Why America's Pullout From Vietnam Was a Success (Freep this megabarfer alert)

SpewsWeak ^ | Aug. 23, 2007 | Michael Hirsh

[Parody]

The Soviet Union was in its final days of existence when I visited Vietnam in late December of 1991. The cold war was about to end forever with the collapse of one of the two adversaries that had kept it going for 40-odd years. A lot had changed in Vietnam, too, I discovered during my trip. The coziness between Moscow and Hanoi, once comrades within the Soviet bloc, had curdled into mutual hatred. Throughout the country, but especially in the North, the Vietnamese had come to despise the large resident Russian population for its cheap spending habits and arrogance. Visiting Americans, by contrast, were welcomed with smiles (“Russians with dollars,” we were called.) On the day I visited the old U.S. Embassy in Saigon—the where some of those iconic photos symbolizing American defeat were taken—I discovered government workmen removing a plaque that once commemorated the North’s victory over the “U.S. imperialists.” In the waning days of that epochal year, 1991, the propaganda against American involvement in Southeast Asia was suddenly no longer politically correct. Hanoi’s new message: Yankee Come Back (and bring your investment dollars). Today Vietnam remains nominally communist, but Hanoi knows it is an ideological relic surrounded by Asian capitalist tigers, all of them U.S. allies or dependents (one reason Vietnam was so eager to have Bush visit last November: it wants to be part of that club). The cold war dominoes did fall—but the opposite way.

[Parody]

This story's got a rating meter that could use a good kick into the 1 star range (the 0 star rating not, alas, being an option).

[vetsvette]

“American defeat”

America was never “defeated.” It’s true that the South Vietnamese were defeated when American leftist politicians broke their word to support them (imagine that! a lying liberal), but America was never defeated and, in fact, has never been defeated in war.

This Vietnam vet is getting pretty tired of that bit of conventional wisdom.

[rwgal]

Revisionist psychobabel....

Meadow Muffin

[El Sordo]

It’s a bit like strolling through Holland and claiming that based on what you see, Operation Market Garden was successful.

[Names Ash Housewares]

I found I could rate this defeat celebrating ass clowns so called thoughts .5 stars.

[YourAdHere]

You know, the headline grabbed my attention. I’m not even gonna read it. Just had to post my rage over such a stupid article.

[American Quilter]

I know—let’s ask the 1,000,000+ Cambodians who were murdered by the Communists after we left whether they think we did the right thing by leaving. Oh, wait...

[L98Fiero]

“It’s a bit like strolling through Holland and claiming that based on what you see, Operation Market Garden was successful.”

Good analogy.

[stylin19a]

Yikes...Democrat talking points are out

as far as this moron is concerned...post Vietnam didn’t start until he got there in 1991.

the only reason Russia was closer connected to China during Vietnam was ...."The enemy of my enemy is my friend" syndrome..

This guy needs a serious history lesson yet he chastises Pres. Bush re: Politics 101..

He mentions “boat people died” in passing...but no mention of death squads, reeducation camps..etc in the immediate aftermath.<

Probably time to sic Aloha Ronnie on him for an education

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

” Yes, a lot of Vietnamese boat people died on the high seas; but many others have returned to visit in the ensuing years.”
Oh! Well I guess it’s okay then. Many died, but tiny few have gone back. Okay.
He’s a complete idiot! It says there are 6 comment, but when I click to read them, I get an empty page. I’m thinkin’ the comments were all very positive.

[RobbyS]

I disagree. We were indeed defeated. Our aim was to provent South Vietnam from becoming a Communist state. In that we failed. The failure, of course, was owing to the Democrats. Nixon’s policy was to withdraw from Vietnam while leaving a non-Communist state intact. The Dems fought him at every step. Every step to make our withdrawal successful was opposed. After Nixon fell, the Democrats simply refused to support the government of South Vietnam. The tone is this article is, “See, things worked out in the end, did they? But South Vietnam had to suffer decades of bad rule from a government whose only talent was making war, who tolerated no dissent. and subjected the people to the crushing despotism that had been in effect in the North for decades. To all this history, Liberals turn their blind eye: the eye that cannot see anything for what it is.

[joeystoy]

Hirsch is an idiot. The abandonment and betrayal of our allies was a success? Why? Because the Viet-Communists now realize that they have devoted their lives to a corrupt ideology? Hirsch seems to forget about the decades of murder and misery that resulted from that corrupt ideology.

Typical stuff. Too stupid to merit a response, but we still must respond.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“were all very positive.”
Should read “weren’t all very positive!” Duh!

[GOP_Party_Animal]

"...[Bush's] abuse of historical fact—no surprise, perhaps, coming from a president who is just now catching up with the Political Science 101 reading he shrugged off at Yale."

Ah. Gotta love clear journalistic objectivity.

A Vietnamese coworker of mine will likely disagree with this asshat's minimizing of how the South Vietnamese suffered after our pullout.

[Logophile]

I disagree. We were indeed defeated.

Not on the battlefield. The defeat occurred in the halls of Congress.

[magslinger]

My daughter took a lower grade in history rather than spout back that particular calumny.

[Billthedrill]

It wasn't the pullout that was the success. It was the intervention in the first place. The two million casualties of the pullout are ghosts that will forever haunt those of the antiwar ego kiddies who care to declare the ensuing disaster a victory, and plenty of them including this author do.

Vietnam will be free as well as prosperous. The new generations know who the good guys were even if our own self-absorbed radicals refuse to admit it. 56,000 dead was no waste, it was an investment in a world not under the bootheel of communism. Most of our own young people haven't a clue just how horrible a place that would have been. But the Vietnamese know.

[Tai_Chung]

Using his logic, I guess Hitler wasn’t so bad because Germany became an economic powerhouse after World War 2.

[live+let_live]

If the author could pull his head out of his ass I’ve got a picture of a mountain of skulls from the killing fields of Cambodia I’d like to show him.

Maybe that’s his definition of success. It’s not mine.

[okie01]

He mentions “boat people died” in passing...but no mention of death squads, reeducation camps..etc in the immediate aftermath.

John Kerry probably forgot to mention them to him...