Organizing the "Battle of Seattle"

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Jose G. Perez" wrote:

> >> BEYOND ALL THAT was a factor the ruling class
> could not ignore.
>
> The U.S. army had been BROKEN. It was DEFEATED. By 1971, the U.S. army in
> Vietnam was no longer an effective fighting force.

List members under 50 are perhaps apt not to be sufficiently aware of
this -- one of the best kept of the many open secrets of U.S. capitalism.

Veteran after veteran I talked to in the early '70s told the same essential
tale, which Jose summarizes very nicely. And it was not only the draftees.
One vet (who had been badly wounded and had spent a year in a
Veterans hospital) told the following incident. His platoon was on
ambush, and had mined a trail with claymore mines. An NVA unit
came  around a curve in the trail. The sergeant reached for the switch
which would ignite the mines. The lieutenant pulled his sidearm and
aimed it at the sergeant. When the NVA commander got about to
where they lay in ambush, he stepped aside as his men walked by,
looked around, smiled, bent down and detached a wire leading to
the mines. He stood there until the last of his men had passed another
bend n the trail, smiled again, and walked on.

This was not an exceptional case but the rule. I don't know what the
case would be with the all-volunteer military the U.S. has now --
but my son (who had been silly enough to join the Marine Reserves
and got called up for the Gulf War) reported that the half of his
platoon who were black or hispanic were of the opinion that they
would not make waves that time but that they would never fight
peasants in latin america.

Carrol