Posted on 05/01/2005 10:34:32 AM PDT by aculeus
We did win the war. The North simply invaded in violation of a treaty.
When they came home, other members of their own generation who were too enlightened to fight spat on, shat on, and slandered them. The elected officials who had hung the vets out to dry, then had the unmitigated gall to solicit their votes, which, with a drop in the voting age, gave the left side of the boomer generation unprecedented power.
The height of esteem in which I hold our Viet Nam veterans is matched only by the depth of my contempt for the protestors. The ideological left is never any good for America, but with the numbers and power they had in this era, they did to American Culture and Society what a swarm of locusts does to a corn field.
The vast majority of contemporary American maladies, be they economic, spiritual, moral or cultural can be laid directly in the lap of the 60's-70's left.
Ronald Reagan, ending the Fairness Doctrine, gave the Rush Limbaugh's of the world an open forum and helped lead to the success of FOX, the Internet and the blogs that began filling in the blanks. Today, the propaganda arm of the left is in a downfall as more people realize how biased and inaccurate they have been for years, and only honest reporting will go unscathed in the future. < /rant > (Sorry)
for later read
bump!
That's my explanation for the current "we support the troops" lie mouthed by the anti-war crowd.
They know vets and their relatives will vote for the rest of their lives and try to cover their anti-Americanism with that trite lie.
I agree the Vietnam War could have ended in a "victory", if the United States had used all its military power early in the conflict.
Two factors worked against that: the demand that the US keep large conventional forces committed to NATO and poor leadership, both civilian and military.
Tragedy flowed from both factors.
Kerry, Fonda, Chomsky and Ramsey Clark should have gone through the "re-education" prison camps of post-war Viet Nam. That is their pro-communist legacy. They should be ashamed to show their faces in public for what they did to Viet Nam and America.
I believe morethan one million people died in the "killing fields" -- I suppose this is not a large enough number of bodies for Morris/NYT to mention. Just as they don't mention the millions dead by Mao's cultural revolution that set the authoritarian stage for what is modern day China. The thrust of this article is that Vietnam is imitating China. That is BAD news.
And .. they've tried to do the same in Iraq - which produced the famous "I voted for it before I voted against it" statement from Kerry.
Is there a statute of limitations timetable on treason?
So now, the traitors of that era want us to recognize communist VN today. Fine. But . .
Precisely because Vietnam has changed for the better, we need to recognize what a profoundly ideological and aggressive totalitarian regime we faced three, four and five decades ago. And out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970's and why.
(We need to start at least as early as the 1968 Tet Offensive.)
What the author writes was not unknown at the time.
But the American Press had its eye on the General Giap coveted "Most Valuable Guerrilla" award and they were not to be denied that award.
I say that given the extra years, the tens of thousands of needless deaths of our military and our allied military dead and VN's civilian dead the press scum of that era, the political scum of that era, the academic scum of that era, the Hollywood scum of that era should all be tried for treason.
North Viet Nam's most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite, spooked LBJ with his distorted reporting to the American public beginning in 1968.
I did not serve in Viet Nam and I am not an expert but IMO had LBJ backed U.S. military requests as our troops virtually annihilated the Viet Cong the North clearly would have started serious peace talks -- just as their post war writings admit. But good 'ol Walter, et al. went to work for their Ho in Hanoi.
Same goes for a large part of the media, congress and academia.
Bookmark for later reading
Admitting they were wrong is never going to happen because their view of history is sealed in their minds as accurate no matter what or how much proof is provided. This is why the Democrats today are so over the top with their hatred. They are convinced in their philosophy and believe they are anointed (ala Thomas Sowell) to lead us because the rest of America is too stupid and incapable of understanding the truth as they know it. Democrat condensation is apparent at every turn and they only remain as a major party because groups like the teachers unions, and minorities such as the majority of the black community, think these guys support them, when in fact the Democrats could care less. They are only interested in the power they can wield over others.
That's not ranting, that's good information. Thanks.
If you lived through that time beginning immediately after the left attempted to blame the emerging modern conservative movement for JFK's assassination through the end of the "Fairness Doctrine" and the beginning of modern talk radio then it is easy to see how very important it is to remember. Never again!
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