Posted on 03/30/2024 8:12:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Vietnam Veterans’ Day is annually observed on March 29. It commemorates the hardships suffered and sacrifices made by nine million Americans during the Vietnam War, and their families who supported them before, during, and after.
Through the years I’ve done a great deal of research and introspection about the war, to understand the war’s pathology from beginning to end. I’ve returned to Vietnam twice for visits and research, and Vietnamese and American friends and veterans have provided their perspectives. The net result of these efforts yielded an unequivocal verdict: the war was a grave self-inflicted injury on our nation on many levels, a “Greek tragedy” writ large, that changed our country forever and whose negative impact still haunts us.
It was a monumental misjudgment of geopolitics and foreign policy, willful ignorance of Southeast Asian nationalists’ motives and alliances, racially motivated hubris, corporate greed, and many missed opportunities for diplomatic solutions along the way.
The war grew from small, discreet beginnings and then escalated into a conflagration with a life of its own. It caused a generation of Americans to lose trust in their nation’s institutions and tore painfully at the nation’s social fabric, opening fault lines in our society that are still divisive.
On the economic front, it has been argued that the billions spent on the war carried tectonic consequences that continue to plague our national financial stability. There is simply no upside to be found from any objective look at the facts of our Vietnam debacle.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
We could have avoided getting involved in WWI and Vietnam.
WWII was necessary, we had no choice due to the mistakes we made in WWII.
We had to go in Afghanistan after 9/11. In retrospect, we should have gotten out sooner. OBL dead. Time to say adios. That was in 2011. We should have given our troops 6 months to prepare for the withdrawal and get out by 2012.
If we as a nation are willing to go to war, we need a congressional declaration and then go full William T. Sherman/George S. Patton on the enemy. Without a congressional declaration, not one soldier should be placed in harm's way.
Once a declaration has been made, and then strategic objectives identified, the politicians need to get out of the way and let the military do its job.
WWI.
Every major War that the US has been involved in the past 120 uears should have been avoided by the US military, and that includes Vietnam. America didn’t know what they were doing in Vietnam. America still doesn’t know what they had been doing in Vietnam. How well have Americans ever understood Vietnamese culture? Do they have any awareness of how strong the influene of Champa/Hinduism was in the past & some Confucianism persisting today & how dominant Budhism is now? Do they even understand the tenets of those religions, both the good and the bad? What about understanding the mindsets due to the periods of domination by the Chinese, French, and their fears of the Americans doing the same in the 1950s forward? Do they realize how the modern comforts in America throughout the 20th century such as electricity, phones, radio, and TV/internet were completely unavailable in most Vietnamese communities until the 1990s? And were Americans truly aware of how corrupt the system/officials were in South Vietnam in the 1954-1975 era? And do Americans really understand how fiercely independent/freedom minded the Vietnamese people were before, during, and after the War & how that continues to this day?
The Vietnamese have long ago moved past the War towards the future. But they have many scars still remaining on how it slowed them down in their development and how much it touched so many lives in horrific ways. Most of the vilages lost the majority of their young men, especially in the areas where you had the conflict - i.e. in the South with the Viet Cong always persistent and united with the North in the mission to unify the country under the government in Ha Noi.
The biggest challenges they face now are these:
1. They are still a developing nation with many infrastructure & norms (like streets/sanitation) with a way to go to be efficient/quality.
2. Their ability for institutions/infrastructure to adapt with the times & develop more quickly is greatly hindered due to them not having effective feedback channels. For an example on this watch how things have often worked in America when a politician comes out with a new policy that has flaws & feedback comes quickly & they need to answer hard questions. In the US there’s the First Amendment. In Vietnam there’s the government.
The best thing for America to do about Vietnam is as follows:
1. Continue to do as is being done with bilateral relations & this is one of the areas where I’m quite impressed with both parties & the diplomats in State.gov on how they handle things with Vietnam now and for the future. Keep it up.
2. Learn the lessons on Vietnam now for other countries - starting with Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Yemen/Houthis, and Taiwan. Tell your people the truth. That was the #1 fatal flaw with Vietnam. Our government didn’t tell us the truth. And the American people should have been getting well-educated on how determined the Vietnamese really were in the North & among the Viet Cong to have this unified country & what level of sacrifice it would have taken to beat them. We see that happening with Russia/Ukraine right now. How many Americans are aware that the Russians are increasing military spending by 70% per annum now? Don’t they know what that means?
Look at Vietnam today. We have great relations with them. And their economy is no longer controlled by the government and they have opened themselves up to the market.
So if other countries wanted to become communist in the '70s, let them. It was unlikely to prevail in the long term.
So his ego took precedence over American lives
Well said fellow FReeper.
Absolutely not.
My father, USMC was there in 63 and 64 as a combat advisor. He came home shortly after Kennedy was assassinated and he told me at age 13, that it was going to turn into a nightmare conflict and we were going to lose our asses in a major way.
It was his third and last war as Marine. He told me many times that the West always loses in negotiations with the orientals because we refuse to understand their culture and how they think. I think the Paris negotiations proved that.
**..simply giving Hanoi the Dressen treatment.**
(I think meant to spell ‘Dresden’)
I am guessing the abundance of sam sites and enemy fighters would have shot down half of the bombers.
No.
I was too young at the time do you understand all the issues, but it occurs to me that the template for the Vietnam War was the Korean War.
In the Korean War, the Communist northern half of the country invaded the southern half, trying to unify the country as a communist country.
In the Vietnam War, the Communist northern half of the country was invading the southern half, trying to create a unified communist country.
Was the mindset of the era that we needed to defend countries against communist aggression and directly intervene with US troops to do so?
Was the mindset of that era, that divided countries where the Communists were militarily invading the other half,, that we should defend the half of the country that was not communist against communist aggression?
Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread.
There are some great points and comments made here.
To those who fought, no matter the reasons, we all owe you a great debt which we will never be able to repay so please accept our gratitude and honor.
We were members of a surf club at Camp Pendleton, learning from the jarheads what war was at an early age.
Same thing with signing up on B day number 18. The recruiters told me to go to college, no need. Five years later still no need
It's been 56 years since, a little more bent and stooped a bit over my cane, but can still snap-to when needed. Thank you for the kind words.
“Was the Vietnam worth it?” For the American people, hell no! For the Military Industrial Complex, hell yes! Democrats and war go hand in hand, as with the DC RINO pukes.
Agreed! Well said and you speak for me as well.
“The great irony is - we left Vietnam alone for 25 years after 1975, and now its a developing, friendly, and Pro-American place”
It’s amazing what being Communist for a few decades will do to a population. If they have any brains at all they realize straight away that the system is inane and doesn’t work. Right about the time they’re standing in line for the one loaf of bread left on the shelf!
After that they can’t wait to get rid of the peckerheads that did that to them
Yep, here was a lie:
President Johnson campaigned in the 1964 election with the promise not to escalate the war. “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves,” he said.
Yes.
It saved millions of lives.
The same elements that worked against the Vietnam war then are the crazy woke Democrats and the radicals who’ve subsequently taken over.
Lot of that going around, I did a tour in Iraq, and I have similar thoughts. Around 5K KIA, what was accomplished? Iraq today is a proxy for Iran, whom our dear leader loves throwing money at.
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