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China was the steadfast ally of North Viet Nam. If we'd thrown all we had at them China would have had to respond. So it was already established that wasn't going to happen. Nobody wanted to risk starting a new world war.
I wonder what people back then would say if someone told them Wheel of Fortune was giving away vacation trips to Viet Nam, apparently a very popular vacation trip, and China now has a booming tourist trade. And that all the communist countries are gone now without us starting any more wars, just crumbling from inside.
It also tells you something about how wrong US policy was then that it made Vietnam ally with China, the traditional enemy of Vietnam. Right there is the final proof that it could not have been more wrong.
It also tells you something about how wrong US policy was then that it made Vietnam ally with China, the traditional enemy of Vietnam. Right there is the final proof that it could not have been more wrong.
Yup. Never underestimate the incompetence of our politicians over the last 50 years or so regarding foreign policy. They fought a Cold War in the halls of Congress and the White House and sent thousands of young Americans, mostly draftees, to die in futile pointless wars abroad. We haven't fought a war that was a direct threat to our national security since WW2.
Speaking of the Vietnam war what would you say regarding what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said about it?
Quote:
Once in the United States, Solzhenitsyn urged the United States to reconsider its attitudes to the Vietnam War (which had ended in April 1975). In his commencement address at Harvard University in 1978,[46] Solzhenitsyn alleged that many in the US did not understand the Vietnam War. He rhetorically asks if the American Anti-War Movement ever realized the contemptuous laughter which, he said, their actions had always provoked among the elderly men in the Soviet Politburo. Solzhenitsyn also accused American anti-war activists of moral responsibility for the political repression that followed the fall of Saigon: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?"
Waste of effort. But I have the benefit of hindsight,
At the time stopping the Red Threat seemed appropriate.
Absolutely it was the seen threat of the times. Kennedy thought so looking at his Cuban policy and sending first marine Corp into combat role in Vietnam. Just as we can not really know what would have occurred if communist movement around world had not been challenged. Many of these abandoned countries now suffer corruption from their revolutionary inspired government ;now that they move to world market and want investment from outside; having been ignore for decades. Once Russia failed economically and China turned to world market after Moa and millions he starved to death; they were on their own.No different than the biggest stand west took .What would Europe look like if US had just abandoned Europe after WWII. What would South Korea ;western Europe ;Japan be like if the threat had not been meet which were the same policy after WII.I think if US had not seen results of peace in Europe after WWI we may well have abandoned it after WWII and many wanted to do just that seeing Europe not our business just as after WWI. Would South Vietnam be like South Korea; we will never know.Did I fact Vietnam end communist expansion in the region afterall ?Wasn't that the objective of policy then?
He was using it as a criticism of the lack of moral foundation and singularity of societal purpose in the west. We are too "in love" with the flavor of the week to allow our nation to pursue the necessary goals to defeat an enemy with a longterm view. When it came to Vietnam, he essentially said, we let the popular idea prevail even though it was not the correct course of action given the responsibility we had created to the people of Vietnam by getting involved in the first place.
This was a very famous speech about what was wrong with the west. Interestingly though, was how wrong he was with many of his conclusions about the course the west had supposedly set.
Speaking of the Vietnam war what would you say regarding what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said about it?
Quote:
Once in the United States, Solzhenitsyn urged the United States to reconsider its attitudes to the Vietnam War (which had ended in April 1975). In his commencement address at Harvard University in 1978,[46] Solzhenitsyn alleged that many in the US did not understand the Vietnam War. He rhetorically asks if the American Anti-War Movement ever realized the contemptuous laughter which, he said, their actions had always provoked among the elderly men in the Soviet Politburo. Solzhenitsyn also accused American anti-war activists of moral responsibility for the political repression that followed the fall of Saigon: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?"
I'd say... so?
