Noam Chomsky on the 50th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War
January 27th will mark the 50th Anniversary of the peace treaty that ended the American war against Vietnam, and Bob had a long discussion with Noam Chomsky about that event.…
Encore Episode: Tin Soldiers and Nixon’s Coming . . . 52 Years After the Kent State Killings
It’s the 52nd anniversary of the killings at Kent State University. In a special encore episode, we’re reposting our Kent State episode from 2020.
Listen in: https://apple.co/3kCCxER
In this episode, we commemorate the anniversary of the tragic events of May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University, where agents of the state murdered 4 students and shot 9 others. Students, who’d been told the war was winding down in Vietnam, erupted in protest at campuses all over America when Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia on April 30th.
80,000,000 Bombs in Laos: A Conversation with Sera Koulabdara of “Legacies of War”
In this episode, Bob had a conversation with Executive Director Sera Koulabdara (@SeraKoulabdara) of “Legacies of War” about the 50+ year crisis of unexploded ordnance (UXOs) in Laos. Scott was away on assignment.
Listen: https://bit.ly/LegaciesGandR
At the same time as it was attacking Vietnam, the U.S. conducted a “secret war” against Laos through the air, dropping 2 million tons of bombs as part of its “sideshow” to the main war against the Vietnamese Revolution. Included in that massive campaign were 270,000,000 cluster bombs, smaller bombs–about baseball-sized–or “bomblets” that often did not detonate. So today, decades after the war ended, about 80,000,000 bombs remain in Laos.
The Reality of the Tet Offensive: Military Failure and Economic Crisis
cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable
by Bob Buzzanco
Tet was a pivot point of the Vietnam War, and it’s been misrepresented ever since……
At the end of January the media will commemorate one of the more important and decisive events of the Vietnam War, the Tet Offensive. On January 30th, 1968 the combined enemy forces of the Viet Cong, the People’s Liberation Armed Forces in the South, and the People’s Army of Vietnam from the North attacked virtually every center of military and political importance in the Republic of Vietnam, even invading the U.S. Embassy grounds. Within sixty days, President Lyndon Johnson would reject a request for a massive reinforcement of troops to Vietnam, begin to de-escalate the war, and withdraw from the 1968 presidential campaign. Tet was as determinative as any event in the Vietnam era and has maintained near-mythic status since.