Posted on 05/11/2015 4:42:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
BJ Clinton treated them as though the North was our ally instead of the South; he acted as though the war never happened while so many veterans were still alive to see it. There is no indication that tens of thousands of Americans were killed fighting that same regime, or that even more of our allies in the South weren’t murdered by them.
There is no justification for the relations we have with them; compare it to the treatment of Cuba.
In case you missed it, or were deceived by their own squabbles: Vietnam IS Red Chinese expansion.
You visit the country and stay there; apparently you are enamored with Ho Chi Minh’s legacy.
They are replacing Red China as our cheap slave labor without basic rights/freedoms; that seems to be OK with you - at least it keeps their wares low-priced. When I see Vietnamese streaming back there from the countries to which they fled, I’ll consider your input more seriously; go lecture those refugees and former prisoners about what they are missing out on.
It isn’t your place to forgive and forget; that is up to their victims.
A combat veteran may have first-hand experience with the price that is paid in these military campaigns, but I don’t think it makes them any more qualified to render judgement about the wisdom of these campaigns in the first place. If anything, it’s probably the other way around.
You’re wrong. Noncombatants enjoying the comforts of home are bystanders, spectators. The only thing the non-serving provide are taxes.
Veterans see everything first hand. They’re committed
And that may be part of the limitation there. They are committed ... which means they may not be totally objective. The Pentagon is filled with career military hacks who have always done what they are told -- even if it means implementing something that is completely disastrous to the personnel in the field, and to the nation as a whole. Isn't that how Vietnam -- and now Iraq -- ended up the way it did?
This is why it's necessary to wait until all of the veterans of a military campaign are long gone before this country can have an honest conversation about the wisdom of that military campaign.
Thank you for that informative post. The gal that cuts my hair is Vietnamese and goes back once in awhile. She was just a little girl when she lived through the nightmare of the fall. Her grandmother and other relatives are still there. Amazing how it has progressed from when she was a girl. (Her dad was taken in the night and they didn’t hear if he was dead or alive for over a year. In a “re-education camp”. And once they did know he was alive it was another year before they could see him, and a couple more when he was out.)
And you answered my question at the end - it there was a difference between the North and the South. It sounds like the North is still restrictive. I know Americans go on tours to Vietnam (my brother was just there). Does Hanoi see many American tourists?
Really? You who have never darkened the halls of the Pentagon, much less a base? What the heck would you know about who works in the Pentagon? I love armchair experts! I expect that the perfumed princes who sat out the Revolution said pretty much the same things about George Washington too, after they were nice and safe.
Vietnam ended up the way it did thanks to know-it-alls like you who hid from duty during the war and then elected treasonous Democrats who greased the skids for the enemy. We had the enemy beaten while back home we had enemy sympathizers pushing "peace" as a cover for supporting their agenda against our country.
I returned from the war and saw my country carrying the enemy flag in the streets - so much for your civilian "perspective" of the war.
Thank God people like you stayed well into the background during WW II or we'd be speaking German by now.
My interest in a military career began and ended in high school after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. I decided that it would be the height of idiocy for anyone to put his life in the hands of a military command who would have men standing guard outside a military barracks -- in a war zone, mind you -- with specific orders to have no magazines in their guns.
I thank you for your service, but to be honest with you I've never understood this idea that it is somehow noble, or a "duty," or even a basic principle of liberty, for someone to put his life at risk in some Third World sh!t-hole just because some @ssholes in Washington think it's a good idea.
I think his assessment of Reconstruction is laughably one-sided.
Duty really does exist and we fight our enemies in those Sh!tholes because if we don't, we fight them here.
Anyway, I'll quit blaming you for the loss in Vietnam, "kid"! It wasn't your war.
What crap.
THE recurring theme of US military history is: We are a representative republic with a citizen army. Our people hate and will not support prolonged campaigning, and they will not support even short wars with no plan for victory.
The "people we leave behind" are foreigners, and are no concern of ours. It's the people (our people) who bear the burden that our obvious concern. The repeated commitment of forces that take casualties and die with no plan to eradicate the enemy and achieve victory (and now do not even get to NAME the enemy) is repulsive to Americans, and we will never support it.
I predicted, right here on 9/13/01, that George W. Bush would fight a Vietnam war in South Asia, which is exactly what he did.