What relevance is it whether or not the Kremlin's interests and those of American protesters coincided? Should we have not allied ourselves to the USSR in 1941 merely because that alliance was in Stalin's interests? Should we have refused trade with the Soviet Union, refused to enter into arms control agreements with them, refused summits and even diplomatic relations? After all, the Soviets engaged in all those things because it suited their interests. And the United States engaged in all of those things because it suited our interests. That should be the driver of action, not some emotional ploy by Solzhenitsyn. So his very argument, that nothing should have been done if it pleased the Kremlin, is specious.
Aside from that, did not American involvement in Vietnam in fact serve Soviet interests? They watched as their enemy got bogged down in a war, which gave their Soviets greater latitude to act militarily. Undoubtedly, part of the calculus in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the Prague Spring was that the U.S., hopelessly focused on and committed to SE Asia, could not possibly even think of intervening. The U.S. was squandering blood and treasure and political capital, all the while driving the North Vietnamese ever more firmly into the arms of the USSR - the latter not at all unwelcome, especially considering how Soviet relations with Vietnam's neighbor, China, had been going steadily downhill for the previous decade, and indeed that conflict briefly went hot in 1969. So anyone who assess the U.S. involvement in Vietnam on the basis of whether or not it hindered Soviet interests can only conclude that it was a complete and total failure.
Of course, the true measure of the American utility of involving ourselves in that conflict is what it did for us, not whether it amused Leonid. And what was the purpose? For one, to make sure a weak capitalist dictatorship did not become a communist dictatorship. And this was a pressing need worthy of the expenditure of 50,000+ dead and hundreds of billions of dollars why, precisely? One stated reason was the domino theory - if South Vietnam falls, so goes SE Asia. Of course, that was utterly wrong, because South Vietnam fell and SE Asia did not. Sure, Cambodia and Laos did, but the communist insurgency in those states was primarily helped not by South Vietnam's fall but by the American escalation of the war in the first place, which then spilled over into those countries. Further, those agrarian backwaters weren't the countries cared about by those proffering the domino theory. Rather, they were worried about the more cosmopolitan countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, as well as the strategic threat that a united Vietnam would pose to the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. And what happened? The Vietnamese domino fell - but none of the countries about which the U.S. cared then fell. The theory was wrong.
The Vietnam War was a foolish endeavor. The enemy was astonishingly committed, offering little chance that they would ever be subdued. And the goals of the war have been shown by history to have been unnecessary. That's why it should not have been fought.
Sure, Cambodia and Laos did, but the communist insurgency in those states was primarily helped not by South Vietnam's fall but by the American escalation of the war in the first place,
I hasten to point out that it was Vietnam that fought against Chinese hegemony, and it was Vietnam that ended the fratricide of the Pol Pot regime. And it was the U.S. in the most perverse act that I can recall that backed the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese. Any so-called moral authority or authenticity had long past.
The fall of Saigon was 40 years ago. What are your feelings about the Vietnam War and have they changed over the years?
Two years after all American combat troops were out of South Vietnam, the NVA invaded the South. This was in direct violation of the Paris Peace Accords. With the fall of Saigon on TV it was thought by many that it was the US losing the war. Those helicopters rescuing Vietnamese were in fact CIA choppers. Those US Marines were in fact embassy guards that are found in every US Embassy all over the world.
The United States military has never been beaten in the field to the point of losing a war. We remain in that respect undefeated. In fact during the Vietnam war the NVA never won a battle to speak of. After the Tet offensive, the Viet Cong were all but neutralized as a fighting force.The American people stopped the Vietnam war, not the Vietnamese.
The politicians lost their war. The United States Military won theirs. We remain as a nation undefeated in the field.
The United States military has never been beaten in the field to the point of losing a war. We remain in that respect undefeated. In fact during the Vietnam war the NVA never won a battle to speak of. After the Tet offensive, the Viet Cong were all but neutralized as a fighting force.The American people stopped the Vietnam war, not the Vietnamese.
The politicians lost their war. The United States Military won theirs. We remain as a nation undefeated in the field.
not so. The US Army surrendered in the Philippines to Japanese during WWII in the biggest ever surrender of US Armed Forces.. it redeemed itself though after 3 years
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Lets get it right.
