Vietnam War History

1/9/08 | MileHi

[MileHi]

Homework. I don't know the details off the top of my head. My son needs sources for "the rest of the story".

[MileHi]

Couple things:

I understand a NV general said in his memoirs that they lost lost during the Tet holiday. He also said that Walter Cronkite proped them up. I don't know his name so I am not sure what to search. I heard this on talk radio recently.

Links to Cronkites comments would help.

Stats on deaths after US pulled out.

Anything that helps a 17 yo politely refute a lefty teacher who implies a Iraq is like VN.

Some of you lived it and know this stuff. Thanks for you service and helping us set the rcord straight.

[MileHi]

You guys forgot more about this story than I know.

[Crim]

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/061021

Excerpt:

Issues analysis
Vietnam deceptions live on
Liberal armchair generals are still fighting the last war

October 21, 2006
Fred Hutchison
RenewAmerica analyst

The tendency of generals to re-fight the last war has been a recurring phenomenon since Carl Von Clausewitz wrote about it in his book On War (published 1832). Sometimes intellectuals who play armchair general make the same mistake. Liberals seem to be caught in a repeating time loop based on a fixation with Vietnam. Many liberals who oppose the Iraqi War are using some of the same arguments that they or their fathers used in opposing the Vietnam War.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Media Impact of Tet Offensive: Examining Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report

http://depts.clackamas.cc.or.us/banyan/1.1/strickland.htm

Good site

[<1/1,000,000th%]

“Vietnam, A History” by Stanley Karnow.

He’s kind of a lefty but he gets a lot of the story correct.

[stayathomemom]

Try this site to links on this topic: http://www.swiftvets.com/staticpages/index.php?page=Links

[MileHi]

Sometimes intellectuals who play armchair general make the same mistake. Liberals seem to be caught in a repeating time loop based on a fixation with Vietnam. Many liberals who oppose the Iraqi War are using some of the same arguments that they or their fathers used in opposing the Vietnam War.

Thanks! That is exactly so. I hope to help him with a reasoned. sourced rebuttal. That link helps.

[onja]

General Tran Van Tra (North Vietnamese general) said:

“We did not correctly evaluate the specific balance of forces between ourselves and the enemy, did not fully realize that the enemy still had considerable capabilities, and that our capabilities were limited, and set requirements that were beyond our actual strength.”

In other words, the Tet offensive was a failure. He was subsequently sacked and put under house arrest for speaking out against the government.

[MileHi]

Wow, that was it. Thanks. We can search that now.

[Doc91678]

Start with the surrender of the French at Dien Bien Phu 1954.
Eisenhower’s committment to south Vietnam after the partition.
Military assistance called MACV beginning 1955-1960.
Kennedy’s increased assistance to South Vietnam after building the Green Berets 1962.

[wildbill]

Most of the reporting is/was from MSM lefty sources. Likewise the info in academia since the war was so unpopular with the left.

The biggest repository of Vietnam source books, essays, graduate papers, etc. is in a collection at Texas Tech.

You should be able to surf their library site for some sources and then get them througn an inter-library loan. The NVA general’s memoirs are extremely enlightening about how they conned the left onto their side via propaganda and the truth about the Tet offensive. A must read source for any rebuttal.

[onja]

More...

“The Spring General Offensive” is the book that discusses it, the memoir.

Another good quote. “The Tet objectives were beyond our strength. They were based on the subjective desires of the people who made the plan. Hence our losses were large, in materiel and manpower, and we were not able to retain the gains we had already made. Instead we faced myriad difficulties in 1969 and 1970.”

And here is an excellent article about him, at least by NYT standards. Might help your son’s argument, having liberal NYT to back him up.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B03E6DF1639F936A15757C0A960958260

Best of luck. I’ll be doing a similar project on civil liberties, although it’s more of a semester project and it’s hard to tell that she’s a lefty. Nice that although all my teachers are big lefties, they don’t discuss it in class and the history teacher openly discusses biases he might have (such as growing up in the sixties, being anti-war, influences his view on the US Civil War). So, anyways, good luck.

[Despot of the Delta]

Anderson, David L. Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953-61 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

Davidson, Phillip B. Vietnam at War, The History: 1946-1975 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press,1988).

Gillon, Steven M. The American Paradox: A History of the United States Since 1945 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

Hammond, Paul Y. “Presidents, Politics, and International Intervention” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 386, Protagonists, Power, and the Third World: Essays on the Changing International System(November 1969) 10-18.

Hess, Gary R. Vietnam and The United States: Origins and Legacy of War (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990).

Hitchcock, William I. The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent,1945-2002 (New York: Doubleday, 2002).

Kattenburg, Paul M. The Vietnam Trauma in American Foreign Policy, 1945-1975 (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1982).

Mann, Robert. A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic Books,2001).

Olson, James S. and Randy Roberts. Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945 to 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991).

Patti, Archimedes L.A. Why Viet Nam?: Prelude to America’s Albatross (Berkeley, Los Angeles,and London: University of California Press, 1980).

Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Tran-Duc-Thao. “Vietnam and Eastern Asia” The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4, French Indochina (August 1947), 409-413.

Wilcox, Wayne A. “Contemporary American Influence in South and Southeast Asia” Annals of

the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 366, American Civilization: Its Influence on Our Foreign Policy (July 1966) 108-116.

Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991).

[DuncanWaring]

General Giap is alleged to have said in his memoirs that they lost big in the Tet offensive; I haven't read them so I can't say for sure.

A member of his staff, a Col. Bui Tin had an interview published in the Aug 3 1995 Wall Street Journal saying the same thing.

[Eagles6]

It was Gen. Giap. Peace accords were signed and we began pulling troops out. By 1972 we had mainly Advisors and air power left. The north broke the accords and launched the "Easter Offensive" in 1972. The South Vietnamese Forces, with American backing beat the NV, backed by the chicoms and the ussr and sent them running home.

In 1975 the north had rebuilt and tried again. By this time the US democrat congress cut off all funding to the South. The rest is history.

[MileHi]

Before I get too far behind, thanks. I knew the info would flow, and it will take a while to look at it all.

Also, what did Johnson say about Cronkites broadcast, and what did Cronkite report?

[MileHi]

Thanks, you guys are awesome.

[MileHi]

Thank you

[MileHi]

Thanks again.

[Brad from Tennessee]

IRAQ:LEARNING THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM By Melvin Laird

Others who were not there (Vietnam) may differ with this description. But they have been misinformed by more than 30 years of spin about the Vietnam War. The resulting legacy of that misinformation has left the United States timorous about war, deeply averse to intervening in even a just cause, and dubious of its ability to get out of a war once it is in one. All one need whisper is “another Vietnam,” and palms begin to sweat. I have kept silent for those 30 years because I never believed that the old guard should meddle in the business of new administrations, especially during a time of war. But the renewed vilification of our role in Vietnam in light of the war in Iraq has prompted me to speak out.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html