“South Vietnam needed ammunition, gasoline, and spare parts.
The 1975 Watergate Congress left them hanging....”
You’re all right and you’re all wrong.
I served in VN from 10/68 - 1/70 although my permanent station was in the RPI and my time in VN was TDY’s (TADs? I forget). I’ve watched VN change. I went there and worked in the mid 90’s when it was still mostly like Russia; since then a surge of free market thinking has taken hold and it’s now a mix of free market/Marxism, more Marxist as you go North, more free market as you go south.
Everyone over the age of 50 know the U.S. could have cleaned VN’s clock btwn ‘67 and ‘72 but everyone probably also knows the bleeding heart Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity especially if they can blame the whole broken omelet on Republicans. They succeeded again.
For everyone who served, thanks for your service. For everyone who dodged the draft, I’d like to be there when you’re buried and have a six pack handy.
I’m 63 and was forced to start paying close attention to Vietnam in 1962 when my father went there as a military advisor. I learned more about the Vietnam War than I ever wanted to know.
“Everyone over the age of 50 know the U.S. could have cleaned VN’s clock btwn ‘67 and ‘72 but everyone probably also knows the bleeding heart Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity especially if they can blame the whole broken omelet on Republicans. They succeeded again.”
Let me remind you that Richard Nixon, Republican, was elected President in 1968. So if someone was keeping us from cleaning the NVA’s clock for the next four years it sure wasn’t a Democrat.
Nixon waited until 1972 before initiating Operation Linebacker, the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong harbor. And I don’t remember any invasion of North Vietnam and the destruction of their military.
What I do remember are protracted and worthless peace talks with the PRVN. Somehow I figure that a President who wanted to win the war would have destroyed their cities, destroyed their army, and would have occupied their miserable piece of dirt. That sort of thing had a remarkable effect on Germany and Japan only 25 years earlier. A war in which America’s part managed to come to an end in 3 1/2 years. But Nixon, just like Johnson, didn’t do it and he had more than 3 1/2 years.
You don’t defeat an enemy by giving them endless time to regroup, by leaving their harbors open to military shipments, by never putting their main army on the run in their own territory. So please spare us “the Republicans would have won it!”. They had ample opportunity and did nothing with it. The loss of RSVN was a bipartisan affair.