Posted on 07/14/2018 12:04:36 PM PDT by eastforker
We certainly had plenty of “pro-communist demonstrators”, but as a parent I would have a real problem with a government demanding that my children fight half a world away (under threat of imprisonment). The subsequent admissions by the engineers of that war have practically ensured we will never see a draft again - barring an enemy storming our beaches or borders.
How long has your family been in America? Any relatives fight in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or since?
WWII and Vietnam - and the Civil War before that. Why?
I thought you sounded anti war.
Which is fine: I’m a parent too. But as I told some lady demonstrator who told me “I’d never let my son join the Marines!” -
“I never asked my mother if I could join - and when your son becomes a man, he won’t ask you, either”
Never thought the draft was a good idea - not because any whiny civil liberty crap - but men who volunteer know what they’re getting into and will fight better.
I do consider it a man’s duty to join a service and fight during a war - and our war in Vietnam was necessary - and I have little or no respect for alleged “men” who duck a fight.
My great grandfathers fought in the Civil War, my grandfathers fought in WWI, and my father and both Uncles in WWII. I’m proud of them and me and all of the guys who served with me and all subsequent wars.
I went back to Hue and Danang several years ago to show my wife what Vietnam was like and visit the places I’d been during the war and it was wonderful.
The people were happy to see me - one was a little girl who used to sell sodas and now she’s a grandmother and she actually remembered me. A catholic priest in one of the villages asked me if I could help them buy a tractor so the local farmers could plow all of their fields and kids could go to school instead of tending buffalos . I got the money raised between the Catholic and Protestant faithful at Quantico in a single weekend and Father Dung sent us a photo of their tractor.
The only communists I saw were bored guards at the airport and one or two former VC vets who glared at me - everyone else were working hard and making a living and very open to all of us returning to visit.
I’m proud of the Vietnamese people and I’m proud that I fought for their freedom.
Read your history on your home page.
Proud of you, Buddy!
Semper Fi,
Chainmail
I agree with you. I still have my CAR card. Both sides of my family have been here since before the Revolutionary War, and; both sides have fought in all big wars. My father was WWII, Korea and two tours in Vietnam. I was there and my BIL was. I feel like you do that men should join during a war.
They are still a repressive government, and Americans shouldn’t donate their tourism dollars there.
I’m not anti-war - I’m anti-grossly mismanaged war. Don’t take my word for it - the people who ran it have admitted it over the past few decades - and all those lives are still ruined/lost.
I understand; I think it is hard to justify some wars as being in our national interests.
If we had refused to fight in Vietnam, the world would have seen a weak and undependable ally and the Sovs would have secured warm weather ports in Southeast Asia to effectively control the Straits of Malacca and our ability to support and resupply Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.
Major nations should learn that threats like this need to be nipped in the bud before they become World Wars. If we had already learned that lesson in the 1930s, tens of millions of lives would have been preserved and the world would have been spared the Holocaust.
Our country flaked out on us before the job was finished but the effectiveness and courage of our men over those eight long years showed that were tough and resilient, even when conducting our end of a conflict half a world away using 1960s transportation systems.
When President Reagan conducted the work that ended the Cold War, it was the image of our courageous stand against two million fighters in a remote, miserable place over all those years that was in the mind of the negotiators. We weren't anybody's "Paper Tiger".
And who are these men?
Lyndon Johnson: “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
Robert McNamara: “We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.”
General Westmoreland: “This was a type of war that we’d had no experience with before. Some of our policies were kind of trial and error in character.”
Millions of people died in this war; serious stuff.
The seeds of the horrors of the 1930s were planted in WWI - addressing THAT would have prevented the later conflagration.
I understand why Vietnam was a just war; the means of fighting it were imperfect. South Vietnam may have survived if their aid wasn’t cut off towards the end; there was no way Americans were going to accept years more of sending our young men over there.
Special Forces and numerous OSS types had all kinds of experience in THIS KIND of war. SF had been in Laos on White Star. What do you think the OSS did with the French and Chinese in WWII against the Germans and Japs.
If we were using special forces and OSS types then the anti-war movement wouldn’t even exist; how many protests do you see today against our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
The draft concept fueled the anti-war movement; every male teen approaching graduation knew he could be sent over there. I was very young when the war ended; I couldn’t imagine facing that at 17 - and now I couldn’t imagine my sons facing it.
“...would have been preserved and the world would have been spared the Holocaust.”
And the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide. Thank you for your service. As terrible as the Holocaust was, I have always thought the slogan of “Never Forget” was foolish.
We have forgotten much more recent genocides such as Cambodia, Rwanda, etc.
The draft had little to do with the movement. It was liberal punks teaching college just like today’s black studies fake degrees plus common core taught to kids to pervert our history.
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