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...My Step-Father in Law fought. He is Vietnamese. A member of a family that owned and operated businesses he was quick to want to fight the communists and save his country. He was trained in special ops, parachuting deep into enemy territory to do covert actions. He was captured at some point, and was in a POW prison for more than 20 years. Bush Sr. arranged for the last POWs to be released. Released not being the same as welcomed, he reunited with his wife, who had thought him dead and had already remarried and been widowed again. They moved to the US, children and stepchildren. I've seen his letter from President Bush. He has some pictures of him as a young man, jumping from airplanes. It took years for any payment to be made for the years of being a POW...
Trying to figure out the above, as I am not aware of any US POW's in Vietnam after the war, although there where rumours and various movies with that theme.
I think what you are saying is he was an ARVN (south Vietnamese) soldier either captured during the war or, more likely, sent to "re-education camps" when South Vietnam/Saigon fell to the communists in 1975. A fate that fell to many South Vietnamese - former soldiers, government officials, priests and monks, wealthy, even some VC officials, basically anyone of importance or part of the former regime went to the Vietnamese version of gulags.
The ARVN have a bad reputation as being poor troops, but indeed there are some that put up a good fight. Mostly they had to deal with bad leaders. Glad he made it to the US.
Let's be clear about one thing. We saw when the Khmer Rouge won in Democratic Kampuchea f/k/a Cambodia and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam there were bloodbaths. Also, valuable time was bought to enable South Korea and Taiwan to become strong and stable, The Philippines also gained valuable time to stabilize though the results were not as salubrious. As a result of this time being bought, the Western Pacific did not become a Communist lake.
Why were the demands to "stop the war" focused only on the U.S.? Couldn't Hanoi have also "stopped the war"?
Bingo. To a lesser extent, the Domino Theory DID prove true with Cambodia and Laos. And furthermore, in 1965, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and just about all of Southeast Asia was unstable. The ten years the USA spent fighting:
1. Exhaused the desire and ability of the Communists to go much further,
2. Let to a Sino-Soviet rift which Tricky Dick exploited, and
3. Allowed economic development in the rest of Southeast Asia to take hold. Singapore even became a "Little Tiger" economy.
US strategy in South Vietnam may have been badly thought out and botched in its execution, but yes, it was a noble cause. Millions of refugees, the boat people, Killing Fields, and "re-education camps" testify to that.
Last edited by NickB1967; 12-14-2015 at 10:01 AM..
If JFK/RFK were President, I don't think there would have been a Vietnam
like the country experienced under LBJ/Nixon at all.
Vietnam is not on JFK's shoulders by a longshot.
Uh, sorry, but LBJ followed the "Whiz Kids" Kennedy appointed.
I know there is a Kenndy Mystique that wistfully thinks all would have gone well had he not been assassinated (and yes, that assassination *was* by a crazy communist sympathizer), but I dare say a re-elected Kennedy in 1964 might have gone out in disgrace over Tet like LBJ did. His foreign policy was already botched with the Bay of Pigs.
Of course, so many what ifs are involved here. Did the climate of paranoia and hostility after the JFK assassination lead to infighting at the GOP Convention in 1964? Might some other Republican, or even a Goldwater unbruised by the GOP infighting of 1964, defeated a surviving Kennedy? Who knows?
Good point. Ironically the "heroic peace-loving peoples army" of Vietnam didn't feel compelled to stop waring with it's neighbors, even after American troops left, until almost 1990.
Bingo. To a lesser extent, the Domino Theory DID prove true with Cambodia and Laos. And furthermore, in 1965, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and just about all of Southeast Asia was unstable. The ten years the USA spent fighting:
1. Exhaused the desire of the Communists to go much further,
2. Let to a Sino-Soviet rift which Tricky Dick exploited, and
3. Allowed economic development in the rest of Southeast Asia to take hold. Singapore even became a "Little Tiger" economy.
US strategy in South Vietnam may have been badly thought out and botched in its execution, but yes, it was a noble cause. Millions of refugees, the boat people, Killing Fields, and "re-education camps" testify to that.
One of the takeaways from Vietnam is that we probably should fight more through refugees and proxies. It's expensive to put $100,000 worth of education onto a battlefield. There are people in Third World countries for whom fighting for the U.S. would be an advance. I do feel strongly that enemy challenges should not go unmet.
One of the takeaways from Vietnam is that we probably should fight more through refugees and proxies. It's expensive to put $100,000 worth of education onto a battlefield. There are people in Third World countries for whom fighting for the U.S. would be an advance. I do feel strongly that enemy challenges should not go unmet.
