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When you are fighting a war to win, you go for the jugular !
In WWII , VE day came about when Germany got its homeland bombarded with artillery
...............VJ day came about after two massive atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
I never could figure out why North Vietnam wasn't bombed into oblivion.
We will never know exactly how great a role the resolve displayed by the United States and NATO in the years 1945-1965 played in finally bringing an end to the last of the great butcher-states which emerged in the 1930's
But a lot of us do recognize that the indirect support of domestic American dissent played a role in the Soviets' strategy, and that the so-called "Peace movement" of the early 1980's was the last, most desperate measure undertaken by the kremlin's gerontocracy.
By whatever method, it turned out for the better in the long run; we can only commemorate and honor those who "paid the freight".
Having lived through it I'd be more apt to say that, ". . .an army of conscripts in a democratic state. . ." which was being socially conditioned to question its values and their worth = political trouble.
Or better yet, political trouble caused the problem with the army of conscripts. An army which has been taught to degrade its country isn't going to defend it very well, is it?
When you stretch the idea of "defense" that far, people would start questioning what is it exactly they are doing over there and what part of the US are they defending in a God forsaken jungle half a world away.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lodestar
I'm unsure of where you get the idea that Americans don't care about people who are fighting wars just because they aren't their relatives. Have we sunk that low?
Do you care about the doctors who fight Ebola in Africa ? Most likely, if you're a decent person, you do ... to some extent.
Do you care about them as much as you do about your own children ? Would their fate be the most important thing on your mind ? I guess not.
If the war in Iraq was fought by a conscript army and every mom and dad in the US knew their son could be drafted and sent to fight, and every young girl knew that their boyfriend / husband could be drafted and sent to possibly die in Iraq, and the people who were being drafted didn't really want to go there and didn't understand why they had to possibly die in that country when the US was not in danger - I can bet you the Bush administration would not win the 2nd term, and anyone who wanted to be the president would have to promise to end the war and make damn sure he followed up on that promise.
A democratic country is by definition a cautious country that does not want to fight wars when they are not clearly the matter of life and death. It's hard to persuade the voters to put their sons' lives on the altar of some vague foreign policy goal that may or may not really be in the best interests of the country.
Now when there's a professional army and everyone in it has willingly agreed to serve, fight and possibly die - most people care for them... perhaps even somewhat more than they care for the doctors fighting Ebola. They are heroes, and it's terrible when they die, and for some people it's enough to protest and demonstrate, but most won't make it a top priority - as long as it's not their sons being drafted against their will. Re-introduce draft, and you'll see America being far less adventurous in it's foreign policy.
As I said, whoever came up with the idea of all-contract army was brilliant. The next step is remote controlled robotic army, this way we could invade half the globe tomorrow and the average Joe wouldn't lift a finger as long as the football season wasn't interrupted.
The fall of Saigon was 40 years ago. What are your feelings about the Vietnam War and have they changed over the years?
A noble cause, and history (that is, the events after the fall of Saigon - mass departure of "boat people" from Vietnam, persecution of South Vietnamese, killing fields in nearby Cambodia, 2 continued decades of war for Vietnam after Saigon, Soviet expansion to Afhiganistan) has shown that our purpose was just and the reason for being there was sound...even as the price, and the outcome, was regretful. The only conclusion is that it was not worth it all, at least to America.
It shows one weakness (depending on your perspective) in our Democratic system - America will not endure a long drawn out war with sustained casualties. That is something our enemies, not constrained by such things as free elections and freedom to publically disagree with it's government, understand well and take full advantage of still today.
A noble cause, and history (that is, the events after the fall of Saigon - mass departure of "boat people" from Vietnam, persecution of South Vietnamese, killing fields in nearby Cambodia, 2 continued decades of war for Vietnam after Saigon, Soviet expansion to Afhiganistan) has shown that our purpose was just and the reason for being there was sound...even as the price, and the outcome, was regretful. The only conclusion is that it was not worth it all, at least to America.
It shows one weakness (depending on your perspective) in our Democratic system - America will not endure a long drawn out war with sustained casualties. That is something our enemies, not constrained by such things as free elections and freedom to publically disagree with it's government, understand well and take full advantage of still today.
bingo !
There was a documentary in the early 80's where a North Vietnamese general was interviewed.
He stated there was never any doubt in his mind they would prevail.
....." 10 years,20 years,50 years, 100 years....American people don't have the patience to support long wars "
The US erred in not using everything possible to win the war quickly..............bombing North Vietnam into submission.
The fall of Saigon was 40 years ago. What are your feelings about the Vietnam War and have they changed over the years?
We should never have been there in the first place.
How did we get there is the better question?
