batvette the troll said:
"While in and of itself the goal of propping up the South Vietnam government.................now the officials of the former USSR gov't are writing their memoirs and telling all. We knew the Soviets were assisting the NVA but I doubt we had any idea the billions of dollars of resources that funnelled in through 1979."
The war in Vietnam ended in 1975, when the North Vietnamese abrogated the peace treaty and, upon the departure of US forces, invaded South Vietnam. By 1979, the Soviets were no longer supplying North Vietnam with much.
"For instance 6,000 SAM batteries with full training and support in 1965 alone-that's a lot of rubles! The Soviets pretty much fed the whole country with grain transported down the Ho Chi Minh trail throughout the conflict."
More leftist hogwash. The North was not feeding the South during the war. The Ho Chi Minh trail moved men and material from North Vietnam into the South, to the support of the Viet Cong but it was not a means of supplying rice to "the whole country" including the South.
"Given the USSR collapsed about a decade later largely because of a lack of the exact resources they poured into Vietnam"
More leftist nonsense; where do you get this crap. As much as any particular Soviet aid to North Vietnam was a big help to North Vietnam it was never a substantial segment of the total Soviet GDP. While there are a lot of reasons for the Soviets collapse, aid to Vietnam was not one of them.
"I think Vietnam was merely a campaign of the cold war-and who in their right mind thinks you can remove events like that from history, merely because it wasn't as pretty as we'd like, without altering the outcome?"
And, what, you don't think the outcome should have been altered???? Obviously not.
"They deny the domino effect yet forget we were grabbing swaths of dominoes from around the planet to stop their fall."
Name them you troll. Name the "swaths of dominoes from around the planet" that "we were grabbing"; in as much as you reveal yourself by your choice of words (you cannot hide how you attempt to rearrange your leftist indoctrination into a pseudo-conservative position, because your "dialect" betrays you.
"The effect of Vietnam on the cold war therefore wasn't just symbolic, or idealism, it was vital and tangible."
To who? How? I'd like to hear you explain exactly what you mean by that statement.
"I refuse to accept we have to have 1.5 million Americans told their sacrifice amounts to nothing merely to protect the reputations of the Fondas and Kerrys and their cohorts, and their stubborn insistence they were right because American policy was flawed."
American policy was not flawed, it was undermined by the same anti-American Marxist fifth-column in the U.S. that is undermining the efforts in Iraq and the war on terror.
As General Giap (North Vietnam's top general throughout the war) admitted to his personal biographer, if it had not been for the anti-war movement in the United States, the North would have had to let the south alone. The US military did not lose in Vietnam, they were betrayed by the same people betraying them now - Democrats. Which is why John Kerry has his photo in a North Vietnamese museum as one their war heroes.
Go away troll.
This is even more bizarre than your other reply.
The point of my post that obviously shot over your thick skull was that I am arguing against leftists who call Vietnam a shameful mistake that didn't need to be fought.
There isn't even any need to address your "points" such as "swaths of dominos" one being Vietnam, how about Chile, El Salvador, (most of central and south america for that matter!)
the point was that the left claims the domino effect was false- that country after country would never have fallen- but only have the ability to make such a claim after the fact that we stood and opposed them from falling.
Now go take your meds and find another windmill, Mr. Quixote.