None.
To begin Vietnam was an illegal and immoral war based in marginally important occurrences in the Gulf of Tonkin. No American ships were damaged or naval personnel injured. One of the naval commanders even denied the second incident ever occurred with his ship. More than fifty-eight thousand US soldiers were killed, many more injured and maimed. The demonstrations on campuses was to stop the bleeding of Americans, not recruited, but drafted into a war that should have never been fought.
What is occurring in the Middle East is real and witnessed in real time. Peaceful people were massacred. Civilians were brutally murdered. When Prime Minister Netanyahu declared war on Hamas he was completely justified.
The war theater was Gaza. Unbelievable as it was because Gaza was given to the Palestinian people by Israel in hopes of peace.
Yet for some idea by people with no respect for life so much as their wayward ideology of a world turned into Shi’ite worshipers. No tolerance of others. No understanding or desire to understand of history or the past. No willingness to live in harmony with the other Abrahamic faiths in the region. Just kill Israelis, that’s all. Just kill them.
While the tragedy that has beset the Palestinians in Gaza is horrible there was little Israel could do to gain control over Hamas but bomb every available tunnel and military structure created with military intelligence and munitions from Iran.
Does anyone, even the most verbal critic of Prime Minister Netanyahu actually believe that the IDF and Israeli intelligence was going to gently handle Hamas with a slap on the wrist and warn them not to do it again? Seriously.
There was no ground war the IDF could conduct as Hamas gathered the support of other Iranian terrorist organizations. There are still skirmishes today between the IDF and terrorists in Gaza. Israel has casualties from all over the world with the return of many diaspora.
The Palestinians are victims to this war without any doubt. But, who placed them in the line of fire? Who compromised their very lives from the beginning of the Palestine state of Gaza? It wasn’t the Palestinian Authority. It certainly wasn’t Israel.
The world forgets how Hamas used the Palestinian people as human shields as they looked the other way. The world allowed the Palestinians to be compromised in hopes that Hamas would grow into a benevolent governing authority. There are many people to blame for the tragedy in Gaza. Israel defended itself in the only way it could. I guarantee you there are many that wish the Late Prime Minister Sharon never sought peace with the Palestinians in the first place.
So, when academicians want to justify the sympathy they have for their students they have absolutely no basis in comparing Gaza to Vietnam. What worries me is the lack of concern for the outside influences on their students and the peace on their campuses.
Every university president, vice president, chancellor, and board of trustees should defend their defense of the university and students. They are dealing with unknown influences on their students. Their faculty, should have been involved in deescalation of the passions that run high, but, they were trying to find harmony between the students. If they had to do so by blaming the administration then their reasons and actions were noble.