The origins of American involvement in Vietnam can be traced to the obsessive fear of communism, or anything we considered communism that came about during the Cold War. Vietnam was a colony of the French. Later, after Japan initiated World War II, it invaded French Indochina and captured these French possessions. At the end of the war, the French regained these possessions and those who belonged to a Vietnamese nationalist movement began a war for independence with the French. It wasn't a lot unlike the American Revolution.
Vietnamese forces were lead by a young, charismatic leader named Ho Chi Minh. Ho had been around for quite a long time and had been agitating for independence from the French since about 1919. He actually appeared at the Conference of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I in Paris and pleaded that Vietnam be permitted to become independent. This was logical because the Treaty of Versailles allowed most of the regions that had composed the Hapsburg Empire in Europe to become independent. Ho's problem was that the Vietnamese were Asians and were not considered as equals by predominant nations at the Versailles Conference: America; Britain; and France. Had the European nations been more accepting of Ho and the cause of Asian independence and self-determination, its likely that much of what happened in the future could have been avoided.
The French fought Ho's forces from about 1946 to 1954. In 1954, Ho's Vietnamese forces shocked the world by defeating the French Army at a place called Dien Bien Phu. Following, this defeat, the French entered into negotiations with Ho Chi Minh. In 1957, the Geneva Accords made North Vietnam and independent country. A second part of the treaty would have grave implications for the USA. This part provided that an election, or plebiscite, would be held among all Vietnamese people to determine whether South Vietnam would become part of the country or not.
Eisenhower was President at the time and was advised by Allen Dulles at the CIA and by John Foster Dulles in the State Department that if the election were held, a majority of people would vote to make South Vietnam a part of a unified nation of Vietnam. At this time, Ho Chi was showing an affinity or friendship for Communist China. The truth was far more complicated. Ho Chi Minh was much less a communist than he was a Vietnamese Nationalist. However, the only countries that showed any support for him and the cause of Vietnamese independence were communist countries like China and the USSR. Nevertheless, Eisenhower was advised something like this:
1. Ho Chi Minh was a communist.
2. If North Vietnam prevailed in the election, than South Vietnam would be forced into joining a communist country.
3. Once this happened to South Vietnam, all the countries in the Southeast Asia would fall like "dominoes" and become communist countries, just as China had.
In another environment, other American presidents might have chosen not get involved. However, the political environment of the time was radically different than the one today. Americans had a huge fear of communism. Senator Joseph McCarthy had stoked these fires by claiming the State Department under former President Truman was full of communists and spies. The fall of Nationalist China to the Communists in 1949 touched off a wave of hysteria. The fear was compounded by events such as the Russians exploding their own atomic bomb. In short, any American president was under huge pressure to do anything to "stop the spread of communism".
Eisenhower acted on his own to cancel the elections, or plebiscite. This was the beginning of the Vietnam War from the American perspective. At first, fighting was sporadic. However, during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations military advisers were sent to South Vietnam. North Vietnam, along with assistance from the USSR and China, showed a great ability to mobilize resources. A road was constructed through the jungle to South Vietnam known as the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" through which supplies were sent to the Viet Cong which was attempting to wrestle control of South Vietnam from the government which was run by President Diem.
During Kennedy's presidency from 1961 to 1963, North Vietnam appeared to get stronger and stronger. Despite the fact that the South was receiving substantial American assistance it appeared the South was losing. The USA gradually saw that President Diem was poorly regarded by his own people. Gradually, we became persuaded that Diem had to go and Kennedy agreed to support a military coup against Diem. The plan had been to offer Diem safe passage out of his country, but that went awry and Diem was murdered by other Vietnamese who lead the coup. JFK was assassinated in Dallas about a month after this occurred.
When Johnson became President, his advisers told him the situation had in Vietnam had gone from bad to worse. In effect, he was told that the only way the country could be kept from falling to the communists was from an overwhelming show of American military might. From 1964 through 1968, the USA massively built up forces in South Vietnam. At the height of the conflict, we had approximately 550,000 soldiers stationed there. The North conducted a guerrilla war because they could not win militarily against the overwhelming power of American forces. However, this guerrilla warfare inflicted heavy casualties on American forces. Additionally, the economic cost of stationing over half a million soldiers half way around the world began to take a tole on the American economy. Nor, could President Johnson demonstrate concrete progress was being made in the war. Even a massive bombing campaign did little to slow the North. Some military leaders argued the problem was that we didn't hit the North hard enough. My belief is that we hit them plenty hard, but it was a very hard kind of war to win. LBJ always had to keep in the back of his mind that Vietnam bordered Communist China. After 1964, Communist China had its own atomic weapons. I have always believed that LBJ thought of victory in Vietnam in terms of negotiating the sort of stalemate that the USA had negotiated in the Korean War. In other words, we wouldn't win outright. However, we'd get a treaty that left South Vietnam in tact as a separate, non-communist nation.
