would pay this guy to speak is not one I would call enlightened.

Jackass! Jackass! Jackass!

Thank you. Good-bye.

Michael Medved is an odious, unctuous apologist for Imperialist America.

Disloyalty Medved? Disloyalty to whom Medved? Disloyalty to a bunch of thieving liars called the Bush administration? You bet!

As I said: Unctuous.