The truth about Viet Nam, and life there today.

Self Researched. | Oct 2002 | Exton

[rockfish59]

Illbay is just that.........ILL!

[rockfish59]

Yep, they were soldiers once, and young!

[Exton1]

Read some of the other posts. I wrote this because the History Channel came out with another leftist piece about the war, and had a poll going on was the war worth fighting. I was in the Air Force during the war, and sacrificed my youth for this country and know I got a royal F Job for doing my duty. There is a point where you cannot take the smugness of the Communists in this country. . Frankly, I don’t give a flying F, if you understand this post or not, By the number of comments it has received it shows that it was worth it, and may have straightened out a few folks.

[185JHP]

It was a ggod news/bad news situation - the good news, we killed at least a million of 'em. The bad news, that turned out not to be enough. Too many of the people in the South were too vile and/or stupid, greedy, lazy, venal and ignorant to fight hard enough - they were happy to let us do the fighting for 'em. I don't weep for the Southerners at all. The Vietnamese are held in contempt by most SEAsians.

[leadpenny]

"Gardens of Stone"

Just finished it. Powerful. If I were teaching a HS or college course, the film would be an excellent starting point.

As a side note, I am distracted when something is not authentic. The movie starts out in 68 and ends in 69. Throughout, they are wearing the white name tags on their fatigues. I remember making the switch to subdued insignia as we (A Co. 4th Avn. Bn) deployed from Ft. Lewis during the first week of 1967. Maybe the Old Guard at Meyer didn't make the change until later.

Good movie. Something kept me from seeing it when it was released. Can't remember what it was now. Thanks.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Thank you, thank you, for this post - and please do write more. I will never forget (and only by God's grace will I forgive) the likes of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather and company for their lies of that era. Their ilk are still here today with the lies continuing - except this time they are siding with the TERRORIST KILLERS who directly attacked America!!!! Your report is so wonderful and, may God bless each and every American (and others) who fought the Communist butchers!

[navigator]

Of course our troops had left completely in 73 formally while our troops had done very little fighting in 70, 71, 72 & 73. The big fighting for our guys occurred in 64, 65, 66, 67 & 68.

Hogwash.

American Casualties only began to tail off noticeably the second half of 71 when Nixon's troop pullout really got some traction.

The number of Americans who died in 71 were similar to the numbers in 66. The numbers in 70 parallel those of 67. (You can check out the monthly figures for yourself.)

It's simple, American deaths went up during LBJ's troop buildup because there were more people in country each month. They went down because Nixon started withdrawals.

btw..my Vietnam service medal says we got mired there starting in 61 not 64.

[Red Jones]

thank you for that information; I was surprised to read it because I had a different impression based on readings elsewhere. I see that it didn't come off exactly as I described. Many of our military people insist the enemy withdrew resources to north vietnam after tet, but the casualty stats don't apparently support that view as well as Ithought.

[Illbay]

What does "militarily" matter? The U.S. military was thousands of times more powerful than that of the North Vietnamese. If the U.S. hadn't had military victories, it would have been astonishing.

Read again what I said: "The military doesn't exist as an end in itself but as a means to an end."

Saying that we killed a bunch of enemy is pointless. We LOST, because the military objective is irrelevant without the political. The military EXISTS to serve the political ends of the nation. If those ends are frustrated, you LOSE, no matter how many tons of ordnance you manage to dump on the heads of the bad guys.

[Illbay]

If you insist on talking of the war as if it were a football game, then consider this: I have seen plenty of games where one team DOMINATED in all the statistics. They had more yards passing. More first downs. More yards rushing. Greater time of possession.

Except for one thing: They lost, because they had fewer points on the scoreboard than their "inferior" opponent.

So it was with Vietnam: The time ran out on the game clock, and the other team, the INFERIOR team, the team we beat six ways from Sunday in all these arcane statistical areas, had more points on the scoreboard.

WE GOT BEAT, 'CAUSE THEY HAD SCOREBOARD!

[Red Jones]

Illbay, you under-estimate that north vietnamese were a strong opponent. We were not 'thousands' of times more powerful than them. Look what the north vietnamese did to the french, I think 10-15 thousand french died in the big battle, dien bien phu??, if I'm wrong in that number, somebody please correct me. That must've been a horrific battle, when did it happen, 1957? They were travelling all together in long single column. The communists had them surrounded and attacked. The communists were able to bombard the french with artillery at horrific rate. The french apparently had no air force to help in defense. They were slaughtered, very few escaped. The 'battle' took weeks.

Our opponent in that war was not a pushover. Remember what happened in 79? Chinese troops invaded north vietnam and were spanked big-time by the vietnamese. By the time the communists fought us in south vietnam they had been developing their military abilities for over 20 years by actively fighting either the japanese or the french.

But you are correct in that the strategic political decision to lose by leaders in washington was more significant than our tactical military victories on the ground in south vietnam.

