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Posted on 03/01/2015 7:24:29 AM PST by Libloather
On February 7, 1965, a company of 300 Vietcong guerrillas armed with AK-47s, mortars and rifle grenades attacked an American helicopter base named Camp Holloway in the town of Pleiku, located in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. The raid, which came just a few hours after the end of a weeklong cease fire for the Tet holiday, lasted only five minutes; but it produced the highest single number of U.S. casualties in the war: Eight Americans were killed and more than 120 wounded.
President Lyndon Johnson ordered an immediate military reprisal. Within 14 hours, U.S. jets were flying bombing raids over North Vietnam. In reality, Johnson and his advisors had already made the decision to escalate U.S. involvement in the war; Pleiku simply provided the opportunity to do so.
The decision to retaliate would for all intents and purposes mark the beginning of the American war in Vietnam—a conflict that would last eight more years, take the lives of 58,000 Americans and millions more Vietnamese. At home it would create a permanent rift within the Democratic Party.
In the days after the attack, while LBJ was making the push for war, one official inside his administration vocally opposed military escalation in Vietnam: Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Ten days after Pleiku, Humphrey would submit a memo to the president that is perhaps the most prescient document on the disaster that awaited the United States in Southeast Asia—and the president at home. Johnson ignored it.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
As for the "we wouldn't have won anyway" crowd, if Nixon hadn't have been brought down by the Watergate controversy, we probably would've had North and South vietnam, the same way we have a North and South Korea, with one side prosperous and free, and the other an oppressive dictatorship....too bad the Dems cut and run, and caused 5 million people to be slaughtered in the Killing Fields.
But Nixon is associated with the war he ended. democRats are associated with Civil Rights legislation they opposed. The democRats are associated with fighting for the Black man, even though the KKK was started by democRats.
If you have read McNamara’s auto-biography you will discover that neither he or LBJ or any other member of the White House inner circle had a clue how to win in Vietnam.
It is very sickening to realize that the very military strategy that got us out of Vietnam almost eight years later (1972) was the same military strategy that LBJ and McNamara had successfully mocked 5 to 6 months earlier to win the 1964 Presidential race. Goldwater - LBJ’s Republican opponent -, retired as a MajGen USAF Reserves, had advocated taking the B-52s north and bombing North Vietnam back into the stone age. In late 1972 that is what finally happened. American POWs held in Hanoi, and so did their guards, knew the war was over when the BUFFs started bombing Hanoi. Guess about 100 bombs per aircraft speak a lot louder than 16.
The article’s conclusion: the problem for democrats is that they remain dvided between the dovish base and the hawkish party elite. Seriously, this is the author’s argument.
Such an abusrd conclusion renders the entire analysis meaningless. Today, all democrats are hawkish. But only for war against America. The real problem for democrats today is that they are all a bunch of screaming leftists and they no longer even try to hide it.
If in the 1960’s we were not willing to intervene militarily to end communism in Cuba, 90 miles from our shores, why was it in the national interest to spend billions of dollars and tens of thousands of American lives to fight communism in southeast Asia? At the time we were told we were fighting the spread of communism in Asia while we permitted it in Cuba.
If communism is against the national interest, why in the 1990’s did the United States pursue a policy of lowering tariffs to foreign goods and deindustrializing by outsourcing its manufacturing to Communist China? Our national economic policy, 20 years after the end of the war to fight communism in Asia was to export our industrial capital to Communist China allowing, giving it the economic resources to build a powerful military capable of attacking the homeland, plus engage in espionage, intellectual property theft, and cyberwarfare against the government and private sector of the United States.
Our policies suggest our leaders lack a consistent concept of what is in the national interest. As a result we continue to bleed both lives and treasure.
And then came Watergate and the ABCBSNBC WaPo, NYTIMES all out press against Nixon and then came ...
“The greatest gift our country can give the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now.” Rep. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.); Congressional Record, March 12, 1975
AND THEN THE KILLING FIELDS!!
and the fella tis t is still betraying America’s allies and making money by selling out humans, this time betraying Israelis.
Two days later, February 10th, Viet Cong Sappers dropped a four story hotel being used as quarters for TDY troops and such. Twenty three were killed and several wounded which took over two days to dig out. The hotel pancaked, sort of a miniature version of Sept 11th. There was also a subsequent fire fight along the bay front adjacent to the hotel. I was there, 560th MP Company.
Dodd has the blood of millions on his hands.
Nothing new for a Democrat.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to hamper them in elections, and they rarely get called out on it when they gleefully use it to attack republicans.
Well stated. And history informs us that while all of
this unconstitutional presidential power grabbing being
committed by the current POTUS is ignored by the MSM, it
will/would create a major crisis if committed by the
next GOP president.
Vietnam was a messy war in large part because Johnson insisted on controlling it from the White House, especially the Air war.
By 1972, the Vietcong had been vanquished and we had technically won the war for the South. South Vietnam fell to a full scale invasion by North Vietnam. One could argue that the ARVN should have been able to repel it, but instead it just fell apart. It might not have had we kept more a presence in that country. In many ways, it is reminiscent of what is happening in Iraq now.
Exactly: the South Vietnamese were holding their own until the communist sympathizers in our Congress cut off their supply of ammunition & other supplies. It is really that simple.
The same folks who continuously harped, during Watergate, that no one, not even the President, was above the law. And bragged about the Supreme Court decision confirming that. Obama has given them Alzheimer’s.
“Woodward: Military Upset Susan Rice Telling Generals How To Fight”
” Woodward said people in the military are complaining to him that the Obama administration has no strategy to defeat ISIS other then having people like Susan Rice “micromanage” military responses.”
“”At the time there were 16,000 U.S. military advisors assisting the South Vietnamese government in its war against communist insurgents””
Only in the name of JFK, could sending 16,000 troops somewhere be called merely having “advisors”.
Clinton raped a girl when he was at Oxford. First of 3, that we know about.
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