Chinese paper says China should stay neutral if North Korea attacks first

[Salmonburgher]

Originally Posted by EvilEyeFleegle

Yes..we won all the battles. All of them...even Tet was a massive victory for the U.S.--- back home, it was portrayed as a loss...thus emboldening the anti-war movement.

I'm not certain that Tet was described as a loss back home.

Rather, it was a brilliant move by the NVA and VC, who understood that the US population was divided on the war. The NVA and VC were thoroughly thrashed in every battle against US military, including Tet. However, the military and political arms were at odds, and as the military was saying that we just about had the enemy defeated, it came as quite a surprise that the NVA and VC were able to launch a major (though militarily failed) offensive on Tet.

That about broke the camal's back, so to speak, back in the US and the public finally decided that if we were not going to fight to win then there was no sense in being there at all.

Originally Posted by EvilEyeFleegle

But we lost the war...

We quit the war. Militarily, we won. Politically, we decided to leave. Worse yet, the democratic Congress then decided to cut all aid promised to the South after we left.

Originally Posted by EvilEyeFleegle

...and while I hate to admit it..we were the bad guys there. IMO.

I disagree.

Yes, we handled the entire saga of Vietnam wrong, beginning with Wilson after WWI and continuing with Truman and Ike and JFK and LBJ, who all handled Vietnam poorly, IMO.

That poor handling, however, did not make us the "bad guys".

Once we left, and after the Democrats in Congress voted to cut promised aid to the South, the Commie NVA and VC rolled into South Vietnam and started killing and torturing those they believed to be "enemies of the state". About two million people tried to escape Vietnam, and many of these (approximately 800,000) took to the seas on rickety boats and rafts and many of these people died on the seas due to exposure, starvation, and pirates.

The new unified Vietnam instituted economic and social policies that resulted in crisis in Vietnam as people fled purges and economic poverty and Communist Vietnam quarreled with its neighbors.

We may have handled the situation in Vietnam wrongly, but, we were not the "bad guys". The Commies were the bad guys. Nobody tried to escape South Vietnam when it was under US protection. Just as the US protected South Korea from the Commie-backed North Korea, we tried to do the same in Vietnam. We succeeded in Korea and today US-backed and protected South Korea is a free nation with a vibrant economy. In contrast, the North Koreans suffer miserably under the murderous Kim regime, backed and propped up by the heartless Chinese.

IMO, the Commies are the bad guys. South Korea enjoys prosperity and freedom while the North Koreans live under the boot heel of the Chinese-backed Kims, and they starve and are tortured and killed for dissent.

Today, the Vietnamese are moving toward capitalism, even if only slowly. Its a pity they had to fight against the US and suffer so many casualties, and then fight with their neighbors and purge their own people before coming around to the notion that freedom in politics and economy are preferable to authoritarian dictatorship.