Posted by (((Walt Rostow))) on Mon, 03 Oct 2016 13:26 | #

Hearts and Minds is a 1974 American documentary film about the Vietnam War directed by Peter Davis. The film’s title is based on a quote from President Lyndon B. Johnson: “the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there”.[1] The movie was chosen as Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 47th Academy Awards presented in 1975.[2]

The film premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. Commercial distribution was delayed in the United States due to legal issues, including a temporary restraining order obtained by one of the interviewees, former National Security Advisor Walt Rostow who had claimed through his attorney that the film was “somewhat misleading” and “not representative” and that he had not been given the opportunity to approve the results of his interview

Walt Rostow (also known as Walt Rostow or W.W. Rostow) OBE (October 7, 1916 – February 13, 2003) was a United States economist and political theorist who served as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to US President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966–69.

Prominent for his role in the shaping of US foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, he was a staunch anti-communist, noted for a belief in the efficacy of capitalism and free enterprise, strongly supporting US involvement in the Vietnam War. Rostow is known for his book The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960), which was used in several fields of social science.

His older brother Eugene Rostow also held a number of high government foreign policy posts.

Early life

Rostow was born in New York City to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. His parents Victor and Lillian Rostow, were active socialists, and named Walt after Walt Whitman. His brother Eugene, named for Eugene V. Debs, became a legal scholar, and his brother Ralph, after Ralph Waldo Emerson, a department store manager.

Rostow entered Yale University at age 15 on a full scholarship, graduated at 19, and completed his Ph.D. there in 1940. He also won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford, where he completed a B.Litt. degree. In 1936, during the Edward VIII abdication crisis, he assisted broadcaster Alistair Cooke, who reported on the events for the NBC radio network. After completing his education, he started teaching economics at Columbia University.

Professional and academic career

During World War II, Rostow served in the Office of Strategic Services under William Joseph Donovan. Among other tasks, he participated in selecting targets for US bombardment. Nicholas Katzenbach would later joke: “I finally understand the difference between Walt and me [...] I was the navigator who was shot down and spent two years in a German prison camp, and Walt was the guy picking my targets.”

In 1945, immediately after the war, Rostow became assistant chief of the German-Austrian Economic Division in the United States Department of State in Washington, D.C.. In 1946–1947, he returned to Oxford as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History. In 1947, he became the assistant to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe, and was involved in the development of the Marshall Plan.

Rostow spent a year at Cambridge University as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions. He was professor of economic history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1950 to 1961, and a staff member of the Center for International Studies at MIT from 1951 to 1961. In 1954, he advised President Dwight Eisenhower on economic and foreign policy, and in 1958 he became a speechwriter for him. In August 1954, Rostow and fellow CIA-connected MIT economics professor Max F. Millikan convinced Eisenhower to massively increase US foreign aid for development as part of a policy of spreading American-style capitalist economic growth in Asia and elsewhere, backed by the military.[1][2]

Involvement with the Israeli nuclear program

While working as national security advisor, Rostow became involved in setting the United States’ posture towards Israel. Although he supported military and economic assistance to Israel, Rostow believed that increased public alignment between the two states could run counter to US diplomatic and oil interests in the region. After reviewing the May 1967 report from the Atomic Energy Commission team that had inspected Dimona along with other intelligence, Rostow informed President Johnson that, though the team found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, “there are enough unanswered questions to make us want to avoid getting locked in too closely with Israel.”

Concerns about Israel’s nuclear program were tabled by the United States during the build-up to the Six-Day War and its aftermath. Though Rostow, Johnson, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk tried to convince Israel not to resort to military force, they supported Israel once the war began. When the nuclear issue resurfaced in January 1968, just prior to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s visit to the United States, Rostow recommended that the president make it clear that the United States expected Israel to sign the NPT.[3]

The Stages of Economic Growth

In 1960, Rostow published The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, which proposed the Rostovian take-off model of economic growth, one of the major historical models of economic growth, which argues that economic modernization occurs in five basic stages of varying length: traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption. This became one of the important concepts in the theory of modernization in social evolutionism. Rostow’s thesis was criticized at the time and subsequently as universalizing a model of Western development that could not be replicated in places like Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa.

The book impressed presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who appointed Rostow as one of his political advisers, and sought his advice.[4] When Kennedy became president in 1961, he appointed Rostow as deputy to his national security assistant McGeorge Bundy. Later that year, Rostow became chairman of the US Department of State’s policy planning council. After Kennedy’s assassination, his successor Lyndon B. Johnson promoted Rostow to Bundy’s job after he wrote Johnson’s first State of the Union speech. As national security adviser, Rostow was responsible for developing the government’s policy in Vietnam, and was convinced that the war could be won, becoming Johnson’s main war hawk and playing an important role in bringing Johnson’s presidency to an end.

