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Was Vietnam worth the cost?
American Thinker ^ | 03/29/2024 | Charles Farlow

Posted on 03/30/2024 8:12:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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To: Retain Mike

I don’t know about all this rearward focused stuff. In my time at 18 I didn’t know the politics, the betrayals by this government, the protests by its citizens and the overall effort to quash it only to start off in more new war.

I know that anti-war losers ended up President and Sectrary of State (also ran for President) and I know that most people in government my age now are leftists. That’s all I know


61 posted on 03/30/2024 9:42:10 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: phormer phrog phlyer

*the template for the Vietnam War was the Korean War.*

I think our WW2 success was a bigger one. It’s the nothing-we-can’t-do attitude.
Think-the French gave up there just like they did building the Panama Canal. We built it and bailed them out in 2 world wars. Show them up. The French plus the rest of the world.

Hindsight will always be 20-20. I say give them the $4 billion Kissinger promised. Do it in the form of military equipment(deep state) as they have bigger issues with the Chicoms, something we didn’t care to realize.

Then give $4 billion to ElSalvador to build more prisons for the gang bangers-theirs and ours.


62 posted on 03/30/2024 9:45:40 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
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To: SeekAndFind

Didn’t LBJ inherit it from JFK and then tried to prove he could win it?


63 posted on 03/30/2024 9:47:11 AM PDT by antidemoncrat
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To: SeekAndFind
Vietnam was another effort to destroy America via sacrificing our blood and treasure.

Even after China helped to kill and harm Americans in Vietnam and Korea they were granted most favored trade status and it has been a priority in giving the country away to them. You always know you were lied to and kicked in the face when our country looks the other way on the exploits and harm done by other countries. Vietnam was rewarded as well with trade.

At least Germany and Japan totally surrendered and apologized and we have great relations with them.

The free trade internationalist hate America. They are the first beat the drum for war and look the other way when trade and harms our country.

64 posted on 03/30/2024 9:50:51 AM PDT by Theoria
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To: combat_boots; All

Hey Boots…

I wasn’t there, I was too young. 13 when the boys came home. So I don’t have the right to an opinion on whether “it was worth it or not”. I think that that is a question that only those who served there can answer, individually.

But to every Vietnam veteran, I say “thank you and welcome home.” You are truly more American and deserving of the highest respect, honor, and gratitude of our people. You were treated shabbily by the government, and by a portion of people back home who were absolute garbage then and still are.

Being the son of a World War II combat wounded (twice) paratrooper, A nephew of pacific Marines, I have nothing but the highest respect for all of you. I also cousins who served in Nam.


65 posted on 03/30/2024 9:52:33 AM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: Zuriel
"I am guessing the abundance of sam sites and enemy fighters would have shot down half of the bombers"

No, the Christmas Bombing (linebacker II) showed that we could bomb Hanoi and Haiphong albeit with some losses, but countermeasures for their SAMs were effective and the damage inflicted on them brought them back to the negotiation table in Paris.

The Mig-21s were effectively countered by the combined strike forces of A-6 Intruders, EW equipped F-4s and virtually every other aircraft that was used in the air war.

Nixon threatened to bomb the dikes on the Red River and mine the harbor at Haiphong; likely he would not have actually done the former as a million North Vietnamese would have drowned. But the threat was credible after December of '72 and that brought Le Duc Tho back to the table.

Linebacker II article

66 posted on 03/30/2024 9:57:04 AM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: Zhang Fei
The US effort in Vietnam essentially prevented huge stores of Chinese and Russian supplies from being diverted elsewhere.

Thank you. That is an essential aspect of the entire event. It was later reported that it cost Russia a much greater percentage of its National Gross Product to provide military support to NVN than the percentage supplied to SVN by the U.S.

It soon became apparent that our effort in VN based on honoring an agreement with an ally was certainly headed toward a major global conflict with China and Russia.

VN was the wrong battlefield for such a larger conflict, we decimated the opponent's ability to wage war and left as soon as convenient. The well-published photo of civilians evacuating embassy by helicopter was taken a few years later after NVN violated the peace treaty.

The author of the article says he has "...done a great deal of research and introspection about the war, to understand the war’s pathology from beginning to end". He conveniently fails to mention, however, the sizeable role of China or Russia in the event, or perhaps even more importantly the role of the American Left in our culture, our MSM and Congress.

Simply put, those who say we "lost the war in VN" are mistaken or following an agenda. We did indeed, however, soundly prevail at great cost of lives in a local skirmish that deferred, perhaps temporarily, a global conflict.

BTW, there were at least two kinds of Purple Heart holders who served in VN, those given to patriotic American warriors and those who like John Kerry's three citations, were based on slight injuries that did not take them off duty.

A lot of the latter type may well believe we lost the war.

67 posted on 03/30/2024 10:17:41 AM PDT by frog in a pot (Rino = one who enjoys the image of good sense yet is unable to support demanding principles.)
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To: Da Coyote

We had no business in that shit show. It was one big effing government con-job where we won nothing but death and debt, just like the rest of these corrupt government wars.


