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 ...
The mistake was allowing the French to keep Indochina after WWII.
From what I've read, when Kennedy discovered that the CIA had assassinated the South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm, and his brother on November 2nd, 1963, he was planning on pulling what military was there, out of Vietnam. Kennedy was killed 20 days later. Kennedy hadn't wanted Diem dead as he felt that with Diem being a devout Catholic, and well liked, he would be a useful asset in relations with the Catholic population of South Vietnam.
The Korean War was a success in that the government of South Korea survived. But it was probably not worth the sacrifice the U.S. had made in the war.
“The Korean War was a success in that the government of South Korea survived. But it was probably not worth the sacrifice the U.S. had made in the war.”
The country remains divided, with American troops still stationed there, because the threat of hostilities is still alive.
50 million in South Korea are free thanks to the Americans in the Korean War. We were right to do the ceasefire. We've fought long enough. We did not have the desire to fight another year in Korea.
Maybe the Russians and the Ukrainians can learn from the Korean War and settle on an imperfect peace. A ceasefire is good enough.
“”””The hippies were trash and now occupy top levels in our government””””
No they aren’t, you are confusing dropout back to nature hippies with highly engaged and educated and accomplished leftwing political people.
As Bobby pointed out JFK was not going to withdraw and like so much about JFK such as the 1965 Immigration Act, the left has always moved the JFK controversies onto LBJ.
LBJ was terrible but if people start running dates and goals and political activities they will see that LBJ was largely completing JFK’s goals.
You think that decision is in the hand of Ukraine? I know Zelensky has refused to sit down to peace talks, even those offered to be hosted by Turkey's Erdogan. Who's controlling Zelensky?
I do see Zelensky's point.
Putin is like Hitler. You have to knock him out until his nose bleeds.
Agreeing to a ceasefire, Russia will simply rearm and attack Ukraine again later.
Thank you for your service. So many like you still suffer from their days back then. And others are lost except in the loving memories of their relatives and friends.
Thank you to all here who served.
“ Maybe the Russians and the Ukrainians can learn from the Korean War and settle on an imperfect peace. A ceasefire is good enough.”
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If that happens, whichever part does NOT include western Ukraine will economically boom. The western part will be a cesspool of corruption, IMHO.
Just sayin’.
I believe the author’s conclusion but all he gives is his conclusion. I was hoping he’d give some basis for the conclusion.
Nope. We didn’t even try to win. So definitely nope.
The French warned us they couldn’t keep Indochina; their public wouldn’t stand for the war, and they had no money to pursue it. We assured them we’d fund it, sent a ton of weapons and supplies (including an aircraft carrier, re-named and staffed by a French crew), and then left them to their fate at Dien Bien Phu (despite assurances of support). French troops fighting in Indochina looked just like American troops fighting simultaneously in Korea; the uniforms, helmets, weapons, radios - all the same.
The worse betrayal of all was the Americans agreeing to an armistice in Korea in 1953 (despite French please not to do so); almost immediately, Red Chinese weapons that had gone to North Korea showed up in Indochina - especially the heavy artillery that demolished Dien Bien Phu.
Right through the very end of that war, the French government (unlike the US ten years later) was not allowed to conscript a single Frenchman to fight in Indochina; the war was fought with colonial African troops, native Indochinese, the Foreign Legion, and the small number of French volunteers from the regular army. Those colonial troops returned home after the war and led their own independence movements, costing the French much of what remained of the rest of their empire.
Although history may at times seem to have the air of inevitably, it ultimately revolves around human choices. The world was trending against the US and its allies, with communism a powerful and going concern that might well have prevailed except for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. On that hinge history turned.
Yes. JFK put us past the point of no return.
https://www.deseret.com/1991/11/26/18953680/jfk-gets-blame-for-u-s-role-in-vietnam-war/
No one has provided more persuasive evidence that it was President John F. Kennedy who got the United States into the Vietnam War than James Reston in his recently published memoir, “Deadline.”
Describing his interview with Kennedy following the young president’s summit with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Reston said: “I remember that Saturday morning very well. He (Kennedy) arrived at the U.S. Embassy (in Vienna) over an hour late, shaken and angry at having been delayed by an unexpected extra meeting with the Soviet leader. . . . I said it must have been a rough session. Much rougher than he had expected, he said.”Kennedy told Reston that Khrushchev had threatened him, warning that if the United States did not agree to communist control over access to Berlin, the Soviet Union would proceed unilaterally to dominate the routes from Western Europe to Berlin. Kennedy said that he replied that the United States would fight to maintain access to its garrison in Berlin if necessary.
Kennedy told Reston he felt sure that Khrushchev thought that anybody who had made such a mess of the Cuban invasion had no judgment.
“Khrushchev,” writes Reston, “had treated Kennedy with contempt, even challenging his courage, and whatever else Kennedy may have lacked, he didn’t lack courage. He felt he had to act.”
Soon thereafter Kennedy sent more advisers to the battlefront in Vietnam. Reston thought this was a “critical mistake,” because once Kennedy had more than 15,000 advisers there, U.S. power and prestige were considered committed.
And just who was it who got the United States into the winless war that killed so many Americans and sapped morale at home?
“No doubt, as president, Johnson was more responsible for commiting the United States to that struggle (he eventually had 500,000 Americans in the war), but in my view Kennedy started the slide.”
Defenders of Kennedy usually point to Robert Kennedy’s denial that his brother had any intention of going to war in Vietnam. Reston writes:
“Robert Kennedy, eager to protect his brother from blame, always denied that the president intended to increase the nation’s commitment to Vietnam and also denied that the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna had anything to do with it. But he didn’t hear what his brother said to me in the Vienna embassy, and I did.”
This is not just another reporter telling us of how something important happened. This is James Reston, one of the most respected men in American journalism.
But there were big problems in Soviet Union. Their economy was failing. Their leaders refused to make reforms to their command economy. They were falling behind the West. Three Soviet leaders died in three years before Gorbachev.
Gorbachev knew he had to reform the Soviet economy if he wanted to compete with the West. That was where he made mistakes. It fall apart like the house of cards.
Did we win?
I met guys who fought at Dien Bien Phu, retirees and the badly mangled bartender at the officer’s club of a French SOF unit, and one NCO who was still on active duty.
Interesting; I wonder how many had to fight in round 2 of the colonial wars (in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, with no American help). Many French veterans fought directly against Algerians they had fought alongside in Indochina.
They thought they’d hang on to Algeria by designating it a regular province of France itself, but still only had about 10% of the population actually French. When de Gaulle agreed to independence, army units revolted (to no avail). As they abandoned French civilians and Algerian troops who supported them (”Harkis”), many French officers ignored orders and evacuated some Algerians and their families, knowing they’d be subjected to reprisals (and plenty were).
Post-colonial Africa was a mess, and I sympathize with anyone who was duped (or who had ancestors who were duped) into settling those colonies. I believe they had a good life for generations, but in the end it was all left behind - whether the colony was French, British, Portuguese, Belgian - didn’t matter. Most left with little more than the clothes on their backs, and some left after losing loved ones trying to hold on in long, fruitless wars (French, Portugues, Rhodesian/British). France and Portugal in particular were hard pressed to accommodate the returning nationals, initially housing them in camps while trying to integrate them back into the home country’s economy.
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