When Richard Nixon became president, Rostow left office, and over the next thirty years taught economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin with his wife Elspeth Rostow, who later became dean of the school. He wrote extensively in defense of free enterprise economics, particularly in developing nations.

Posted by Down with Dow / Monsanto on Wed, 05 Oct 2016 16:22 | #

Another Vietnam war documentary

Posted by Dr Doom on Sun, 09 Oct 2016 23:31 | #

Most people don’t know why we went to The Nam.  There have been countless theories and many excuses, but the reality is far sickening than this documentary I assure you.  What if I told you we went there for drugs?  Would you think I was a conspiracy nut like Alex Jones?  Well let me tell you, its true.  South Vietnam is where The Golden Triangle was, and it was run by the Montagnards, now known as the Hmong or boat people.  JFK was dirty like his old man.  His family is a crime family.  His Daddy Joe ran Rum during Prohibition and I hear they run drugs now.  One of his pals was Aristotle Onassis, once the Richest Man in the World.  People say he made his fortune with shipping, but they leave out the part about what most of his shipments were illegal drugs.  When the French were fighting Ho Chi Minh, they lost at Dien Bien Phu.  Old Man Onassis, who ended up screwing and marrying Jackie, JFKs widow, called up his old pal Joe’s son JFK, and asked him to protect the Golden Triangle for him from the Communists.  At Paris, they ripped of Ho Chi Minh and the Commies by giving them the North and not any piece of the lucrative heroin trade.  The Golden Triangle made China White, the purest and finest heroin in the World.
You might be interested to know the real reason we’re in Afghanistan now is the poppy fields.  They used to make that shit into Opium during the days of The British Empire.  Baron Rothchild used his dirty Opium dens and the whores he recruited by getting them hooked on Opium to finance the Whole Fucking British Empire.  Today they make the poppy grown in Afghanistan into heroin.  That’s why we’re really there.  Its not the Taliban and Al Queda is actually a CIA operation like ISIS.
Sickening huh?  Our guys think they’re fighting Commies and Terrorists, but actually they’re protecting illegal heroin brought in by CIA.  Both Old Man Bush and Bubba Clinton are big drug guys.  Old Man Bush was CIA director running drugs, and Bubba was the Governor of Arkansas where the drugs on CIA planes land.  There’s a big airport in the middle of nowhere in Silver Springs, Arkansas, that has almost no commercial passenger traffic, but 24/7 cargo planes loaded with CIA run drugs coming in there.

Posted by Just Sayin' on Tue, 11 Oct 2016 12:54 | #

Is this whole thing about rationalizing a case of yellow fever?

For a “White Nationalist” blog the whole thing has become oddly Asia-philic.

I don’t really recognize this blog from where it was a few years ago.

Sad!

Posted by DanielS on Tue, 11 Oct 2016 15:26 | #

Posted by Just Sayin’ on Tue, 11 Oct 2016 12:54 | #

Is this whole thing about rationalizing a case of yellow fever?

For a “White Nationalist” blog the whole thing has become oddly Asia-philic.

I don’t really recognize this blog from where it was a few years ago.

Sad!

Stupid comment.

The Answer is no.

In the particular example, the Vietnam war was neither popular nor highly defensible on the part of the elite - even they tend to recognize it as a mistake; they thought they were fighting communism but were really fighting Vietnamese ethnonationalism.

As for the site’s geo strategy in general: We seek to align European and Asian ethnonationalism against Jews, Muslims and Africans.

Nothing sad about that, it is a very promising outlook.

Posted by DJF on Thu, 13 Oct 2016 14:39 | #

Not all the “right” was in favor of the Vietnam War, the John Birch Society came out against it in 1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1EFlMKV6sY

Robert Welch thought that it was a no win war which was just going to cost the US lives, blood and money while at the same time distracting everyone while LBJ pushed through his “Great Society”

Buckley made a final break with JBS after this and tried to destroy them.  Unfortunately with Buckley getting the support from the MSM he was made “Mr Conservative” and the rest is history

Posted by DanielS on Thu, 13 Oct 2016 14:56 | #

That’s true, but through time, the idea that the right was against the war has been mythologized in David McGowan’s conspiracy theory that indeed the right was against the war, and therefore the CIA and military industrial complex had to concoct a false opposition “so ugly” and distasteful to normal Americans, that they would be turned off by the anti war movement and its right wing proponents.

