Kerry Lied
Millions Died
Posted on 04/19/2015 7:22:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Forty years ago this April, our nation lost the Vietnam War – a war that America could easily have won, and should have. South Vietnam had been invaded by North Vietnam, although the conflict was portrayed by communist apologists as a “civil war.” The Viet Cong did fight, but the primary enemy of the South Vietnam was North Vietnam.
The SEATO alliance pledged France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan and America to come to the aid of South Vietnam if that nation was attacked by another nation. The moral obligation of France, the colonial power that held Southeast Asia, and Britain, which held Malaya, was greater than our obligation. We had, after all, granted independence to our only possession in Asia, the Philippines, before Pearl Harbor.
North Vietnam was not just an aggressor, but a particularly brutal aggressor and a particularly evil regime. The conduct of the war by the communists in South Vietnam was calculated and sadistic terrorism, particularly focusing on threats to members of the family or the local village, who had no political views at all. Children, for example, were tortured and maimed if their parents opposed the communists.
The consequences of losing a winnable war were even worse. Cambodia experienced genocide equal to the worst crimes against humanity in modern history. The victorious North Vietnamese sent millions to their own concentration camps, and millions of “boat people” fled in desperation as well. Throughout the new communist region, people suffered appallingly.
Communism, as always, promises to help the people but always instead delivers grinding poverty. The noncommunist nations in Southeast Asia – Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia – are all much more prosperous than Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. These communist nations also have dramatically less political and civil freedom than their neighbors.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Still pissed 40+ years later.
The dye for failure was cast during the Korean War. When American soldiers were locked in lethal combat with hordes of Chinese and their commanders were not allowed to attack their staging and supply sanctuaries in China despite the fact the US has nuclear weapons, many American soldiers died and victory was not achieved. The US never destroyed North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war by placing absurd restrictions on its military commanders. The result was many American deaths and failure. Same pattern today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Caesar and Sherman were both right. Either you wage war or you don’t.
cudda, shudda been won earlier. The Christmas bombing proved that.
The way we lost the war was when the DemoRATS defended the military and blamed the Veterans for all sorts of things to cover their treason.
A number of years back, I was watching the Christmas 1976 episode of “All in the Family”. That, of course, was when a draft dodging friend of Mike Stivic’s comes to the Bunkers for dinner without first knowing that a friend of Archie’s, who lost a son in Vietnam, was also going to be there. I can remember at one point Mike lecturing to Archie “can’t you just admit we were wrong to be there to begin with?” Knowing that at that time in 1976, there were absolutely unspeakable things going on both in Vietnam and Cambodia with the Killing Fields, reeducation camps, etc, I was completely repulsed by the program. What utter selfishness of the Left and their friends in Hollywood concerning all of this, and that TV episode captures that sort of thing.
The other thing I’d like to mention is my Dad (even though very much liberal) one time telling me he had coworkers at his former company’s headquarters in Boston who knew a few of the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As a result, while it has never been fashionable here in Canada, my thoughts still go out to decent and brave Americans who knew they were doing the right thing there in fighting these brutal, evil people that could and should have been beaten. Instead, thanks to Hollywood and Democrats who would have never let Nixon have this success, we all know what took place instead.
Which was about as real as Obama's upcoming agreement with Iran. The North Vietnamese were perfectly aware of the political situation in the USA. Of course they would have liked to have won militarily, but they always had the backup plan of making the public so sick of the war we would quit. The Paris Treaty was designed to allow us to leave, knowing that once we did there would be no support for going back. It worked.
We lost. Bill Murray said it in Stripes.
Congressional creeps. Same-same today.
I remember seeing bumper stickers in the early ‘70s that said: “VietNam? When I came home we were winning.”
The Treaty of Paris was an instrument of surrender. The North Vietnamese Army was allowed to remain in South Vietnam, the U.S. withdrawn all of their ground troops and the logistic support allowed to the South Vietnamese was entirely insufficient to defend their country.
It is interesting to recall that there were almost 70,000 SEATO troops, including almost 50,000 Koreans, fighting with us in Vietnam at the peak of their involvement in 67-68.
Over the course of the year, nearly 30,000 Canadian nationals fought for the US in Vietnam . . . nearly three times the total number of draft dodgers who went to Canada.
Politics. Never were allowed initially to go in and take over Hanoi and its harbor bringing in in Russian arms or to attack the Chinese supply bases. It was all downhill politics from there.
The minute we entered it in a half-assed manner.
Roger that, me too.
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