Viet Nam

People ain't so bad once you had some lunch in their restaurant.

Folks, give Vietnamese cuisine a shot: its really good. Light, tasty and leaves you with a sense of self-contentment. (Oh, yes and inexpensive with a capital ka-ching). How is this possible? Its the ding-dong-dabbingest.

Here's something else: the Vietnamese, they were once our enemies who we tried to "bomb back into the stone age" (in the immortal words of the modern stone-age conservative, Barry Goldwater).

We lost the dad-blamed war and now they're our pals, even though "the Commies" won.

After all the Hanoi Jane-ing, Kent State-ing, Days of Rage-ing and endless recrimination and bawling by the religious right for our poor military losing a war because it had "one hand tied behind its back" (we dropped over 100 tons of bombs per capita, what's "two hands" an A-Bomb for each citizen?), what it all comes down to is now we is friends, the Vietnamese have become Americans and everybody loves each other. How can this be? Is it merely a matter of ideology and government telling us that "they is the enemy, hate them"? Yeah, I think so.

People mostly can get along, given the obbortunity. Same with those Soviet Bloc Type peoples flooding into the US during the 90s.

"Gee, they don't seem very enemistic, does they?"

Reminds me of the Orwell example in 1984: one week Eurasia is the devil enemy, the next week its Africa. The records get expunged and the rhetoric, while remaining the same, has "Africa" inserted where it once said "Eurasia".

So, expect 20 years from now for Iraqis to be our pals, no matter which way the current mess turns.