It is a ridiculous theory of course. And it seems McGowan was hypnotized to create a story to put attention and blame on hippies and to distract from the YKW and racial consciousness.

This is more the right wing that I am addressing when I say “fuck you” - the right wing of today,which accepts the sundry Jewish stories to misrepresent what hippies of the Vietnam war time were about. They did have an organic motive (which McGowan and right wingers deny) which was midtdasein - being amidst their folk (as opposed to non being in utility of the draft)..the right wing which tries to accept Jewish affectations associated with the White kids of the era - “Free Love”, “Civil Rights”,  liberal feminism, universal openness and peace..

These were Jewish affectations….ruses to be associated with the hippies by Jewish media…

In this way, they get a new generation of right wing kids to blame “hippies”, i.e., White people, males in particular - distracting from their important organic motive - midtdasein and away from the fact that Jews and right wingers, were mostly to blame.

The hippies were inarticulate of their organic motive, but they did not have the Internet and other experience to help them articulate their motive. I am particularly suspicious when right wing or alt right girls blame our problems on “hippies.”

Posted by My Lai massacre on Mon, 06 Feb 2017 20:11 | #

My Lai massacre

Posted by Tet offensive turning point: battle of Hue on Mon, 12 Jun 2017 21:13 | #

The “Tet offensive” was a surprise holiday (Tet is a holiday) attack by the Viet Cong all throughout South Vietnam in early 1968; an additional part of the surprise was that they brought the fight to the cities in the South. It had been assumed that the Viet Cong were only jungle fighters: The urban battle for the ancient imperial city of Hue, Vietnam was highly significant, and marekd a precipitous downward turning point for American morale - after that, the question became, not “will America win?” but rather, it was understood that it wouldn’t, and the question became instead, “what’s the best way to get out of Vietnam?”

NPR, “Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam”, 12 June 2017:

Posted by Led by the unqualified to kill the unfortunate on Thu, 24 Aug 2017 08:57 | #

Posted by Vietnam war documentary by Ken Burns on Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:48 | #

Documentary film maker Ken Burns is even more obnoxious and self righteous than the standard liberal (Terry Gross coaxes some of that out of him later in the interview; try to ignore it), but he’s made a documentary about the Vietnam war which includes interviews from different perspectives on the war along with footage not seen before - bound to be interesting and provide some insight.

NPR, “In ‘Vietnam War,’ Ken Burns Wrestles With The Conflict’s Contradictions”, 21 Sept 2017:

Posted by Vietnam vets: Alioto, Honan, Lucas on Wed, 31 Jan 2018 17:37 | #

Vietnam Veteran: Michael Alioto

Vietnam Veteran: Thomas Frederick Honan

Vietnam Veteran: Steven M. Lucas

Posted by Tom Hagel on Fri, 02 Feb 2018 23:09 | #

Tom Hagel

Posted by mancinblack on Wed, 07 Feb 2018 14:09 | #

“As a nineteen year old scout and spy for the communist forces in South Vietnam, Hoang Thi No remembers the determination and spirit of her eleven member team of young women who took part in the audacious Tet Offensive that turned the tide of the Vietnam war fifty years ago.

“If we didn’t fight the enemy, they would destroy us all” she said “We were young and weren’t afraid, once we had a strong ideology, we could do anything”

Her unit was known as the Perfume River Squad for the river that runs through Hue, Vietnam’s cultural capital and third biggest city. Four of them died during the fighting that raged through the city for most of that February, two died later in the war.”

More…
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3355168ma

Posted by mancinblack on Wed, 07 Feb 2018 14:19 | #

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3355168

(try the link again..)

Posted by David B. Carlson on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 01:16 | #

David B. Carlson, Manchester, New Hampshire

Posted by Paul Kallas on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 20:43 | #

This Vietnam Vet, Paul Kallas, was drafted in ‘69 and lost his arm (among other catastrophic injury) in 1970. .. a daughter born with spinal bifida (wheel chair bound) as well due to his agent orange exposure. It’s particularly moving that he describes the Vietnamese as good people. He went back to visit in 96.

It is utterly sickening to hear millenials and so on when they blame “hippies” for all the problems we have now..  oh yeah, like they shouldn’t have been resisting the draft….

