Posted on 10/19/2002 12:59:12 AM PDT by Exton1
The truth about Viet Nam, and life there today.
Exton
I have been to Viet Nam twice in the last two years. In fact I went with the son of someone who for a short period of time was the highest ranking representative of the South. The dirty truth is that we actually won the war MILITARILY and lost it due to politics and lies of the communist press here in the states. Walter Cronkite, a proclaimed communist, lied when he said after the “Tet Offensive” that we were in a quagmire. The truth is that we had just destroyed the Viet Cong. They spent several years and all they had at us, and we kicked their butts. In fact the communist were surprised that we did not declare victory then.
The US killed so many men during the war that women had to fight. Even today the ratio of women to men is about 5 to 1. (Many families sent their boys out of the country to work so they could send money home) In fact the country almost had mass starvation, due to the war and the stupidity of the Communist leadership. It was not until about 5 years ago that they have had enough rice and goods to export.
What happened is that the last leader of the South was a communist who basically gave the country to the North. The North Communist had estimated that it would take 3 to 5 years to take over the South. Because of the action of the South’s president, the Communists met little if any resistance and took the country in about 3 months. What is also not widely known is that Nixon’s Christmas bombing almost won the war. The communist leader in Hanoi, said that had the bombing continued for a day or two longer they WOULD HAVE GIVEN UP UNCONDITIONALLY.
In addition , the Wall Street Journal had an article about 8 years ago that talk brought up the “Domino Effect.” Because we fought the war for about 10 years, this gave surrounding countries the time they needed to become DEMOCRACIES. People in countries like Thailand, give us credit for wining the war and stopping the spread of communism.
The lesson of Viet Nam is that, you do not go to war with a country unless you plan to finish the job and win. Once we were committed we should have stayed and finished the job. And that we should always support our troops and explain to the public why we are fighting.
In addition, it has been pointed out that America ONLY spent about one or two hour total explaining to the GI’s why they were fighting. This compared to the Communist who spent nearly 4 hours a day, every day explaining to its solders why they were fighting. They told their soldiers that as poor as they were, the South was worse, because of US Imperialism the South did not even have bowls for their rice. That there was mass starvation and poverty. With stories like this many soldiers felt that their was great need to fight. So many were extremely surprised to find that it was all a lie, and that the South lived in luxury compared to them. Many said if they had known the truth they would have not fought or changed sides.
If you go to Viet Nam today you will find that the people love America and much of our culture. With the exception of the Government run War Museums, you will think the West won. Viet Nam has discos and night clubs where they sing American Songs, dress in American style clothes, and use cell phones. Although it always helps to be with someone who speaks the language, more people are learning English in Viet Nam then at any time in the past.
However, the county is very poor and change is slow because the old jungle fighters run the country, and they are extremely greedy. The average income is about $80.00 per month. When I was there I read a story about a family of four or five who got by on about $1,200 a year. The populace are fairly intelligent and realize that if they are to grow they have to get rid of Communist rule. Even though the government has repressed anti-government talk. It will only be a matter of time before even they ended up on the ash heap of history.
Fine, then we were only HUNDREDS of times more powerful. And we lost, because we did not obtain our objective--ending the North Vietnamese insurgency and stopping the spread of Communism in Vietnam--and they won.
Rewriting history is pointless.
Individuals don't "lose" wars. They lose an limb. They lose a life. They don't lose a war.
To consider myself as having lost the war in Vietnam would mean I didn't have a country to come back to, and, I'd be paying taxes to some office in Hanoi.
Point taken, but in this case "lose" means that YOU didn't subject the enemy to your will, they subjected you to theirs.
We "lost" because of politics, of course, but as I mentioned earlier you cannot take politics out of the equation because the military does not stand alone. The military is a MEANS to a political end, not the end itself.
No, they weren't. You can't divorce "military objectives" from "political objectives." The one is meaningless without the other.
No, because "they"--the ones that cheated--were put there by "us." Therefore, in a democratic society such as ours, you can't blame leaders without putting the blame on the citizens that put them in their position of leadership. If you doubt that, remind yourself how angry you get that your idiotic fellow-citizens elected Bill Clinton TWICE to the Presidency.
The soldiers realize that is was a rigged game. And are upset that they were blamed for doing there best and then being accused of being losers.
If the soldiers are professionals--not to mention "real men"--they will simply accept that. That isn't to say that those who spat on our returning soldiers were justified; they weren't. But they were a part of the problem as well.
The real losers were the American and the VIETNAMESE people.
I totally agree. In fact, I would say the Vietnamese ultimately might come out better in the end because they will undoubtedly throw out the Commies when they are able, and never allow them to have power again. Meanwhile, we will be dealing with the dregs of our political class, the Clintons, the Gores, the Daschles, the Gephardts, et al, for a long, long time to come.
Those people were made "legitimate" by their being "right" about Vietnam, and we have been suffering ever since.
They weren't. By and large they were drafted. And they were the best. The Best this country ever produced.
They won and won and won, until they were brought home completely by 73. At first tours were a year and a half, then a year. If your name was Al Gore your tour was six months, then you rotated out.
By 1975, Congress had been taken over by newly radicalized leftist weenies who voted to pull the rug out from under the fragile government in the South and to literally waste the sacrifice of the three million Americans who served in Vietnam from 1961 to 1973, including 55,000 dead.
The jackass president who allowed this to happen, Gerald Fraud, was summarily fired by the American electorate for that atrocity, rather than for his quid pro quo pardon of Nixon as leftwing media loves to spin it.
The facts are plain. Our military was never defeated in battle and our troops had been withdrawn two years prior to the communist invasion of the south.
We didn't lose the war, You did, And you continue to lose it every time you and your ill(k) aver and affirm that we did.
LOSER
So true. The ironic thing is it was the Dems who got us in that war and kept us in it. Nixon inherited the mess and finally gave in. The political capital to lose was the Dems', but it has been conservatives who have suffered.
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