Is over 50,000 American lives worth it. Was it worth it for all the war hating, war protestors to grow older and become this nation’s elitists who now virtually run it.
The leftists would have glommed onto another cause to advance Marxism.
Vietnam helped stop the advance of communism across the globe.
We would be saluting Lenin today if we hadn’t fought pretty much everywhere.
Freedom is infinitely worth it.
I thank every Vietnam Veteran I meet.
No
58,200+
Like WWI, and the WWI consequences in Communism, Nazism, WWII, Red China, and Korea before Viet Nam.....it was not “worth it”.
US involvement was avoidable at a dozen points and our objectives could have been accomplished in a far less costly manner by competent honest leadership.
Something we lack a lot of the time.
A mistake from the start. From the first LBJ lie.
I don’t think so. The RATS got us involved in that mess and it took a Republican to get us out. We claimed we were fighting communism. The communists kicked us out and Vietnam went full commie. Now they are one of our major trading partners and Vietnam is one of America’s favorite places to vacation and spend their money.
Never understood why LBJ dropped bombs on the Ho Chi Minh Trail instead of simply giving Hanoi the Dressen treatment. The NVA certainly had it coming to them.
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s leader, was so grateful to the US for its defense of the region, he had a purpose-built carrier repair facility built to facilitate American operations in the region. Vietnam was a Thermopylae - a delaying campaign fought in order to give the newly-independent nations of Southeast Asia time to stabilize and muscle up to destroy the insurgencies also being supplied by the Chinese and the Russians. The US effort in Vietnam essentially prevented huge stores of Chinese and Russian supplies from being diverted elsewhere.
Just how big were their efforts in Vietnam? Individually, they dwarf the combined EU and US supply efforts in Ukraine, whether in terms of troops, aircraft, tanks, SAMs, ammunition or artillery pieces.
This is a question that involves complex issues but has a simple answer:
NO
This is not denigration or opprobrium on those who served. I respect and honor them.
The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Lyndon B. Johnson. What a piece of ####. Possibly the worst President before Biden.
Just my humble opinion of course. Welcome to correction.
The cold war was real and the collapse of the soviet union resolved many of the world’s problems (and created new ones)
Vietnam was a poor, worthless country - completely outside the original idea of “containment.” The US had no overriding strategic interest there.
The great irony is - we left Vietnam alone for 25 years after 1975, and now its a developing, friendly, and Pro-American place
That should be a lesson for corrupt MIC neocons in DC
No
5.56mm
The question would only mean anything if the war were not hamstrung by the government.
If the military had been allowed to do what they needed to, it would have not had been the exercise in futility it was.
So in that regard, no, it was not worth the cost in human life that our government threw away.
Same with the war on terror and Afghanistan.
The only possible upside to the Vietnam War was that it provided an example to future politicians of how NOT to conduct a war.
That example was completely ignored by George W. Bush in his Afghan adventure. And that’s why when it comes to conducting a war, I despise Bush II even more than LBJ.
LBJ only had the Korean War to guide him. And that war was fought to a stalemate. Successful enough. But Bush II also had Vietnam as a guide. And he repeated many mistakes that LBJ made.
This is what happens when Congress allows a president to go to war on his own. It’s tragic. And it’s infuriating.
You’d have to be an idiot to think the Vietnam war was worthwhile. Of course I could say that about most if not all of our wars.
If we had treated Vietnam the way we treated Cuba (i.e., acted like we were going to overthrow Ho Chi Minh and then quit right after we started), there would have been far fewer casualties.
But there would be other consequences.
Vietnam would still be a Communist backwater like Cuba, instead of a burgeoning proto-capitalist nation that is begging for Americans to come teach business and teach Christ.
The communists wouldn’t have stopped with Indochina, because they never stop. Their military money would have been free to attack Taiwan, or reinstigate the Korean War, or invade Japan from the Kirils—or even attempt to take over Alaska, especially if we didn’t try stopping them in Taiwan or Korea or Japan.
LBJ fought the Vietnam War as stupidly as Hitler fought Operation Barbarosa, and for the same reason: he wanted to run the strategy and the tactics, and sometimes even the operations. Nixon just wanted to end the war without looking like he was ending the war (unlike Biden, who ended Afghanistan without giving a damn how it looked), which extended the war for four more years than necessary. It was the way we fought Vietnam which made it, to use a word no one hears these days, a bloodbath.
Full Disclosure: I lived in Japan 67-70 as a Navy brat and was as close to the war as one could get without being in Vietnam. Later, I was entering AFROTC when the draft was suspended in ‘73, and told by the CO at the college that we wouldn’t be needed, which was how my military career ended before it began.
Worth it? Personally, No. From a way back gubbmint view, maybe. I went in the Army on my 17th birthday, shipped to Vietnam as an Infantry private 2 months after my 18th birthday. Shipped home in a hospital plane 4 months before my 19th birthday. What a way to spend the teenage years, supposedly your most fun years of life. Have never actually recovered from the wounds from an rpg hit during Tet ‘68 and now at 74 the painful walk reminds me with every step that early life certainly can affect your ‘sunset’ years. BUT, even with that it was so much better than the 58,000 much unluckier bastards that bought it and gave all they had. So, worth it, nah.
no.
The Democrat Party secured defeat. Responding to Tet, those that got us into war cut and ran. In 1972 a Democratic Congress refused funding to restore South Vietnamese forces, which had defeated the invading NVA army. Soviet and Chinese support brought NVA victory in 1975.
A few examples from the History Channel show the disinformation campaign waged against Vietnam Veterans. U.S. forces took extraordinary steps to avoid civilian deaths, while the VC and NVA murdered over 36,000 by targeting village leaders, teachers, and medical workers. Two-thirds of Vietnam vets volunteered compared to only one-third of those in WW II. Over 90% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served and 74% would serve again knowing the outcome. Compared to non-veterans, they were more likely to find employment and then earned 18% more.
Ronald Reagan said of them, “ours (mine) was a noble cause. A small country (including ethnic Chinese, Catholic Vietnamese, and others fleeing Communism) newly free from colonial rule sought our help in establishing self-rule and the means of self-defense against a totalitarian neighbor (Tonkinese) bent on conquest.” He said to consider otherwise dishonored the memory of over 58,000 who died in the cause. I didn’t want to go, but I volunteered and served in three campaigns to keep faith with the many of The Greatest Generation I knew growing up. I understood through them the armed forces were a rite of passage into adulthood.
War should be regarded as a continuum, and not a dichotomy between violence and diplomacy. Mao Zedong distilled a chapter of Sun Tzu when writing in his red book, “It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed”. For eight years we shed our blood in Vietnam and then politicians managed to develop strategies to secure defeat. The Day It Became the Longest War
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1996/may/day-it-became-longest-war
Statistics about the Vietnam War
http://vhfcn.org/stat.html
(1) in fighting the Vietnam War, the US protected Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines from being overrun by communist insurgencies; and
(2) and that by changes in tactics and strategy, the US under Gen. Creighton Abrams had the guerrilla war won until a Democratic Congress cut of assistance to South Vietnam. This led to North Vietnam defeating the South through a conventional invasion.
Those points seems correct but do not necessarily mean that the US war effort was strategically sound or at a reasonable cost relative to any benefits.
If we as a nation are willing to go to war, we need a congressional declaration and then go full William T. Sherman/George S. Patton on the enemy. Without a congressional declaration, not one soldier should be placed in harm's way.
Once a declaration has been made, and then strategic objectives identified, the politicians need to get out of the way and let the military do its job.