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Should the US have become involved in the Vietnam conflict?
The History Channel ^ | 18 OCT 2002 | Producers

Posted on 10/18/2002 10:13:43 PM PDT by onedoug

It's that time again...tho re-fight the Vietnam War. This time via the online poll for the program The History Channel cablecast this evening on the subject.

I voted yes, despite the politics that led us there, because I refuse to believe that so many brave Americans lost their lives their needlesly.

I yet feel our involvemnt there was a great enterprise from which, as was the case with the fall of the Soviet Union, we will yet emerge victorious.

I'm curious what Freepers...expecially my fellow Vietnam veterancs, may think.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: vietnamcontroversy
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To: onedoug
The biggest mistake we ever made was to allow France to keep Indochina as a colony after WWII. France would not have joined NATO, if the US didn't allow them to have Indochina. In retrospect, this was bad for two reasons, 1 of course is that we let the French into NATO, and 2 it set us up to attempt to clean up the mess left after Dien Bien Phu.
41 posted on 10/19/2002 1:50:39 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: onedoug
Some here seem to discount the importance of Vietnam. Cam Ranh Bay has figured in our history for a long time, but far more in the history of SE Asia. We all know what happened as a result of the Japanese landing there. Cam Ranh is one of the best natural harbors in the world. One reason why it didn't take the USSR long before they began parking their subs there, after the fall of Saigon. And would it not be crucial now, in the War on Terror?

I always find the issuance of Ho Chi Minhs March,1946 Order to be very interesting. He actually authorized the French to come back in (the North) and assisted them in destroying the Nationalist Vietnamese. Thousands were butchered. "Uncle Ho" as the left loves to call him not only was a founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party, but the French Communist Party as well.

The USA entered Vietnam as a member of SEATO. As did other nations. All were duty-bound to do so (come to the assistance of a member state). The North has ALWAYS been covetous of the South. They invaded numerous times in previous centuries. So many in fact, the South construction a couple of walls on the 17th Parallel to keep them out.

This from UNHERALDED VICTORY by Mark Woodruff:

"America's victories on the battlefield up until 1973 were overwhelmed by later events, and the sad fact is that Communist North Vietnam did later invade and conquer it southern neighbor. Those who predicted that the surrounding countries would fall like dominoes were proven wrong, but the world will never know if they might have fallen if America had not acted when it did. In 1994, Singapore's President Lee Kwan Yew noted that America's actions in Vietnam had given his country ten years to strengthen itself against the Communists, ten years without which Singapore might well have fallen. One can only speculate on how many other then-vulnerable states could also be added to the list."

42 posted on 10/19/2002 2:31:31 PM PDT by donozark
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To: Polybius
What you said! Bump
43 posted on 10/19/2002 5:32:31 PM PDT by CatoRenasci
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To: donozark
Quite happy to see you on this thread, as I've always appreciated your pinging me to related items in the past, and so am somewhat embarrassed that I didn't return the favor for this.

Your points about Cam Ranh Bay are very well met as a deep-water port on the cusp of the western Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Plus, the point you make concerning Singapore can hardly be questioned as asserted from such a unique perspective. One of even my current co-workers in Singapore readily attests to the assistance of the Israeli military in formulating that island's defensive strategies, as no one else had heretofore given them the time of day on that issue.

You'll undoubtedly realize that a good slice of my take on this issue is sociological over even military. This derives from my senses of the Vietnamese people during the war, which - I think to my credit now as I was then a dumb kid - were as greatly reinforced for me during my return trip there in APR 2000 (re#33). You're especially right when you say that, "The North has ALWAYS been covetous of the South." When I went to Hanoi on the final leg of that latter trip, I really sensed their differences. The northerners are decidedly colder and bureaucratic to the point where one could almost feel their notions of superiority.

Yet I'm still optimistic that truth for them will out, and that their latest generation of leaders will yet realize that in order to engage in real terms with the world that their people will have to be freer, because that is the only way that capitalism works. And even in this the realization that capitalism is going to be the way of the world.

I actually hope the same for the Chinese to the north, but still hold out more hope to such ends for the Vietnamese as I truly believe them to be a hardier people.

Everything hopefully as even marking the greater Good to you and yours.