Sadly, many americans are so out-of-touch with sacrifices made by those in the military. The abilities and achievements ofour military are just taken for granted, as if our military is a magic capability, wave a magic wand, win a war. watch it on CNN, cheer for victory and beat chest and still go to work next day like nothing happened.

People who know war understand that war is always bad. There may be good reason to fight a particular war, but even in that case war is still very bad. Weakening our military causes war, it also magnifies the suffering in war. When war comes we should try to face that war as a nation, instead we put all sacrifices onto a small minority of our people.

I don't blame anyone on this forum for this circumstance. I blame the news media, the politicians and the academics for letting us live in little fantasy cocoon world of unreality.

[Red Jones]

I don't support war for empire-building either. But keep in mind this history.

In ww2 we were allied with ho chi minh's army in fight against japanese. We had one US Army captain among ho chi minh's troops as advisor in north vietnam during ww2. That advisor came home at end of war. He had personally witnessed that ho chi minh and his communists would go into village after village for the purpose of converting it to communist cause. In order to convert they just plain told everyone that they were to support communists from now on. If village leaders objected, then they were immediately killed. There were times when communists ended up killing nearly whole villages that did not support them as desired.

So, we had actual evidence from experience that the communists were butchers in this manner. Also, keep in mind that at the time communists had taken over countries all over the world, always by force, and had killed as you know tens of millions of people. So, we had this consideration more so than just protecting american investments.

We were also concerned about world-wide expansion of power by communists collectively.

Also, if you were one of the 2-3 million americans who did serve in vietnam, then you'd have thought it very good to kill a million or more communists because the communists were there to kill you and you'd rather kill them than they kill you. We had about 500,000 troops at peak, they had 2 million or so. We did very well to only lose 58,000 in reality. If you'd have been in war, then you'd have thought killing the enemy to be a very worthy goal.

Those soldiers didn't ask for that war. Our civilian leaders gave it to them. Our citizens voted for those leaders even after the leaders said they were taking us to war over there. Our soldiers only served, the overwhelming majority volunteers, but not war-mongers. They did not do it for fun. It was duty.

[leadpenny]

Germany lost a war. A couple of 'em in the last century in fact. Japan lost a war. Italy lost a war. LBJ lost a war. I didn't lose a war. To consider myself as having lost the war in Vietnam would mean I didn't have a country to come back to, and, I'd be paying taxes to some office in Hanoi.

Seems to me that your propaganda needs to be peddled on some site where one's guilt needs to be assuaged. Say, maybe, a site that William Jefferson Blythe Clinton frequents.

[Red Jones]

here's some interesting history I read.

In summer of 64 there was a 'white paper' produced by a group called Institute For Policy Studies?. It was a brand new think tank established by a rich american couple who had previously been supporters of the american communist party. The IPS 'white paper' was a blueprint for our involvement in vietnam. It recommended that we put troops into south vietnam, but that we fight a restricted war, that we only protect the south and not ever go into the north to actually win.

This white paper was circulated only among top congressmen and others among the elite. It was not discussed in public, nor even released tothe public. But LBJ obviously used this as his blueprint because that's exactly what happened. It shows how decisions are made in america, behind closed doors, with the journalists, the politicians and even the academics purposely isolating the masses of the americans from any decision making or any knowledge about the decision making.

Somewhere around 65 president Johnson actually signed an order and saw to it that this order was circulated to each and every american military officer and that each and every military officer acknowledged that he read and understood the order. The order said that on the ground in south vietnam we were not even allowed to shoot at the enemy unless the enemy first shot at our troops and caused a casulaty on our side. I have no doubt that good people defied this order immediately.

But the whole thing demonstrates how truly bad a president LBJ was and how americans really had the wool pulled over their eyes by their own nation's elite who later blamed the americans for being stupid enough to fight in that war.

[Thumper1960]

"The military EXISTS to serve the political ends of the nation."

The war was lost, not by the military, but by the political class. The military objectives were accomplished despite the defacto political surrender. The failure, and loss, in quantitative terms was political. The two parts are not divisible, but can be measured individually. As a whole, the "war" was a loss. Politically, it was a surrender and a defeat. A suicide. Militarily, by qualitative and quantitative measures, it was a victory. Hollow, yes. But, still a victory.

[Exton1]

Your sick and don't know what your talking about

[Exton1]

You don’t lose a game that is rigged. You are cheated out of victory, and that is what happened in VN. The soldiers realize that is was a rigged game. And are upset that they were blamed for doing there best and then being accused of being losers. The real losers were the American and the VIETNAMESE people.

[Exton1]

This is typical COMMUNIST propaganda. The USA is an Imperial Government, we only do thing for the money. BS. Name me one country that the USA has concurred and Occupied and stolen its wealth. Let’s see We occupied Japan, and Germany and left them off better than when we took them over. FYI, you can thank Eisenhower for the wealth of the Middle East. For under his presidency a law was passed that gave the money from oil to those who occupied the land, not to those who found and worked on ways to extract it.