The Vietnam War myth

[Bear]

And the war was the first time the U.S. gave the president war powers.

The first use of such powers was done by Thomas Jeffersion in the war with the Barbary pirates. After dispatching a US fleet - Jefferson informed congress but there was no declaration of war. For a while there were joint operations with the Swedish navy in the fight against the Barbary pirates. This war is the source of the line - to the shores of Tripoli in the Marine Corps Hymn.

The action on the Barbary is not comparable to the War In Vietnam. The were 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam trying to secure an imaginary line i.e. Mason Dixon to secure the "freedom and liberty of the south from the north. Quite arbitrary in macro historical terms. Ho Chi Minh did make formal requests to the U.S. for diplomatic and trade relations in late 1950s but was not dealt with appropriately. That is when we turned a school teacher into the lap of the Chicoms. The U.S. then ended up with a dead dog in the South, even the C.I.A. had to assasinate the President of the South because he was too "bizzaro" to take care of business. A true cluster fk from every angle from French Indo China, Japan and then the U.S. The French tried to warn us but U.S. arrogance was fueled by the Military - Industrial combine (Act 1). Twenty five years later the new CEO of the Combine, Bush steered the U.S. into Iraq in the name of his father and oil contracts.