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 ...
I don’t know about all this rearward focused stuff. In my time at 18 I didn’t know the politics, the betrayals by this government, the protests by its citizens and the overall effort to quash it only to start off in more new war.
I know that anti-war losers ended up President and Sectrary of State (also ran for President) and I know that most people in government my age now are leftists. That’s all I know
*the template for the Vietnam War was the Korean War.*
I think our WW2 success was a bigger one. It’s the nothing-we-can’t-do attitude.
Think-the French gave up there just like they did building the Panama Canal. We built it and bailed them out in 2 world wars. Show them up. The French plus the rest of the world.
Hindsight will always be 20-20. I say give them the $4 billion Kissinger promised. Do it in the form of military equipment(deep state) as they have bigger issues with the Chicoms, something we didn’t care to realize.
Then give $4 billion to ElSalvador to build more prisons for the gang bangers-theirs and ours.
Didn’t LBJ inherit it from JFK and then tried to prove he could win it?
Even after China helped to kill and harm Americans in Vietnam and Korea they were granted most favored trade status and it has been a priority in giving the country away to them. You always know you were lied to and kicked in the face when our country looks the other way on the exploits and harm done by other countries. Vietnam was rewarded as well with trade.
At least Germany and Japan totally surrendered and apologized and we have great relations with them.
The free trade internationalist hate America. They are the first beat the drum for war and look the other way when trade and harms our country.
Hey Boots…
I wasn’t there, I was too young. 13 when the boys came home. So I don’t have the right to an opinion on whether “it was worth it or not”. I think that that is a question that only those who served there can answer, individually.
But to every Vietnam veteran, I say “thank you and welcome home.” You are truly more American and deserving of the highest respect, honor, and gratitude of our people. You were treated shabbily by the government, and by a portion of people back home who were absolute garbage then and still are.
Being the son of a World War II combat wounded (twice) paratrooper, A nephew of pacific Marines, I have nothing but the highest respect for all of you. I also cousins who served in Nam.
No, the Christmas Bombing (linebacker II) showed that we could bomb Hanoi and Haiphong albeit with some losses, but countermeasures for their SAMs were effective and the damage inflicted on them brought them back to the negotiation table in Paris.
The Mig-21s were effectively countered by the combined strike forces of A-6 Intruders, EW equipped F-4s and virtually every other aircraft that was used in the air war.
Nixon threatened to bomb the dikes on the Red River and mine the harbor at Haiphong; likely he would not have actually done the former as a million North Vietnamese would have drowned. But the threat was credible after December of '72 and that brought Le Duc Tho back to the table.
Thank you. That is an essential aspect of the entire event. It was later reported that it cost Russia a much greater percentage of its National Gross Product to provide military support to NVN than the percentage supplied to SVN by the U.S.
It soon became apparent that our effort in VN based on honoring an agreement with an ally was certainly headed toward a major global conflict with China and Russia.
VN was the wrong battlefield for such a larger conflict, we decimated the opponent's ability to wage war and left as soon as convenient. The well-published photo of civilians evacuating embassy by helicopter was taken a few years later after NVN violated the peace treaty.
The author of the article says he has "...done a great deal of research and introspection about the war, to understand the war’s pathology from beginning to end". He conveniently fails to mention, however, the sizeable role of China or Russia in the event, or perhaps even more importantly the role of the American Left in our culture, our MSM and Congress.
Simply put, those who say we "lost the war in VN" are mistaken or following an agenda. We did indeed, however, soundly prevail at great cost of lives in a local skirmish that deferred, perhaps temporarily, a global conflict.
BTW, there were at least two kinds of Purple Heart holders who served in VN, those given to patriotic American warriors and those who like John Kerry's three citations, were based on slight injuries that did not take them off duty.
A lot of the latter type may well believe we lost the war.
We had no business in that shit show. It was one big effing government con-job where we won nothing but death and debt, just like the rest of these corrupt government wars.
as long as we got the aa battery fonda was at im all good with it
“Hippies,” proper were just useful idiots for the SDS/Weatherman Columbia-educated self-loathing Jew commies that now hold the reins of power. Think Ayers/Obama/Holder/the Clintons. “Coat-and-tie radicals“, to use Emmett Tyrrell’s term.
Exactly correct. Just like globalist open border Bush, and his 10 year long, "Compassionate war", where once again we won NOTHING but death and debt.
[The author of the article says he has “...done a great deal of research and introspection about the war, to understand the war’s pathology from beginning to end”. He conveniently fails to mention, however, the sizeable role of China or Russia in the event, or perhaps even more importantly the role of the American Left in our culture, our MSM and Congress.]
Lol
Nope. My brother was a Vietnam Vet, U.S. Army, 25th Infantry Division, Ch Chi 1966-1967. Died too young at 51. He wrote home from there that the war was a joke. That the black market thrived in Vietnam. That it was a good thing the VC couldn’t shoot for shit, and that if he was going to be shot, it would be by his fellow soldiers. Despite all that, he said at least he knew he had done his part. But what did the part he and thousands of other men play, actually succeed in doing? Vietnam was just another proxy war with Russia and China, and there was no victory, like there never is a clear victory in any proxy war.
When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's, the saying back then was: "Democrats start the wars. Republicans have to finish them."
The same a-holes who were protesting the Vietnam War in the 60's and 70's are among the commies running this government today, and pushing the Ukraine War. Biden got five draft deferments during the Vietnam war, and as a Senator in 1975, he was against Gerald Ford aiding South Vietnam and evacuating refugees. Biden thought protesters were “assholes,” but he said the war was a “tragic mistake” based on “lousy policy.” From the guy whose policies are a "tragic mistake" based on "lousy policy."
I don't know about poor, but as far as the rest, you could be talking about Ukraine. Vietnam was a proxy war with Russia and China. Ukraine is a proxy war, and who knows, but China could also be involved in some form.
Two guys in my senior class that joined up right after graduation, died in Vietnam. One of them sat behind me in homeroom.
Be careful of this shrimp. Farm raised is often noted in fine print. It is the wild caught shrimp that is clearly stated on the packaging and that is the type to get.
We made mistakes in the Korean War too.
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