Which, essentially, was the Reagan Doctrine--sponsoring guerrillas to take down *their* regimes, rather put our own boys into the fray.
If JFK/RFK were President, I don't think there would have been a Vietnam
like the country experienced under LBJ/Nixon at all.
Vietnam is not on JFK's shoulders by a longshot.
This is a valid conjecture. Obviously, we don't KNOW what would have happened in re: Vietnam had JFK not been killed. However, we DO know that he authorized a National Security Memorandum a few days prior to his assassination that called for the first 1000 troops to be brought home by the end of 1963. LBJ reversed that decision before the end of November.
Sorry, the Domino Theory stated that a country falling to communism would lead to more and more neighboring countries falling to the communists. It didn't have an exception that said something like this 'but not if some western country first spends a decade fruitlessly sacrificing blood and treasure before pulling out and letting the country fall'. What the Domino Theory proponents claimed would happen did not happen.
While Laos and Cambodia became communist, it was not because of Vietnam being communist itself but because of the war, which expanded beyond the borders of the two Vietnams. In any case, the West never cared about those agrarian backwaters. It was the possibility of communism in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia which terrified Western leaders. And those dominoes never fell and were never in any particular danger of falling, despite the fact that the Domino Theory predicted their fall after the communists unified Vietnam.
It is incumbent upon theorists to prove their case, not to demand that those who do not accept it disprove it.
Sorry, but "fruitlessly sacrificing blood and treasure before pulling out and letting the country fall" meant that the enemy had to spend their blood and treasure, which exhausted their ability to spread their communist ideology further. In terms of lives, that meant 15 times as many NVA and VC casualties per American casualty.
Moreover, in 1965, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and just about all of Southeast Asia was unstable. The ten years the USA spent fighting:
1. Exhaused the desire and ability of the Communists to go much further,
2. Led to a Sino-Soviet rift which Tricky Dick exploited, and
3. Allowed trade (largely with Japan) and economic development in the rest of Southeast Asia to take hold. Singapore even became a "Little Tiger" economy.
And Sorry again, but for you to claim an exception that "While Laos and Cambodia became communist, it was not because of Vietnam being communist itself but because of the war, which expanded beyond the borders of the two Vietnams," is dishonest and irrelevant. The Domino Theory didn't have an exception that said something like "Laos and Cambodia don't count." North Vietnam was using Laos and Cambodia as staging areas, and sponsoring the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge as proxies, even before US involvement. That the Khmer Rouge turned on them later and decided to exterminate Vietnamese nationals in Cambodia as well as "class enemies" is another story. What the Domino Theory proponents claimed would happen did happen, to a lesser extent thank goodness.
US strategy in South Vietnam may have been badly thought out and botched in its execution, but yes, it was a noble cause. Millions of refugees, the boat people, Killing Fields, and "re-education camps" testify to that.
As for Hoffman and Rubin who the hell knows, hedge fund managers?
Truth can be stranger than fiction! Abbie Hoffman remained an unrepentant communist, but Jerry Rubin about faced.
On April 12, 1989, Abbie Hoffman was working on his next book. I’m sure it would’ve been another great book from Mr. Hoffman, filled with his priceless wisdom about how to "Steal Yourself Rich" and be a parasite, and solid advice for leftists on the fine art of absolving communist goons from their body counts.
Except Abbie Hoffman committed suicide that day, halfway through writing it.
Perhaps he saw what was going to happen to his beloved Soviet Empire, and it so distressed him that he killed himself, rather than reinvent it as the "politically correct" Cultural Marxism poison infecting college campuses today, like his fellow leftists did.
Jerry Rubin went the other way. After stirring up endless rabble in the ‘60s, Rubin concluded in the ‘70s -- after having attained profound realizations through EST therapy -- that he was wrong, that his whole Big Man On Campus act had merely been his attempt to “compensate" for personal shortcomings, and he did become a venture capitalist!
On November 28, 1994, the former ‘60s commie turned capitalist investor would get run over by a car and die while jaywalking in the middle of a busy street in Los Angeles.
Last edited by NickB1967; 12-14-2015 at 01:22 PM..
Originally posted by mensaguy: This is a valid conjecture. Obviously, we don't KNOW what would have happened in re: Vietnam had JFK not been killed. However, we DO know that he authorized a National Security Memorandum a few days prior to his assassination that called for the first 1000 troops to be brought home by the end of 1963. LBJ reversed that decision before the end of November
Yes he did sign an order to bring home 1,000 troops, but they were not combat troops, most were cooks, mechanics and other rear echelon. Unfortunately most do not look at the details of this and equate the 1,000 troops with JFK's willingness not to widen the war.
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