44 posted on 10/19/2002 11:09:11 PM PDT by onedoug
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To: hosepipe
i've always despised JFK, not so much for the reasons you all have stated (good as they were), but because he unleashed that evil, psychotic, insane lyndon banes johnson on america. LBJ singlehandedly destroyed america's worldwide respect and reputation. we were a laughing stock until the 1980's, and we're still quagmired in the War on Prosperity, as i call it. rot in hell, FDR and LBJ. hope carter and x42 will join you shortly.
45 posted on 10/19/2002 11:19:15 PM PDT by Nayt2
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To: hosepipe
Well, my semantics were a bit off, as I realized after I posted that. I meant to say, "most people, including some on this website, will not stand up..." etc.

Regardless, Kennedy's policies w/r/t Cuba/Vietnam make me see red every time I think about them - primarily, I think, because I lived through it, couldn't see what was going on while it was right there under my nose (even though I couldn't stand him and the whole "Camelot" schlockfest at the time), and came far too late to a realization of what he'd done...

46 posted on 10/19/2002 11:34:45 PM PDT by fire_eye
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To: CatoRenasci
It wasnot a mistake. The French were not the communists, and to get them to join NATO to help fight the Soviets we ahdto assist them.

By the way I see that you are CATO, that means you don't know history, have sorry opinions on foreign policy, but on economics ahve it about right. (As in CATO institue, a joke, yet serious)

MacArthur also wanted to use a nucelar radiataion belt to keep the Chinese from crossing the Yalu. MacArthur was a brillant operational thinker, but at the strategic level he couldn't sind his @ss with both hands.

We got involed when Ike sent advisors first to Vietnam.
Kennedy just upped the advisor count. Before 64' there was no question about American INVOLVEMENT, just about intervention, full blown @ss militarily.

Abrahms from 69' to 70' after the Cambodia invasion, through securing of the villages, and the Phoenix Program(Go read Moyar's Birds of Prey, and don't beleive the assaniation myths)won the damn war. We lost it politically when Ted Kennedy and the Dems halved supplies for the ARVN. The ARVN could not operate on these low supply levels, they ran out of bullets. The end.
47 posted on 10/22/2002 7:39:47 AM PDT by Ridgeway
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To: onedoug
He was a communist. period. Look at his speeches to the communist party in the 30's and 40's. The guy was lying to us. Like a brutal dictator isn't capable of lying? LOL
48 posted on 10/22/2002 7:42:00 AM PDT by Ridgeway
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To: truth_seeker
Then the US proceeded to give the freedom seeking Hungarians ZERO support. We were all talk, and no action.

Same with Czechoslovakia 1968.

49 posted on 10/22/2002 7:47:25 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: RLK
I guess under ideal conditions, any war is easy to win. We didn't have ideal conditions, as you stated. The reason we lost, is because that's the way it was. I think it is more realistic to plan with what one has, than with what one wants.
50 posted on 10/22/2002 7:47:36 AM PDT by stuartcr
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To: onedoug
I said no because I lost too much, and I haven't seen enough good come out of what was lost to justify it.
51 posted on 10/22/2002 7:49:08 AM PDT by stuartcr
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To: Ridgeway
and to get them to join NATO to help fight the Soviets we ahdto assist them.

Yeah right, like the French would have been of any help. NOT!

52 posted on 10/22/2002 7:50:31 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: onedoug
Backing the South Vietnamese was the route to take. Sending in 500,000 troops was stupidity.

Their government was unstable before Diem... corrupt and afraid of the north.

Johnson was a fool. His Great Society destroyed the black family.

In these two things alone, he beats out Clinton and Carter for worst president... so far as we know.

53 posted on 10/22/2002 8:01:22 AM PDT by johnny7
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To: CW_Conservative
I spent nearly 4 years training young troopers to be Combat Engineers at Fort Belvoir between '62 and '66. Many of THEIR names grace that black monolith on the Mall. Some were friends.

Those of us who have never seen combat need to understand the horror and sacrifice of war and the love between the men who are sent by the politicians and bureaucrats to misadventures like Nam with one arm tied behind their backs. For a taste of what that’s all about, check out “We Were Soldiers.”

