The truth about Viet Nam, and life there today.

Self Researched. | Oct 2002 | Exton

[Exton1]

leadpenny if your referring to why I talked about the resort about a days drive north of Saigon, it was a response to KneelBeforeZod who said “Budget Travel had an article about little bungalows you can rent in Vietnam. Looked like a good trip”

If your asking why I did the original post. Well that is more complicated. It started as a reply to a post about a pole on the History Channel about was it worth us going to Viet Nam. Frankly, as an American Veteran of that era, I am sick and tired of self-righteous leftist liberals saying that the USA was criminal in fighting the war, and that Veterans were stupid for serving. I am sick and tired of feeling ashamed for serving my contry, while cowards like Bill Klinton strut around like peacocks, proclaiming they have superior morels, and that Nixon was worse than “LBJ how many Kids did you kill today.” There is a fact that Socialist Liberal Cowards fought the war and demonized the soldiers who fought it.. As late as 1984 a friend of mine was turned down on a job because he mentioned he flew cargo planes form the US to VN. They told him that they did not hire Baby Killers.

[Exton1]

rockfish59
What years were you in VN? Do you have any desire to go Back? What did you do there?

[Exton1]

Illbay So What is your point? That we should let the lies of the Left continue? That we should just bend over and continue to take the abuse of the lying liberals? That those who proudly served should be ashamed for being Americans? What have you ever done for this country?

[nightdriver]

"The lesson of Viet Nam is that, you do not go to war with a country unless you plan to finish the job and win."

The democRATs wouldn't even let us try to win the war as it was. "No, you can't bomb Hanoi, No you can't mine Haiphong harbor, No you can't take out the Ho Chi Minh Trail, No you can't follow the little bastards into Cambodia, and you have to back the ships 20 miles off the coast so the North Vietnamese can re-supply their Cong fighters in the South.

Sheeeeesh!! Don't ever let a democRAT run a war for the U.S.A. unless you want our country to be utterly disgraced!

[Illbay]

So What is your point? That we should let the lies of the Left continue?

What "lies"? You are promoting the "truth" that we "really won" in Vietnam?

Sheesh, give it a rest.

[RangerVetNam]

We might not have won but we certainly did not lose! To use a football analogy, we pulled the first team out of the game at the end of the third quarter and then the US congress took away the helmets, shoulder pads and shoes from the guys remaining on the field. Our congress sold out the South Vietnamese in a way that caused our "allies" to question our commitments for decades. Our enemies are still testing our national resolve.

[leadpenny]

Oh! OK. I apologize for sounding irritated.

To he!! with anyone who wants to criticize the military. I know what I did. I did what I was told to do. We did what we were told to do. Here in DC they play the LBJ tapes on weekends and evenings on C-SPAN Radio. I catch them sometimes. What comes through to me, loud and clear, is the image of a truly sick and disgusting power-hungry man. In my book LBJ did as much harm to this country, if not more, than WJBC did. I would urinate on LBJ's grave in front of cameras if I could get away with it. I blame no one else. Not Mcnamara. Not Westmoreland. Not the Chiefs of Staff. Not the American public or the media. It all comes down to the failed human being in the name of LBJ.

[Red Jones]

I checked my bookshelf. There's a book called 'Khe Sanh', volume 5 in a series called 'The Illustrated History Of The Vietnam war' written by Michael Ewing. In that book he says that at Khe Sanh the north vietnamese had both heavy artillery deployed, the best from the soviet arsenal, and Migs. He says they didn't know for sure, but they strongly believed it was russians piloting the migs. But, maybe they just used em in that 1 battle. Maybe they decided there was no fruit in sending them south of khe sanh which was on border between north andsouth. maybe russians decided it was suicide mission and stopped sending migs and pilots into battle.

Either way, I don't know if it was right or wrong for us to fight that war, I'll never know. But it was one heck of a war. And our troops performed so very well.

[Illbay]

We might not have won but we certainly did not lose!

Anyone who tries to look at that conflict in only military terms is being myopic in the extreme.

Wars are not football games. The military exists to assert the will of the nation against its protagonists.

We "lost" in Vietnam because we had no will to win, and trying to "score" the conflict in purely military terms is preposterous.

We LOST that conflict, and we wasted many lives and squandered much political capital in the process.

Worst of all, we energized the coterie of dissident Leftists that still plague us today. That's perhaps the most telling sign of defeat of all.

[RangerVetNam]

"We LOST that conflict, and we wasted many lives"

Don't lecture me on what we lost there, I know up close and personal! "WE" had the will to win, our leaders did not. I know why the military exists and have lived it to the extreme.

[Exton1]

My point is that if you consider that countries around Viet Nam did not fall to the Communist, and that Viet Nam did not fall until about two years after we pulled out, it can not be did that the USA lost the Viet Nam war. If you go to Viet Nam today and see who our life stile is copied, and how the people feel about the USA, WE DID NOT LOOSE. My point is that it is basically a Liberal wet dream that keeps bring up Viet Nam war as an example of our mistakes.. My point to that we cannot go to war against Iraq until we have the American people behind the President, and have shut up and locked up the protestors. AS A VETERAN, I WILL NOT LET WHAT HAPPEN TO ME AND OTHER VETS, HAPPEN TO SOLDIERS WHO FIGHT TODAY.

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

Here in DC they play the LBJ tapes on weekends and evenings on C-SPAN Radio. I catch them sometimes. What comes through to me, loud and clear, is the image of a truly sick and disgusting power-hungry man.

Ike's reaction to Kennedy choosing Johnson as his running mate was,

"He is not a big man. He is a small man. He hasn't got the depth of mind nor the breadth of vision to carry great responsibility."

From page 521 of the Stephen Ambrose 1990 condensed biography of Ike.

[RangerVetNam]

Amen!

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Why did the North have piles of tanks. Is it because the United Nations prohibited the US from attacking them in North Vietnam?

My understanding is that the UN cost us the Vietnam War moreso than the US media every did, what with them requiring our bombers to always use the same pre-determined approach paths and broadcasting all of our intended actions to North Vietnam.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT