Vietnam: When We Lost the Winnable War

American Thinker ^ | 04/19/2015 | Bruce Walker

[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.

[McGruff]

I don’t think we could even get involved in a similar war these days. With 24 Hr News Station’s live reports of casualties our leaders would be forced to withdraw. Sad but that’s the way it is nowadays.

[oh8eleven]

People shouldn’t discount the endemic corruption of the South Vietnamese regime.

Professor Turgeson: Now, can someone tell me… why, in 1975 we pulled our troops out of Vietnam?

Student: The failure of Vietnamization to win popular support… caused an ongoing erosion of confidence… in the various American… but illegal… Saigon regimes.

Professor Turgeson: Is she right? ‘Cause I know that’s the popular version… of what went on there. I know a lot of people like to believe that. I wish I could, but I was there.
I wasn’t here in a classroom… hoping I was right, thinking about it. I was up to my knees in rice paddies… with guns that didn’t work, going up against Charlie…
slugging it out with him, while pussies like you… were back here partyin’, puttin’ headbands on… doin’ drugs, listening to the g*ddamn Beatle albums!

[Liberty Valance]

bttt

[<1/1,000,000th%]

We won the Vietnam War.

Vietnam was lost 2 years later when the Democrats in Congress passed a bill that stated American military forces could not be employed in southeast Asia even if that meant not honoring our treaty with South Vietnam.

Ford never signed the bill but he honored it. This was the signal to the North Vietnamese to attack.