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The objective in Vietnam quickly became....prolong the war while fighting with one arm tied behind your back. The Vietnamese wanted Communism and to get rid of foreigners. We basically barged in acted like we owned everything.
Killed over a million I think. Doesn't seem like the lives of "brown skinned people" account as more than a statistic.
If S Vietnam had asked for our help against northern aggression then we would have had moral authority. As if we need that...
The Vietnam war made a great deal of sense from the point of view of the Vietnamese. Their country was occupied by foreigners and the Vietnamese wanted them out.
In the context of post WWII Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe and coming on the heels of the Korean War, Vietnam wasn't at all pointless from the view of the USA/western countries. Whether or not it was impossible to conclude Vietnam with a return to the 1954 Geneva accord borders in the way Korea was ended is a another question.
I say the Vietnam war made sense and had a point, but the USA could have walked away sooner.
As for WWI, it depends upon how the start of the war was framed. The Serbian group that engineered the assassination of the Archduke wasn't random - it was a purposeful direct attack upon the monarchy with the eventual goal of eliminating monarchies from Europe. That's how Austria-Hungary saw it, and there was plenty of evidence to show assistance from the Serbian government in the plot. When one government sends killers to take out another government's leaders, that is a legitimate cause for war. And from the point of view of the other countries in Europe, if a war is going to happen, you want to have your military ready and it's a great advantage to throw the first punch. The problem with that is the "if" in "if a war was going to happen". It didn't have to happen. If the leadership of only Germany and/or France had said "we don't want to have a war", it would not have happened.
As the others have pointed out, once a war starts, it becomes about survival more than about causes.
As for the USA in WWI ...
The only interest the USA had in entering WWI was protecting the repayment of loans made by US banks to finance Great Britain and France. Those countries made it clear that if they lost, they would default upon the billions that they owed the US banks. Such a default would be a huge blow to the US economy. Of course they didn't repay the loans after the war in any real fashion, but the announcing of a default would have caused a run on the banks and might have even caused Wall Street plutocrats to lose some of their personal fortunes.
It was really a no-brainer: a hundred thousand lives of lower class Americans vs Wall street losing a few billion dollars.
So as for WWI, it made a lot of sense from the point of view of Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. For the others piling on, that was pointless. For the USA, it was worse than pointless, it was a betrayal by our leadership.
This is my take (& Thulsa stated it better than I could).
From a US perspective: In 1964-1966, there was (some) geo-political logic to having troops in Vietnam (given our strategy of communist containment & our other actions taken the past two decades). Also, we were only 3-4 years removed from "missiles of october" for goodness sakes, so the Communist threat was certainly or possibly a real one. Ironically, Johnson was actually the "peace" candidate in 64.
The only reason for US participation in WW1 was economic. Granted, the end result was a leap frogging by the US over several world powers into one of the top 3-5 powers by the war's end; but this wasn't a goal, & I don't believe it's why the US leaders got us in.
WWI was much more pointless.
Vietnam has a sort of "War for Independence" motivation on the North Vietnam side, and also a legitimate anti-communism angle for the United States. One could argue that holding the Communists at bay for 10 years bought the US time until the USSR ultimately unraveled.
From the beginning WWI was fight so we don't lose. There were never geo-political aims of any sort on any side.
Also the fact is WWI was about 10x worse the Vietnam. so I think its enormity over basically nothing should probably play into the decision.
WWI was much more pointless.
Vietnam has a sort of "War for Independence" motivation on the North Vietnam side, and also a legitimate anti-communism angle for the United States. One could argue that holding the Communists at bay for 10 years bought the US time until the USSR ultimately unraveled.
From the beginning WWI was fight so we don't lose. There were never geo-political aims of any sort on any side.
Also the fact is WWI was about 10x worse the Vietnam. so I think its enormity over basically nothing should probably play into the decision.
though, from what we have read, WW1 was pointless, most of us only know what we have read and I have learned to take what I read with a grain of salt in many cases. I was here during the Vietnam conflict and remember it well. My brother as in Nam. For that reason, I have to say the Vietnam war.
I could vote either way but I guess for Vietnam only because nearly everyone else was dumb enough to fight WWI and well before us. In Vietnam, only a few other countries went down the path to Hell with us.
Yes, sophomoric thinking...
I will say that given the choice, I would rather fight Charlie in the jungle than sit in a cold, muddy trench and then charge into dozens of machine guns.
wwi WAS POINTLESS...we entered it basically because 120 some americans were killed, and Germany said they would keep sinking passenger liners
WWI was a significant factor in causing the Great Depression, introducing a LOT of disease, including a pandemic or 2, in the usa...and it led to WWII...
basically a lot of countries going to war with bordering countries over fear of being invaded...
wwi WAS POINTLESS...we entered it basically because 120 some americans were killed, and Germany said they would keep sinking passenger liners
WWI was a significant factor in causing the Great Depression, introducing a LOT of disease, including a pandemic or 2, in the usa...and it led to WWII...
basically a lot of countries going to war with bordering countries over fear of being invaded...
Vietnam was even more pointless...
I have pretty much said the same thing on other threads, although I think the true total of Americans killed was over 1,000 (there were other ships sunk by the Germans besides RMS Lusitania). Regardless, to avenge those 1,000 civilians, we lost over 100,000 young soldiers.
So from the American perspective, WW1 was more pointless. At least Vietnam has some kind of rationale, the communist domino effect.
I would argue from the British POV, WW1 could have turned out more pointless as well, if Russia did not collapse in 1917 and the Franco-Russian Alliance did not end. People forget that in 1914, Britain sided with her traditional enemies, France and Russia, against her traditional allies, Germany (Prussia) and Austria.
Had the Russians not fallen in 1917 and the Franco-Russian alliance lasted into the post war era, Britain could have been faced with a powerful alliance, this time without the traditional Germanic powers to balance against it.
Did you fight in Vietnam? It was an unwinnable War. It was a Police Action, we could not fight it like we wanted because that would make us the aggressors. We tried cutting off supplies to the North, which is a good strategy when fighting but we was told we couldn't do this.
I felt it was to be fought to prevent the spread of Communism. Both World Wars were fought for other reasons.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Unsettomati
From the point of view of the United States? The Vietnam War. Simply put, there were more compelling American interests at stake in World War I than in the Vietnam War.
After all, in Vietnam the overriding American interest - stopping the communists from rolling up the rest of SE Asia after they got South Vietnam - never happened even though they did get South Vietnam. The Soviet Union went out of business, and we have normalized relations with Vietnam and do tens of billions of dollars of trade with them annually. In other words, things seem to have worked out pretty well despite the war's failure.
This is not to say that American interests in World War I were tremendous - but they were certainly more significant in comparison to those of the Vietnam War.
It sometimes seems the real overriding interest was LBJ's fear of appearing soft on COMMUNISM!
At the time I was in high school and haven't understood to this day the fear of SE Asia going Communist, given the combined land masses and populations of the USSR and China at the time SE Asia seemed relatively insignificant by comparison.
And I 've read more instances of LBJ being concerned about his image than I have with him actually seeing any of it as a true threat to the US.
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