Posted on 05/23/2014 10:35:41 AM PDT by TangledUpInBlue
In June 1969, LIFE magazine published a feature that remains as moving and, in some quarters, as controversial as it was when it intensified a nation’s soul-searching 45 years ago. On the cover, a young man’s face — the very model of middle-America’s “boy next door” — along with 11 stark words: “The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” Inside, across 10 funereal pages, LIFE published picture after picture and name after name of 242 young men killed in seven days halfway around the world “in connection with the conflict in Vietnam.”
(Excerpt) Read more at life.time.com ...
I never said that and I never implied that. I asked you if you thought Korea had anything to do with "how the vietnam war was later fought"
The war went on and on because our political leadership was not willing to do what was necessary to win - destroy the north vietnamese in the north, where they lived. And there was one great big reason why they wanted to tread lightly. LBJ - and I blame him primarily - thought he could hold the line until the NVA got tired and went away, but they never did.
Talking to you isn’t getting anywhere, you don’t seem interested in what I post, so why don’t you just tell us why JFK went in and why LBJ and Nixon fought it so viciously, yet so deliberately ineffectively, and for no obvious reason.
Just do your own narrative, this time do include Nixon’s running the last five years of the war, and the conclusion of our participation.
What you've posted has been utterly irrelevant to what I asked you in the first place. I asked you one simple, direct question. One. I was asking your opinion about how the war was fought. You have yet to answer that one question. I asked thinking you might have some insight - my mistake.
I did tell you that I quit using the excuse you still use, China, other than that, I’m not interested in putting what is already far too much effort, into going over the history of the Vietnam war with you.
Just tell us what you want to tell us, and be done.
But of course! And thank you.
That evacuation happened almost 3 years after we left victoriously! Are you just pretending to be an idiot or are you the real thing? I addressed that very issue in my post. Please go back and read it all to become much more informed about that war. Or, would you just rather wallow in perpetual ignorance?
bfl
Brings to mind the epilogue of a book I read that detailed the horrendous losses Germany was suffering on the Eastern Front:
The scale of losses on the Eastern Front worried deeply the leaders of Nazi Germany, but there were many men in more humble circumstances who were also deeply concerned at the loss of so many future fathers, future leaders of their country.
One of these was a humble padre serving in a German mountain unit who had fought alongside his men throughout the long years of the war. Let his words of worry and concern be the epitaph to this war on the Eastern Front.
He wrote these words in the autumn of 1941, shortly after the battle of Uman and yet only 4 months after the start of the war.
“Today I buried some more of my former parishioners who have died in this frightful land.
Three more letters to write to add to the total of those which I have written already in this war.
The deleted names of the fallen are now more numerous in my pocket diary than the names of the living.
My parish is bleeding to death on the steppes of this country.
We are all going to die out here.”
You have your opinion, I have mine. Read opinions about this stain in history and it comes out about 50/50 win or lost.I lost a few friends over there and those that came back agree with me on the outcome.
He wrote back saying what we were hearing about US casualties was a lie, as his small station was processing around 500 US combat deaths a month, which was near the total of all deaths reported for all the stations.
He believed that all soldiers killed with no next of kin listed were simplify omitted from the US body count as a political move lessening the impact at home.
That would be quite a 45 year conspiracy, but if a guy who washed out of one of your classes said it to you, well then it must be totally true.
He washed out not because he was some sort of despicable character, but because he was a bit slow in picking up Russian. He also had a very high security clearance, back when they were worth the paper they were printed on.
Not a conspiracy, just politics as usual. Believe those in power at your own risk.
When you come up with a better source than one of your buddies who washed out of a class 45 years ago, for a 45 year conspiracy of making American GIs disappear from existence, to hide the true combat losses in the Vietnam war, let us know.
I bet their insurance designates didn’t like it, and the decades of their fellow vets and friends and squad and platoon leaders looking for their names on the death lists and the Vietnam wall, probably had quite a few heads being scratched when they noticed that guys who died in battle with them, beside them, serving for them, aren’t listed.
As Tom Moorer used to growl at me if I asked him about it: "Seems like they turned all our victories into defeats."
Whatever ...
You didn’t like that post, I understand.
I get what you’re saying. I wasn’t implying that a voluntary military was the same as being drafted. Simply stating the the durations were similar.
I had those same thoughts. Watching it in the nightly news day in and day out. It just kept going and going with no end in sight until Ford declared it over in 75. I was a year and half from graduating and being drafted as my oldest brother (15 years my senior) had been in 66.
Then they ended the draft. Then that POS Carter became president and whatever was left of military pride was gone. My dad who was retired Regular Army would not allow or approve if enlisting during those dark days. So I never joined knowing that our government would sell out and and leave us hanging. Biggest regret of my life...
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