Ping.
If the US had the political spine to defend South Vietnam another 3 years, it would have seen a huge sea-change in the world situation.
Namely - in 1976 Mao tse dong died, along with Zhu De and Zhou Enlai. the Gang of Four was overthrown and that was the end of Mao’s politics and the start of practical rule in China. Who knows what accommodations could have been reached with Deng Xiaoping on Vietnam?
China had Maoist governments installed in Laos and Cambodia by 1975 so I don’t see how they lost.
Vietnamese Politburo got everything they were going for but Vietnamese people were mowed down in the process on both sides of the border. Typical for a communist regime.
American politics have been wrecked since August 64’ when Johnson decided to ramp up Vietnam to counter Goldwater’s accusations that he was soft on communism.
The communists convinced the people of Vietnam to die so that the communists could ride in the government limousines.
Excellent analysis. Thank You!
This was an excellent ‘preview’ as well:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3569786/posts
So far, this movie is a baby boomer (Ken Burns) trying to justify why he and his left wing college buddies ‘resisted’ the war. Classic late in life navel gazing. Caroline Kennedy did the something similar in ‘Last Days In Vietnam’, though at least she didn’t spew the communist propaganda lines like Burns has in this film (so far).
This movie will not go over well in Orange County, CA.
Excellent read. My brother was a Vietnam Vet. Thanks for posting.
Not a bad summary. I can’t watch the series, though.
I dislike Burns as a leftist, and anything that is on PBS cannot give a fair, non-liberal viewpoint. They make the window dressing of giving fair treatment by throwing a bone here and there, but...it isn’t.
Vietnam is a black stain on our nation’s honor, and it isn’t because we “lost”, it is because we stabbed an ally fully, deliberately, and without a second thought, right in between the shoulder blades. I have long thought that if we had held up our end of the Paris Accord, events in 1975 wouldn’t have played out as they did. We would have likely ended up viewing it retrospectively the same way we did the Korean War.
And I blame liberals for that, the ones who took over government in the wake of Nixon’s resignation when they gained a 2/3 majority in Congress. The Vietnamese Communists may have been filthy, beady-eyed communist tyrants, but as with all tyrants, they recognized weakness when they saw it.
Thank you for sharing. My brother was KIA there and this expands my vision of motives and losses.
Now I will consider what is really happening with Korea.
Thank you for the post. I will “ping it” to my military list later today.
It is nice to hear from someone on our side during the Vietnam war - the one episode of Burns’ piece I saw was virtually all North Vietnam - minutes and minutes on end of how much their people suffered during the war to repair that damage done by our bombing in the North and along the Ho Chi Minh trail, and a couple of sentences about the savagery and destruction visited on the South by the Cong and North Vietnamese forces - all the low points hit as expected, like the body-count metric and burning the villages to save them. Haven’t watched another episode since. Burns may redeem himself when the time comes by including a thorough discussion of the sellout of the South by Democrats in the Senate who refused to continue funding for the war after Nixon was deposed and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese trying to escape Uncle Ho’s legacy in the South - but I doubt it.....
The comment on the preview below is from John Domina, ex 2/35th US Arty (Husky Alfa), the 155mm how’s with 1 ATF 1966/71.
"Having read this I agree with Dr. Sang, this seems like SOSDD. All the 'terrible' things that we 'The Americans' did during the war, vs how peaceful and loving the NVA were toward their enemies. Perhaps it’s better to say how hidden the NVA’s actions were and how quick to blame the US for any perceived offences."
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Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for posting this.
ping
IMO.
The whole premise for the War was that Communism and its tyrants were evil and dangerous and had to be stopped.
Hindsight has made even wiser and nothing has changed — Communism and its tyrants were and still are evil and if anything, we now have more proof of this fact by the millions who died under the brutality of Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao.
Oh, and BTW, we/Reagan defeated Communism... it took China a few more years to follow but they too realized that it is a failure.
I highly recommend reading Dr. Sang’s review of Ken Burns’ new Vietnam PBS series.
Also, I have managed to delete my Military ping list. If you wish to be on it. please send me a freepmail.
Thanks,
GreyFriar