Posted on 10/17/2017 10:11:23 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
When Richard Nixon was in the White House, I was in Vietnam and he was my commander in chief. When I was on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff, I had the opportunity to brief former President Nixon on numerous occasions and came to admire his analysis of current events, insights on world affairs and compassion for our troops. His preparation for any meeting or discussion was exhaustive. His thirst for information was unquenchable and his tolerance for fools was nonexistent.
Mr. Nixon’s prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia is poorly told by Ken Burns in his new Public Broadcasting Service documentary “The Vietnam War.” That is but one of many reasons Mr. Burns‘ latest work is such a disappointment and a tragic lost opportunity.
It’s sad, but I’ve come to accept that the real story of the heroic American GIs in Vietnam may never be told. Like too many others, Ken Burns portrays the young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of the Vietnam War as pot-smoking, drug-addicted, hippie marauders.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
We will be better treated when the draft dodgers die off. They have to justify their cowardice and they do it by degrading their betters. Just look at “We Were Soldiers” which was directed by someone too young to have been a draft dodger.
But coming from PBS and Ken Burns that shouldn't surprise a single soul.
Yep, I don’t need to smell crap to know that it stinks.
Ken Burns should have named that documentary “The History of the Anti War Movement (and How They Betrayed Our Troops)” or the “History of How LBJ Screwed Up and Nixon Almost Snatched Victory from the Jaws of Defeat, but the Democrats Successfully Stopped Him With Watergate”
I wonder what the Vietnam Veterans as a whole (not Oliver Stone and John Kerry) will think. There were 2.6 million of them and their voices were never really heard.
Haven’t watched any of it.
All I need to know about Vietnam I apparently learned from John F’n Kerry.
LBJ war good. Nixon war bad.
Burns and Cronkite can suck it.
Ed
I also thought Burns tried to make both parties equally responsible for the war. Truth is that demos were 10x more responsible for getting us involved over there.
Dems were then able to sucker in all the anti-war leftists to their corner. It’s almost like when they became the party for the blacks soon after they were the kkk party.
I was there...I don’t watch any Vietnam “documentaries”...
I don’t need them...
I had a feeling that this was a crappy documentary by the way the leftists were singing its praises.
I liked the documentary, but I want you to know I understand your reply. My father turned down several offers by me to take him to Normandy even omniscience’s the 50th anniversary. He was d-Day+6. He went through France and Germany often alone counting enemy lines. they called him a count not reconnaissance. He didn’t talk much about the war, but one day at a family bar-b-q he opened up to his great grand children. i sat there glued to his stories. I wish i had record it.
Best wishes!
50 the anniversary. Scouting enemy lines.
“I wonder what the Vietnam Veterans as a whole (not Oliver Stone and John Kerry) will think.”
Karma
Barack Hussein Obama, a man with no record of personal accomplishment, no leadership experience, and a man with strong connections to terrorists, criminals, racists, and anti-American Communists pulled it off and was elected then re-elected President of these United States. What does this mean and what does it say about the American people? Could it be that karma has finally bestowed the consequences of dishonorable behavior on the American people?
Why do I say this? In answer to my question, let me remind you of this statement and where these words took the American people:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Inaugural address, Friday, January 20, 1961
With these words ringing in our ears, my generation went to Vietnam and promised the Vietnamese people we would stand shoulder to shoulder with them until their freedom was secure and the enemies of liberty were defeated. By 1973, with the Paris Peace Accords signed by the United States, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, the Vietnam War was effectively over and the United States and South Vietnam had effectively won the war.
But, it is to America’s eternal shame and disgrace that the American people then sided with Communist North Vietnam and betrayed the South Vietnamese people who had believed and trusted us. In 1974, the American people elected Democrats to our Congress who had rather see our country defeated than allow a Republican President to receive credit for defeating our enemies. This Democrat led Congress (the infamous 94th) cut off funding and support for South Vietnam and abandoned a valiant ally to their fate. American troops were withdrawn, but we departed with the hollow promise that we would return if the Republic of South Vietnam was ever invaded by Communist North Vietnam. As we all remember, in 1975 Communist North Vietnam invaded the South and the United States did nothing in response.