68 posted on 03/30/2024 10:24:31 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Zuriel

as long as we got the aa battery fonda was at im all good with it


69 posted on 03/30/2024 10:44:22 AM PDT by al baby (I know sarcasm )
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To: DesertRhino

“Hippies,” proper were just useful idiots for the SDS/Weatherman Columbia-educated self-loathing Jew commies that now hold the reins of power. Think Ayers/Obama/Holder/the Clintons. “Coat-and-tie radicals“, to use Emmett Tyrrell’s term.


70 posted on 03/30/2024 10:45:07 AM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: TokarevM57
”The war in Vietnam was lost, of course, but it wasn’t in vain. It made unimaginable profits for the arms industry. Why do you think American wars last so long? If America wins the war, the money stops flowing. If it loses the war, the money stops. Keep the war going, and the money flows

Exactly correct. Just like globalist open border Bush, and his 10 year long, "Compassionate war", where once again we won NOTHING but death and debt.

71 posted on 03/30/2024 10:49:10 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: frog in a pot

[The author of the article says he has “...done a great deal of research and introspection about the war, to understand the war’s pathology from beginning to end”. He conveniently fails to mention, however, the sizeable role of China or Russia in the event, or perhaps even more importantly the role of the American Left in our culture, our MSM and Congress.]


There’s an element of garbage in, garbage out here. Most of the literature is pretty airy fairy in its avoidance of hard numbers re the Comintern supply effort. This omission isn’t accidental, because looking into those numbers, and finding out that Russia supplied more and better jet fighters and tanks to North Vietnam than to the South would put the lie to the insistence that part-time guerrillas defeated South Vietnam rather than a better-supplied regular North Vietnamese Army in a blitzkrieg involving MiGs, tanks and howitzers.

https://www.rbth.com/history/332396-how-soviets-fought-against-americans
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War

Note also that it was assumed for decades that North Korea would defeat the South without US help even with the sacrifice of 38K GIs on both sides of DMZ in the early 50s. Superior fighting ability is not an indication of the other guy being a better person. It just means that at a given time and place, he had a better military force cobbled together than the loser. It’s pretty astonishing how enemy fairy tales have become mainstream here, but no Russian would see Russia as the only Axis power to end up on the winning side, even though the latter is literally truw.


72 posted on 03/30/2024 11:02:49 AM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room)
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To: al baby

Lol


73 posted on 03/30/2024 11:31:46 AM PDT by Zuriel (Acts 2:38,39....Do you believe it?)
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To: SeekAndFind

Nope. My brother was a Vietnam Vet, U.S. Army, 25th Infantry Division, Ch Chi 1966-1967. Died too young at 51. He wrote home from there that the war was a joke. That the black market thrived in Vietnam. That it was a good thing the VC couldn’t shoot for shit, and that if he was going to be shot, it would be by his fellow soldiers. Despite all that, he said at least he knew he had done his part. But what did the part he and thousands of other men play, actually succeed in doing? Vietnam was just another proxy war with Russia and China, and there was no victory, like there never is a clear victory in any proxy war.


74 posted on 03/30/2024 12:00:28 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: FlingWingFlyer
"The RATS got us involved in that mess and it took a Republican to get us out."

When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's, the saying back then was: "Democrats start the wars. Republicans have to finish them."

75 posted on 03/30/2024 12:01:44 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: DesertRhino
"The hippies were not correct. They were pushing for the same exact thing the Vietnamese communist were."

The same a-holes who were protesting the Vietnam War in the 60's and 70's are among the commies running this government today, and pushing the Ukraine War. Biden got five draft deferments during the Vietnam war, and as a Senator in 1975, he was against Gerald Ford aiding South Vietnam and evacuating refugees. Biden thought protesters were “assholes,” but he said the war was a “tragic mistake” based on “lousy policy.” From the guy whose policies are a "tragic mistake" based on "lousy policy."

76 posted on 03/30/2024 12:12:26 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: PGR88
"Vietnam was a poor, worthless country - completely outside the original idea of “containment.” The US had no overriding strategic interest there."

I don't know about poor, but as far as the rest, you could be talking about Ukraine. Vietnam was a proxy war with Russia and China. Ukraine is a proxy war, and who knows, but China could also be involved in some form.

77 posted on 03/30/2024 12:14:45 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: piytar
"Still think sending a ton of troops to die in Vietnam was a mistake."

Two guys in my senior class that joined up right after graduation, died in Vietnam. One of them sat behind me in homeroom.

78 posted on 03/30/2024 12:15:49 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: SeekAndFind
There's tons of farm-raised shrimp from Vietnam in our supermarkets. Not because it's from Vietnam, but because it's farm-raised, probably in dirty waters.

Be careful of this shrimp. Farm raised is often noted in fine print. It is the wild caught shrimp that is clearly stated on the packaging and that is the type to get.

79 posted on 03/30/2024 12:16:51 PM PDT by SamAdams76 (6,575,474 Truth | 87,429,044 Twitter)
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To: MinorityRepublican

We made mistakes in the Korean War too.


80 posted on 03/30/2024 12:17:27 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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