The only "recurring theme" we need to know about is TomasUSMC's tagline: "Fight like WWII, win like WWII. Fight like Nam, finish like Nam".
We fight wars at a distance to protect our populace but the effects on the locals wherever we fight is important. The only way you win wars is to convince the other side of the validity of your position and your ability to enforce that position. We didn't win WWII by failing to consider the safety and security of the French, the Dutch, the Okinawans, the Philipinos . We won WWII by crushing the Germans and the Japanese while earning the trust and assistance of the French, the Dutch, the Okinawans, the Philipinos and many others.
The Vietnam War and the Iraq Wars were tough but all wars are tough. It's the nature of warfare. The only big difference between WWII and these wars is that they're being televised now and our people get to watch whatever version is presented in real time.
We kicked the snot out of our enemies in Vietnam and Iraq and we lost a lot of good young people. Both the Vietnam War and Iraq wars were worthy fights because we had good people to protect, national objectives to secure and vicious, criminal enemies to kill. It's the nature of protecting our country and our interests in these times.
The parts we haven't learned are:
1. War isn't begun until we all, collectively, decide what the objectives are - the success critera. (I know: this is the Powell Doctrine). War will always cost us some of our children - until we face this fact, we will never win anything again.
2. Once the war is on, we stick with it until the objectives are completed. Crapheads that decide that they want to support the enemy/interfere with the prosecution of the war need to be locked up/deported until the war is over.
3.If the war is considered worth fighting, we ALL fight. No more of this "somebody else's kids" garbage.
4.We stay in East Camel Butt until that place is completely, positively secure, even if it takes 50 years. Coming into someplace, hammering it and then leaving never works.
Bush 1 was a WW2 vet. He remembered a few things.
Bush 2 had a chance to DO ANYTHING after 9/11. What did he do? He told us “Islam is a religion of peace”. ...”Get down to Disney World in Florida,” he urged just over two weeks after 9/11. “Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”
Not exactly a call to arms.
It was downhill from then on.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301977.html
some good points in that link.
Semper Fi
The magazines were kept out of the weapons because of orders originating in the White House and the Marines were kept in that barracks because our political leaders felt that it would be less threatening to our supposed "neutrality". Even the sainted Ronald Reagan could make stupid decisions.
I rest my case. If Ronald Reagan had loved ones in the U.S. Marine Corps over there in those barracks, you can be damn sure that the guards outside would be armed to the teeth.
One of my favorite figures from American history was Ethan Allen. He led the Green Mountain Boys, which was a colonial militia formed long before the American Revolution for the purpose of enforcing New Hampshire land titles in the disputed territory that had been subject to competing claims by the colonial governor of New York.
The Green Mountain Boys and its leaders are considered heroes of the American Revolution because of their role in battles of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but most Americans aren't aware of the second part of the story. Within 18 months of those two battles, the Continental Congress was calling for General Washington to send an army to Vermont to subdue the Green Mountain Boys. Those folks from Vermont may not have liked the British, but they didn't trust a centralized Federal government in Washington or Philadelphia, either. That's why Vermont was conspicuously missing among the original thirteen states after the war ended. It basically functioned as an independent nation from 1777 until 1791.
When duty calls me, I'll be up in the Green Mountains waiting for anyone who wants to f#%& with me.
I suspect you do understand why I'm a touch resentful of what my idiot country did to us during Vietnam. Nothing like enduring the heat, the humidity, the bugs, the horrors of combat, the Dear John letters and coming back to a country having a great party. The "antiwar" demonstrations were one big picnic and it was no skin off their noses if it hurt any of our feelings to see enemy flags everywhere.
No bitterness here, mind.
The Green Mountain Boys were a force to be reckoned with, no denying it. But today, our oceans don't protect us anymore. Every vicious idiot out there has the means to reach us and thanks to the imbeciles we elected from both parties, we could see cities wiped out by people who haven't spiritually left the 8th Century.
The issue is, we have a responsibility to protect and defend our country and our people even if they lapse into craziness, like muttonchop sideburns, wearing flowered bellbottom pants, and chanting for our enemies. It's what American men are supposed to do.
We lost Vietnam because our country gave up on is and elected leftist Democrats who threw all of our sacrifices into the dumpster and handed the enemy their victory. Of the 14,000 or so Marines killed in Vietnam, 10,000 of those were killed around where I was. How many of those would you say fought badly in your estimation?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.