In January of 1968, the end came. North Vietnam launched what is known as the "Tet Offensive". Militarily, the Tet Offensive turned out to be a huge defeat for the North. However, strategically it changed American minds about the war. The context of the battle has to be considered. American General William Westmoreland, Commander of troops in South Vietnam, had said many times before Tet that the turning point in the war had been reached and the North Vietnamese were losing. When Americans saw t.v. pictures of Viet Cong soldiers that were able to attack the American Embassy in Saigon, the notion that America was "winning" this war, no longer seemed true. Television news anchorman, Walter Cronkite, reported from Vietnam that it was time for America to leave the conflict. Thus began a huge change in American opinion.
When President Nixon took office in January of 1969, there was no thought of anything other than gradually leaving Vietnam. Within a couple of years, Nixon dramatically reduced the number of American troops in South Vietnam. By 1973, Nixon had negotiated the "Paris Accords" with North Vietnam. These accords, in reality spelled the end for South Vietnam as an independent country. Within two years, the USA had disengaged from Vietnam and the North practically walked into South Vietnam and took over the whole country.
Essentially, the USA entered a hopeless conflict for the wrong reasons. America should only fight wars where our "vital interests" are at stake. No vital interests were involved in propping up a dysfunctional, corrupt regime in South Vietnam. No attempt was made to evaluate whether the loss of 58,000 soldiers and the expenditure of $500 or more billion dollars was worth any benefit we hoped to obtain by fighting in Vietnam. There is very little positive to take out of the entire experience. Sometimes, great countries make huge mistakes that have enormous implications. In the end, this conflict was a huge mistake.
Last edited by markg91359; 04-27-2015 at 09:03 AM..
...I have always believed that LBJ thought of victory in Vietnam in terms of negotiating the sort of stalemate that the USA had negotiated in the Korean War. In other words, we wouldn't win outright. However, we'd get a treaty that left South Vietnam in tact as a separate, non-communist nation...
I think that you erroneously give Johnson credit for a nation-building plan that was put in place by Eisenhower in 1955.
When was the last time a new movie came out about the Vietnam War? When was the last time there was a political discussion on TV about it? That's important because I think the Vietnam movies and the political discussions in the 80's and 90's demonstrated the importance of having a clear mission and exit strategy. Look at the difference in the two Iraq Wars. The leaders of the second Iraq War clearly forgot the lessons of the Vietnam War.
But its interesting that if you put two people in a room who were growing up then, or had, and they start talking about Vietnam, the anger is still there. Nothing has convinced the pro war people that it was going to end the way it did without all of those American lives, and nothing will convince the deeply commited anti war people that anything at all was achieved.
When I was in college the history teacher tiptoed around the whole subject.
I can on the surface understand why the pro war people believed as they did, but still cannot forgive them for the blindness which took so many of my generation.
The prevaling idea was that we'd been the good guys, won the big war and now a new menace is out there and we were destined to save parts of the world from it. If anyone had looked at it from a practical way, and balanced the real loss over the imagined one if they didn't, then they would have seen a different picture.
In the end, communism failed in and of itself and its defincies over time.
, ". . .an army of conscripts in a democratic state. . ." which was being socially conditioned to question its values and their worth = political trouble.
A citizen army that ISN'T conditioned to question its values and their worth = the Wehrmacht.
Sadly, I doubt the US politicians or the US people have the will to see a war thru to the end.
WWII was the last war the United States and its allies won a total victory.
I doubt US will ever accomplish a total victory anytime in the future.
The difference was that Hitler and his conquests were seen as necessary by everyone. The amount of territory taken and the pure evil involved in his ideas were so far out of the norm that even those who might have said no didn't oppose it. Stalin benified by becoming our 'friend' for a time since between them we needed Hitler gone more. And it had spread to a great portion of the world.
The war(s) against the Red Menace were not the same. They were skirmishes with client states standing in. Korea wasn't going to attack the US continent. Vietnam was taken and it didn't become a staging place for the next step. It was even obvious at the time.
Nobody wanted the US and Russia to go to war, even if they were the most horrid, ungodly enemy ever known. Nobody wanted to know what a nuclear winter was really like.
And a lot of information was hidden from the public then. Now that's hard and will become even more difficult. There were also limited sources of informaton. It was easier to stir up the country side against a carefully designed enemy.
I don't see a 'world war' that looks like before. But as resources get hard to get, many little, local and personal 'wars' an conflicts which cool and heat and cool again. What heats and cools them will be the availability of things like food, water and fuel, not political 'enemies'. And it will be about extreme religion. That may prove the unifying element which drives the parts back together again at least for a time.
I don't think tomorrow is going to look like today or yesterday but be its own often cruel and bloody time.
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