• Honor a Viet Nam veteran, while pointing out that US leaders lied to them and the public. US soldiers were undercut by US civilian leaders not telling them that US corporations and government had operated there for decades, enabled by terror under the French invasion and subsequent US invasion. That pitted US soldiers against patriots who were fighting for their homes and country. Withholding that truth, US leaders escaped corrective action by voters. Foreign policy into 2021 has mirrored the resource control by force attempted in Viet Nam.

• Request your Congressional representatives to establish a cabinet-level Voter Facts Commission. A government of, by, and for the people would partner with voters, not hide the ball. This would allow the public to debate general policy: Should the US pursue resource control by force or fair trade by diplomacy?.

• Inform everyone that today, Viet Nam has about 150,000 children who have birth defects from Agent Orange/dioxin/toxins sprayed by the US during the US-Viet Nam War. The Viet Nam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/dioxin (VAVA) informs this writer that the 150,000 is a best estimate, given the high death rate among these children. For source, see "Interesting Quotes” in this website, for VAVA email Nov. 4, 2021.

• Today, approximately 1 million disabled dioxin victims in 2021 live in Viet Nam. In 1959, the US government proved that dioxin, in some cases, killed or caused serious disease. But civilian leaders sprayed dioxin anyway, during 1961–1971, in far greater concentrations than allowed in the US. They did it to advance their colonial, resource-control purpose for attacking Viet Nam. The US says people must take responsibility for their actions. Yet the leaders have failed to inform voters about the victims and the reason for spraying. What does Jesus want people to do?

What influence do you have in educational curriculum through high school? If students are taught the trugh about why the US fought in Viet Nam, students can become knowledgeable voters.

• Request the Voter Facts Commission to secure the facts and report to the public on whether, in Africa, South and Central America, and the Middle East, In regions where resource-control by force is used, people do not appreciate US corporations using their natural resources and wealth, throwing most of them into poverty rather than democracy and economic development. Viet Nam veteran Oliver Stone pointed out in 2017:[1] “In the 13 wars we’ve started over the past 30 years. . . . call it what you will—the military-industrial-security-money-media complex—it’s a system that has been perpetuated under the guise that these are just wars . . . but in the name of that wealth, we cannot justify our system as a center for the world’s values, when we continue to create such war and chaos in the world. . . .

• In Africa, for example, military actions are being conducted without voter knowledge of basic facts and issues. Nick Turse reported in 2015 that “the United States has been developing a back-to-the-future military policy by making common cause with one of the continent’s former European colonial powers in a set of wars that seem to be spreading, not stanching violence and instability.”[2]

  Turse added specifics:[3]

  • June saw members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team deployed to Niger, Uganda, Ghana, and on two separate missions to Malawi; in July, troops from the team traveled to Burundi, Mauritania, Niger, Uganda, and South Africa; August deployments included the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Niger, two missions in Malawi, and three to Uganda; September saw activities in Chad, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Uganda, and Malawi; in October, members of the unit headed for Guinea and South Africa; November’s deployments consisted of Lesotho, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Guinea; while December’s schedule involved activities in South Sudan, Cameroon, and Uganda. All told, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division carried out 128 separate “activities” in twenty-eight African countries during all of 2013.

The road to such conflict in sub-Saharan Africa started with US leaders deciding in 1960 to overthrow democracy and deny fair trade with Africa’s newly independent Congo, the most mineral-rich nation on earth. Its democratically selected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba flew to the US and said that Western corporations could have a fair share of the mineral profits, but not virtually all the profits as had been done in colonialism. Congo children, he said, had a right to schools, and citizens had a right to a higher standard of living from their nation’s mineral wealth. US (white) leaders, and Belgium (white), decided that he needed to be killed to keep US and European control of the mineral wealth. Following Lumumba’s assassination, the CIA paid Joseph Mobutu who seized power and ruled for 30 years as a dictator.[4]

“The five years that followed Congo’s independence , , , provides eloquent testimony both about the responsibility of Western powers for Africa’s turmoil and about the troubled nature of African governance,” are facts of Africa as stated in The history of Congo. Post-colonial Africa is in a mess today, with widespread poverty, reports Professor Godfrey Mwakikagile, [5]

The failure to inform voters about Africa—even as US military involvement grows—not only flies in the face of the lesson of lies on Viet Nam, it also violates a bedrock principle of democracy spotlighted in 2004 by Walter Russell Mead, a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR):[6]
And while American foreign policy is studied in great detail by professionals and scholars, it must ultimately
be debated and decided by tens of millions of voters.

Shut out from knowledgeable debate, the US public cannot see whether a common policy on war in Africa and in Viet Nam appears in a 1943 report for the State Department: [7]

to secure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by foreign nations that constitutes a threat
to the minimum world area essential for the security and economic prosperity of the United States and
the Western Hemisphere. [Italics added.]

The conclusion for all US voters is that on foreign policy, we have all been given a false premise. Republican, Democrat, or other, whatever you believe, your views have developed without knowing that the war in Viet Nam was to resume the pre-1900 US corporate operations in Viet Nam. Thus, US voters have never had a debate based on such knowledge related to resource control by force today.

[1] Oliver Stone on war and chaos. WGA West (2017, Feb. 20). James Woods presents the 2017 Writers Guild Laurel Award for Screenwriting to Oliver Stone. Youtube, 9:50–12:20 of 12:25.

[2] US military policy on Africa. Turse, N. (2015). Tomorrow's battlefield : US proxy wars and secret ops in Africa. Chicago, Illinois: Dispatch Books : Haymarket Books, Kindle location 1058.

[3] Silence on US failures on Africa. Turse, N. (2015). Tomorrow's battlefield : US proxy wars and secret ops in Africa. Chicago, Illinois: Dispatch Books : Haymarket Books, Kindle locations 1069 (silence on failures), 1368 (deployments), and 3459– 3759 (not full information).

[4] 1960 Congo coup; Lumumba for benefit children. Witte, L. (2001). The assassination of Lumumba. London; New York: Verso, pp. 5–6. Lumumba quotes, fatal mistake, US investments, Gottlieb poison. Colby, G. & Dennett, Charlotte (1995). Thy will be done : The conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the age of oil (1 st ed.). NY, NY: HarperCollins.Colby, pp. 325–28.

[5] Five years Congo after death of Lumumba. Gondola, C. (2002). The history of Congo. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, pp. 124–129..Rich nations and post-colonial Africa poor; mess today. Mwakikagile, G. (2019). Post-colonial Africa; A General Survey, Amazon Digital Services LLC, Chapters Two, Seven, Kindle locations 1155, 6078–6222, 6436, 9500.

[6] Voters ultimately decide. Mead, W. (2004). Power, Terror, Peace, and War : America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk. NY: Vintage Books. A Council on Foreign Relations Book; Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, p. 6, Kindle location 129.

[7] Limit sovereignty. Council on Foreign Relations report E-B19, “The War and United States Foreign Policy: Needs of Future United States Foreign Policy” (October 9, 1940). Quote on limitation of sovereignty. Chomsky, N. (Nov. 4, 2011). Changing Contours of Global Order, Professor Noam Chomsky, YouTube Video, Publ. by Deakin University (Nov. 11, 2011), 18:07–18:28, of 1:18:00.