Posted by Lonejack on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 21:17 | #

I always like to be reminded that my assessment of the times and its meaning as opposed to what we’re told it was about by MSM found agreement in the following comment by a Vietnam vet - it was written in the context of an article by Richard Spencer at the original Alternative Right site. Needless to say, Richard’s assessment of the times wasn’t very deep -

A Vietnam vet calling himself Lonejack agreed with my assessment:

  Agree.

  As a VN vet, I can attest to most of what you say. The effects of the VN-era conscription – that is, having been forced into slave-soldiering in a non-White country’s civil war orchestrated by bankers and corporations, having absolutely nothing to do with the actual defense of a White homeland, and calculatingly prosecuted by LBJ and his Ivy League YKW intelligentsia with absolutely no intent of military victory – reverberate to this day among the White guys who were in our late teens and early twenties during the 60’s, more than 50 thousand of whom died in combat, many of whom were captured and tortured, and hundreds of thousands of whom returned maimed, grossly disfigured, and/or dysfunctional only to be vilified, upon their return, by many elements of the society which sent them.

  When I returned from overseas, my drop-out from family and society into the flower-child milieu had little to do with civil rights or free love. BTW I do not begrudge those who emigrated to Canada to avoid the draft. And, for those interested, the works of author Tim O’Brien, who “served” an extended “tour of duty” as an infantryman in SVN, are richly descriptive, compelling, and well written IMO.

  Commenters on this site (Alternative Right) and in other threads who incessantly demand the boomers to go fuck or shoot themselves, while they themselves consider employment with the Navy, CIA, SS, or some other corrupt, terrorist, anti-White ZOG organ of the NWO agenda – as though such employment would be anything more than a convenient way to escape a tough job market – do, I confess, grate. Why on earth would they willingly collaborate with evil, when alternatives, difficult though they be, are available?

  My 2-bit rant.

Thank You Lonejack

Posted by Jeane B. Christie on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 21:49 | #

Jeane B. Christie - “those Dear John letters that American women would send to the conscripts in Vietnam really made me angry. They had no idea what they were doing to those men. Some of them would just go ahead and blow themselves up on point.”

Posted by Draft dodgers on Wed, 14 Feb 2018 07:17 | #

   
Photo: Laura and Bennett Jones Phillips Baldwin Street Gallery-SA “dodgers being counseled1967”

Posted by Harry Blaszkiewicz on Fri, 08 Feb 2019 14:52 | #

Harry Blaszkiewicz - Vietnam - Veterans History Project

Posted by toxic masculinity prescribed on Sat, 09 Feb 2019 07:12 | #

The Great Con of American Patriotism

Tom Cruise [starred ass] Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989). (Universal Pictures)

American soldiers born decades apart in the state of New York, Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen are two crucial dissenting voices that have experienced firsthand the futility and brutality of America’s interventionist wars. Kovic, a Marine veteran who was paralyzed in the Vietnam War, has spent the rest of his life fighting against the U.S. war machine. The film “Born on the Fourth of July,” starring Tom Cruise, was based on his book, a work he hoped would combine with his activism to dissuade young people from buying into the toxic patriotism that leads Americans to fight destructive, ultimately pointless wars.

In the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Kovic tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer, “I couldn’t stop speaking against that war. I was arrested a dozen times. I—every single day was life and death. Every single day, I know that there could be another young man like Ron Kovic being paralyzed, another young man from a town or a farm somewhere in this country, being killed in that war that had to stop.”

Sadly, Sjursen, who says he watched the film based on Kovic’s life before he was even of age to join the military, explains that he wasn’t able to hear past what he calls the “faux patriotism” that pushed him to attend the U.S. Military Academy, as well as do tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think the fact that I didn’t learn the lessons from Ron Kovic’s story,” Sjursen laments, “[is] proof of the power of the masculinity that is associated with military service, and this notion of nationalism and patriotism. It’s so prevalent that it’s, in some ways, if it’s not fought every day … it will continue despite the lessons before us.”

Sjursen also reflects on the shame he feels for having led soldiers to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan long after he “no longer had any faith in the wars.”

”What I really saw [in Iraq],” Sjursen recalls, “was the results of American messianism in the world, of American exceptionalism, the notion that we could remake societies in our own image. What it really meant was a whole lot of dead children, a whole lot of car bombs, a whole lot of teenagers shooting each other in the night. And then, of course, a whole lot of Americans getting killed as well, although less of us than the Iraqis.”

Listen to their brutally honest discussion about the vital need to reframe patriotism in the age of the “forever wars” and the current state of the military-industrial complex. You can also read a transcript of the interview [at] TruthDig.org