The tactic we had taught the South Vietnamese was to, when invaded by the North, fall back to a defendable position, stall the communist advance, force the communists to mass their forces before South Vietnam’s defenses, and this would allow time for American forces and air power to return to assist them as we had promised. South Vietnam did just that; for twelve days, outnumbered ten to one, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) held and stalled the communist’s advance outside Saigon near a little town called Xuan Loc.
Outside Xuan Loc during April 1975, in an effort as gallant as that of the Spartans at Thermopylae, the ARVN 18th Infantry Division held two North Vietnamese Army Corps at bay for twelve days. Every infantryman in the ARVN 18th Infantry Division died in that stand. None ran away and none survived. They died to a man fighting overwhelming odds and believing to the end we Americans would return as promised.
Just before the last ARVN soldier of the 18th Infantry Division died, he might have rolled over on his back and looked to the sky hoping to see the contrails of American B-52 bombers and he saw nothing. This last ARVN soldier then knew that he, along with all the Vietnamese people, had been betrayed. With his dying breath, this soldier must have then turned his gaze heavenly and beseeched God to Damn America.
Yes, there is such a thing as karma where dreadful consequences are meted out in recompense for dishonorable behavior. The American people’s just rewards for abandoning a valiant ally during their time of need could have been that the chickens came home to roost on the American people with an Obama Presidency, a Nancy Pelosi Congress, a Harry Reid Senate, a John Roberts Supreme Court, a Loretta Lynch Department of Justice, a James Comey FBI, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving people.
The election of 2008 and re-election of 2012 was about more than just Obama, his arrogance, his empty resume, and his traitorous comrades. Just as karma provides consequences for dishonorable behavior, there are also adverse consequences for irresponsible behavior. As a people deserve the government they vote into office, they also deserve the consequences resulting from that government’s actions or inaction. The consequences of a government not securing a country’s borders is that a people will lose their country as we are now losing ours to an invasion of illegal aliens. The consequences of not securing a country’s electoral processes to prevent voter fraud is the country will lose its Democracy to a Thugocracy as we have lost ours to a Chicago-mob run Coup d’état.
But the final insult to our Republic is with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, an avowed Marxist Communist, a significant chapter in American History finally closed. Our sixty year long Cold War with Communism is over and the Communists won the war.
These words precede those of President Kennedy, so no one can say we didn’t see this coming:
“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
As we Americans continue to live out the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
By
Donald J. Taylor
A Vietnam Veteran
My father was with Patton’s Third Army in Europe...
I noticed when I was a child, he never talked about the war...I wondered why...
After Vietnam, I know why...
Best wishes to you also...:^)
Welcome home......
By 1973 there were virtually no more “Vietcong” and North Vietnam held no meaningful amounts of territory in the south.
As Ollie North mentions in his excellent piece, all the South needed was continued promised assistance, which the commie rats democrats (I repeat myself) cut off in 1974.
I am sure one logical proposition regarding Vietnam:
If no Watergate, then no South Vietnam collapse.
My father third army. I took him too see Patton. The first and last time he was in a movie theatre in about 60 years. He said it was true as much as he knew. never saw. him in person. He felt Patton was killed because of his opposition to the USSR. He didn’t feel the impact of Patton personally, he just wanted them to gobble up as much land as possible and get to Berlin. It was obvious the Germans were not going to surrender in France. He scouted the Battle of the Bulge. got shot in the nose dragging a wounded Lt through a trench and stayed in action. He was running away (he was slight and lean and an athlete and used to forests of southern WV and the small mountains. He was running to get away from three Germans rather than get in a fire fight. He heard a few bullets close to him and when he got away he saw a hole in his pants leg but nothing in his skin.
> Ken Burns portrays the young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of the Vietnam War as pot-smoking, drug-addicted, hippie marauders.<
Sorry Burns, we had no pot-heads, drug addicts, hippies or anyone else who truly didn’t want to be there in my unit. Any that occasionally sifted in simply didn’t last long, so we never had to worry about them.
Vietnam Era Vet.
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