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Vietnam war was an expensive chess game as is the Gulf war. We are the invaders in both wars. There was never a direct reason to invade. I hope your children spent on these wars was worth it for you and others.
direct reason???? then you can use the same reason for WW 1, WW 2 and the Cold WAR.....NO "direct" reason to invade....Germany didn't attack our soil and neither did the Soviet Union and those wars were expensive chess games beyond compare to Vietnam and the Gulf War.
this is the price you pay to be a super power and prevent a nuclear WW 3.....either that or don't play the game of thrones and let other super powers put us in a corner when they get the advantages, by then it would be too late and we are left with less favorable options.
Like I said, Vietnam was to show the Soviet Union and China that we were willing to bomb to the stone ages anybody from their side that wanted to expand communism and control Asia and we were willing to kill far more of them than they of us.....you don't think that made the SOVIETS and China pause and think twice before they consider to expand to the Sea of Japan and Indonesia and the Philippines? Of course they did.
You don't think North Korea invades South Korea because we are there and we would bomb them to the stone ages and kill more of them by far than they would kill us? OF COURSE!!!!!.....If it wasn't because of that, North Korea not only invades South Korea they would expand to the Sea of Japan and further south.
You know how hard it was when the Empire of Japan invaded those countries in Southeast Asia in WW2 to get it back? it cost us bloody a lot. 26 Million civilian deaths. 5 Battleships, 11 aircraft Carriers, 25 cruisers, 84 destroyers, 63 submarines, 22,000 aircraft, 5 million allied military deaths.
that's what the U.S.A has been trying to prevent since WW 2 because not playing the chess game is more expensive in the long run.
(4th paragraph, last sentence )............President Truman and General Douglas MacArthur did not have an agreement on how the Korean War would end.
Thus President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur over their differences.
I don't understand. The Vietnam War was won. It took them 30 years, but they defeated every invader and got their nation back. They beat the Japanese, they beat the French, they beat the Americans and they beat the Chinese. The NVA went toe to toe with the People's Republican Army and stopped a quarter million Chinese in their tracks. Tough folks, those Vietnamese. They had a cause they believed in.
They didn't beat the Japanese. The reason Japan withdrew from Vietnam had to do more that the U.S. pretty much destroyed the Japanese fleet and drop 2 NUKES forcing Japan to accept our unconditional surrender and their automatic withdrawal from Southeast Asia. We destroyed 11 Japanese battleships, 25 Japanese Aircraft Careers, 39 Cruisers, 135 destroyers, 131 submarines, over 44,000 aircraft and over 5 million Japanese combat military and drop 2 nukes to seal their fate.....without the United States Japan would have wipe the floor with Vietnam for a long time.
We couldn't care less if North Vietnam had a cause they believed in, they sided with our enemies and our goal during the cold war in Asia was to stop communism aggression and expansion coordinated by the Soviet Union and China and not let them expand to the Sea of Japan, Southeast Asia and Indonesia and prevent them putting us in a box and in a disadvantage position.
Our only move was to make them know that we would bomb anybody to the stone ages that expanded our enemies goals and put us at a disadvantage and kill by far more of them than they would kill us. To make them pause and second guess our moves.
The Sino-Soviet Split happened, deterioration of political and ideological relations between the neighboring states of the China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This remained tense until 1989. We took advantage of this by having warming relations with China. That means we didn't have to worry about China in Asia and only had to deal with the Soviets and at the end we didn't need Vietnam,,,,,we got what we wanted, China having tensions with the Soviets and difusing that ticking bomb as an alliance against us. Its a lot easier to deal with just the Soviets than with the Soviets and China in the region as our enemies. Once we got China on our side and in good terms during Nixon, Vietnam was expendable if we wanted to keep good relations with China.....that's a good trade off.
Chess games and at the end we met all of our goals.
Last edited by Hellion1999; 10-07-2016 at 09:20 PM..
When I was in the Navy we picked up about 1,000 boat people. Some of the refugees were x-South Vietnamese officers. We asked them what happened after 1975 and they said it was pure horror. One interesting comment was they were surprised how many fellow South Vietnamese officers, political leaders, civil servants and others were secretly supporting the Communists. We tried out best but we could never win there even if we had stayed.
Winners in war are called "profiteers" for a reason. In most of our history, and the history of the empirical war driven Euro nations, large industrial entities made a lot of money from war. An example is the second world war being the largest driver of US industrial strength ever. At the end of WW ll these war profiting industries desperately wanted that huge windfall of war profits to continue, and they did, throughout the so called "cold war." The discovery of war preparedness as a money making substitute for war itself was a very real economic driver that lasted for decades, and is still a huge segment of our national economic picture.
Russia also found itself in a similar situation, the rise of Russian industrial employment during and after WW ll gave the appearance of economic stability, the fact that much of it was war related didn't matter, although it was government funded prosperity, much like ours was. The next logical political/economic move was to to utilize the military in both nations in various foreign policy decisions that gave rise to the notion of military power fronting for economic expansion, all the while fueling a false sense of national prosperity at home.
Both Russia and the US found a way to engage in "proxy wars" all over the world, basically utilizing their money, machinery, and military troops, in order to further their political/economic foreign and domestic goals. Vietnam was but one of those proxy situations, not the first, and certainly not the last..The winners are making steel and guns, body bags and socks, the losers are the dead and wounded..
EXCELLENT POST!
DEAD ON!
The only way we ever end war is when people refuse to fight and die for political parties (the rich)
From a strictly military point of view, we did win the war. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. Borders were status quo ante bellum. The U.S. military withdrew, leaving it up to North and South Vietnam to maintain the treaty.
As we know now, North Vietnam broke the treaty and Saigon fell in April 1975.
We won the war but lost the peace.
Talk about revisionist history, as a V veteran let me also add that John Wayne was a great general.
When I was in the Navy we picked up about 1,000 boat people. Some of the refugees were x-South Vietnamese officers. We asked them what happened after 1975 and they said it was pure horror. One interesting comment was they were surprised how many fellow South Vietnamese officers, political leaders, civil servants and others were secretly supporting the Communists. We tried out best but we could never win there even if we had stayed.
well they got what they wish for, a totalitarian poor country...if they would have listen to us they would be like South Korea.....but since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, they have changed their tune, they are open to private ownership in industries, commerce and agricultural....communism sucks, it just takes longer for some to figure it out.
Vietnam #162 best economy in the world. South Korea #11.
I should preface by stating the U.S getting involved in Vietnam at all was a stupid mistake and never should have happened. However, hypothetically had the U.S had a "We don't care how many U.S soldiers die, or how much money is spent" mentality, do you think the U.S could have won the Vietnam War, had they been willing to fully engage in war all through the 70s, and possibly beyond?
Nuclear bombs would have won the war, but at a very terrible cost.
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