Dear o sung wu,

The US Constitution was set up to prevent whoever headed the country from involving the country in war on his own. Unless there is a domestic insurrection, an attack on the US, a treaty obligation or a declaration of war by Congress US troops are not to be sent into action. The presidents who did this should have been impeached as violating the basic law of the land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States#:~:text=For%20the%20United%20States%2C%20Article%20One%2C%20Section%20Eight,nor%20does%20the%20Constitution%20itself%20use%20this%20term.

“The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-allied Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war.”

The war in Vietnam was authorized by the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which was based on the lie that the North Vietnamese made an unprovoked attack. The US Navy had been attacking North Vietnamese installations even though we were supposedly at peace with North Vietnam. The resolution was a result of a North Vietnamese attack which was provoked by the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution#:~:text=The%20Gulf%20of%20Tonkin%20Resolution%20or%20the%20Southeast,in%20response%20to%20the%20Gulf%20of%20Tonkin%20incident.

“Out of the hope of provoking such an incident, Johnson ordered the Maddox to continue to cruise off the coast of North Vietnam, to be joined by another destroyer, USS Turner Joy with orders "to attack any force that attacks them".[42] Both destroyers were ordered to sail 8 miles from North Vietnam in waters that Americans asserted were international waters, disregarding North Vietnam's claim to the 12-mile limit.[42] The Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, ordered his staff to "pull together" the resolution Bundy had written in May-June, just in case Johnson decided to submit it to Congress.[42] On 3 August 1963, the South Vietnamese in their Swift boats raided Cape Vinhson and Cua Ron.[43] The cruise of the American destroyers was not directly connected to the raid, but Herrick knew from reading the summaries of decrypted North Vietnamese radio messages that the North Vietnamese believed that it was.

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Herrick received orders to "show the gauntlet" and prove to the North Vietnamese that the Americans would sail off North Vietnam in waters that the Americans insisted were international waters.”

The US really did not care about the fate of the Vietnamese people. After Vietnam split into north and south with Ho Chi Minh’s government in the north and a US supported puppet government in the south many Vietnamese (mainly Catholic) fled the north for the south preferring the US puppet government to the communist government in the north.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom

The US based a propaganda campaign on this movement. However, much more sympathy was shown to the Hungarians who fled Hungary at the same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956#:~:text=Hungarian%20Revolution%20of%201956.%20Jump%20to%20navigation%20Jump,lasting%20from%2023%20October%20until%2010%20November%201956.

“On Sunday, 28 October 1956, as some 55 million Americans watched Ed Sullivan's popular television variety show, with the then 21-year-old Elvis Presley headlining for the second time, Sullivan asked viewers to send aid to Hungarian refugees fleeing from the effects of the Soviet invasion. Presley himself made another request for donations during his third and last appearance on Sullivan's show on 6 January 1957. Presley then dedicated a song for the finale, which he thought fitted the mood of the time, namely the gospel song "Peace in the Valley". By the end of 1957, these contributions, distributed by the Geneva-based International Red Cross as food rations, clothing and other essentials, had amounted to some CHF 26 million (US$6 million in 1957 dollars), the equivalent of $54,600,000 in today's dollars.[202] On 1 March 2011, István Tarlós, the Mayor of Budapest, made Presley an honorary citizen posthumously, and a plaza located at the intersection of two of the city's most important avenues was named after Presley as a gesture of gratitude.”

I feel sadness for those who fought, killed, suffered and died on both sides of that rotten, illegal war.

Thank you once again DAVID F. You knowledge and scholarship never ceases to amaze me. And I accept everything you said in your most recent explanatory note as being factual and true, so I'd never dare to debate you on any of it.

Being soldiers, all we were told prior to embarkation, we were there to prevent the Communist North Vietnamese from pushing down into South Vietnam, very much against their wishes and interests, nothing more. Whether we were brainwashed by our superiors I've no idea? The only thing I do know now; is we should never have been there in the first place. Possibly saving the lives of at least 504 good Australian soldiers.

Thank you DAVID F for taking the time and energy, to bother to explain these things to me, facts that I've never previously known, and as a Veteran, I think the whole damn campaign should've been far better explained to us all. With more detail and facts, thus at least we'd know the reason(s) why we were being sent over there, in the first instance.

Dear o sung wu,

Thanks for the compliments, but scholarship is something much deeper than my posts. I appealed to my memory, but I didn’t doublecheck the sources of my memory. I merely remembered things I knew in the past without rechecking. I cited Wikipedia rather than going to the sources of the Wikipedia article. What I posted may be entirely accurate. However, the Wikipedia article may not be accurate as it may have mangled the material. My memory may not be great as I will be 95 this month. What I told you may be entirely factual, but I did not do the work a scholar would do. A scholar would have access to the sources for the Wikipedia article rather than Wikipedia, and I don’t have access to the sources. The sources for the Wikipedia article may be secondary material rather than original.

What I wrote is true to the best of my knowledge, but the best of my knowledge may not be good enough

"A former top firefighter claims he and 22 emergency services chiefs were 'fobbed off' by Prime Minister Scott Morrison when they penned a chilling warning about impending bushfires and catastrophic weather in Australia months ago.
david f,
Do fire chiefs need to get the ok from a PM to fight fires ? If so, why don't we rid ourselves of all chiefs & managers altogether & whenever trouble is brewing we just ring the PM for the go-ahead ?
I'd have thought that fire chiefs make on-the-spot decisions, divorced from bureaucrats & politicians !

Dear Individual,

The job of any executive is more than making on the spot decisions. It is also preparing for eventualities, The fire chiefs accurately predicted the eventuality of the fires. However, fire chiefs do not have funds at their disposal to order the equipment needed for the anticipated tasks. They had neither funds nor man power to order preparations such as building access roads through the forests. For that they needed the cooperation of government. Without such cooperation they were powerless to take the necessary actions. By ignoring them Morrison neither saw that necessary equipment was purchased nor necessary preparations made. The forest fires need not have done the damage they did,