Robert STRANGE (he certainly is!) McNamara popped up on the book tour circuit a while back promoting his mea culpa on Viet Nam. Through clenched teeth, I watched him weep crocodile tears during one TV interview as he declared that he KNEW the entire exercise was wrong as it unfolded -- but did NOTHING to try to stop it.

They are excavating a new, lower level of Hell for McNamara as you read this. It is next door to LBJ's. My hope is that he and Johnson will spend eternity seeing the faces of the 58,200 and thousands more who still carry the physical and emotional scars of their blunders while they fan each other in a futile effort to cool themselves.

There must NEVER be another Viet Nam (or Somalia! -- thank you, Bill Clinton) -- EVER!

With a silent prayer for ALL those who fight and die for this country, I also pray that we never send our young people into harm’s way for any purpose but to preserve what remain of our freedoms and/or our deepest, most provable national interest.

54 posted on 10/22/2002 8:03:10 AM PDT by Dick Bachert
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To: onedoug
Interesting that a Vietnam Retrospective comes now. Also the Cuban missle crisis has cropped up. What next, the A bombs in Japan. Gotta wonder about the coincidence of pulling strings.
55 posted on 10/22/2002 8:10:42 AM PDT by Helms
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To: Ridgeway
You have the wrong Cato (and, if you're Ridgeway, you should be a toddy of MacArthur), I took the handle because from 1990 (back on the old Prodigy boards) I signed every post Ceterum Censeo Mesopotamia Esse Delendam paraphrasing Cato the Elder (or the Censor)'s famous line about Carthage with which he ended every speech in the Roman Senate. But I digress.

No one ever suggested the froggies were THE commies in Vietnam, and I disagree that putting them back into Indochina was necessary to get them into NATO. I am also familiar with the history of the French war against the Viet Minh and the division of the country after their pull-out. Yes, we had advisors, in low level miltary training mission sort of way much as in many other countries, under Eisenhower.

The great increase in our involvement came after 1960 with Kennedy. During the '61-62 school year, one of my best friends had a Laotian foreign exchange student living with him, and we all learned far more than was ususal about the whole Indochinese situation at that time. The real road to intervention was paved when the Kennedy brothers of unhappy memory had the CIA and others get heavily involved in South Vietnamese internal politics, especially the coup against Diem. I remember it vividly at the time, and I remember reading the documents at length when the Pentagon Papers were published in the '70s.

I have alluded on other threads to MacArthur's plan to use a radiation belt along the Yalu, but I hardly think that that simpliciter disqualifies Dougout Doug (as his detractors called him) as a strategic thinker. Having read extensively in WWII and the MacArthur literature, my conclusions about MacArthur differ greatly from yours. And, as VMI man who greatly admires George C. Marshall, given the Marshall-MacArthur feud, I have to swallow my institutional pride to give Mac his due.

I was involved in some of the debates within the military community during the war about whether we ought to have been there and whether we were winning or losing at any given time. I know the arguments you're making, I agree that our ultimate failure was political, but I would also argue that the politics made the warfighting itself impossible. I still have no use for Westmoreland and the body count types, I have too many friends who didn't come back. I have a lot of respect for the men who fought the war at the squad, platoon, company, and even battalion level, but not much for the higher command levels, in the Army or the puzzle palace. I reserve my greatest contempt for the politicians, Hanoi Jane, and the cowards of the "New Left" whose personal fear of being drafted for cannon fodder led them to oppose the war.

I still think, based on everything I read, our involvement on the ground as we did it was a serious mistake, which almost destroyed the army -- you had to be on active duty in the mid-to-late '70s as I was to really appreciate how badly we were wounded -- and rent the country. We would have been much better off to have left Diem alone, let the Vietnamese fight their own war with training and supplies, maybe used some air to interdict the North, and let the chips fall where they might.

56 posted on 10/22/2002 8:43:01 AM PDT by CatoRenasci
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To: Ridgeway
Of course he was. The question though, is could he have been stabilized in our orbit, as Castro might have been? I think it's interesting they both turned to us first. Perhaps it was a ruse, but one that may also have been capable of being turned to our advantage.

Though as I mentioned earlier, this is all academic now. ...Always thought for the future, however.

57 posted on 10/22/2002 8:45:21 AM PDT by onedoug
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