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I've never been able to decide whether or not there was any ratinoal cause in Nam. I've seen interviews with South Vietnamese who claimed they were sharecroppers under the old regime with no possibility of owning land, that the VC split up and old plantatations and pretty much gave them the land that they'd been working forever, and that then the south (temporarily) retook the area and immediately gave all the land back to the absentee landlords.

That sort of thing coupled with the way the war was being prosecuted by our side pretty much killed any political support for the war in the US. A real war between the US and North Vietnam should last a year, tops. Moreover, there is no rational way anybody can ask draftees to fight in such a thing or draft the boy next door and tell him it's somehow or other his patriotic duty to go into harms way for something which clearly amounts to a geopolitical game with no semblence of a declaration of war or a real commitment.

That was the problem. Ronald Reagan finally figured out that you play geopolitical games with petty cash and a few handsfull of professional soldiers and soldiers of fortune, and not with vast sums of treasure and tens of thousands of draftees and, for that reason, unlike the presidencies of LBJ or Nixon, Reagan's presidency will go into the books as a success story.

That sort of thing coupled with the way the war was being prosecuted by our side pretty much killed any political support for the war in the US.

That was always part of the problem with our war against Communism. The enemies of Communism were usually corrupt. They were usually much better than the Communists, but most had serious issues. The Communists slaughtered well over a million people after the end of the war. Communist regimes throughout the world slaughter 100 million people in the 20th Century. So as bad as the people we supported were, they usually could not hold a candle to how evil Communists were.

That sort of thing coupled with the way the war was being prosecuted by our side pretty much killed any political support for the war in the US. A real war between the US and North Vietnam should last a year, tops. Moreover, there is no rational way anybody can ask draftees to fight in such a thing or draft the boy next door and tell him it's somehow or other his patriotic duty to go into harms way for something which clearly amounts to a geopolitical game with no semblence of a declaration of war or a real commitment.
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Well put. Nam was a disaster and a tragic waste of our soldiers lives, in monumental proportions, because it was a war that was NOT FOUGHT TO BE WON, just scripted by politicians and not to be fought and won by military commanders. Washington politics out of control.

It is evident that the left has brain washed several people. The South Vietnamese left the country by the millions when the North took over and many ofthose remaining were placed in reeducation camps. The North took over when they violated the peace treaty signed in Paris and after the US Congress cut off funds. Further, there were no Viet Cong left (or very few) after TET 1968 and those that were left were discarded by the North Vietnamese. If the military had been allowed to fight a war with the North it would have been over in months. The military was not allowed to fight to win and as such we lost over 58,000 and still counting. The cause was to gain freedom for the people of South Vietnam. Any lies that you read about giving land to the South Vietnameseby by the Communist North is mostly that, lies. Do not believe the press in the United States as they must maintain the lies to make sure that their position on the war was justified. The war was against Communism there are NO good Communist the Communist of the world were and still are trying to destroy the United States.

the VC split up and old plantatations and pretty much gave them the land that they'd been working forever

Just for a history correction, immediately after 1975 the Hanoi regime seized my mother-in-law's 600 hectares of property near Sa Dec and all of father-in-law's family properties near Ha Tien.

Then to make sure they'd missed nothing, the NVA then went repeatedly through Southern cities, towns and villages with metal detectors searching for even the smallest holdings of family gold. They'd tear up your walls and yard looking for even a single tael.

A real war between the US and North Vietnam should last a year, tops.

For comparison, when the NVA (all draftees) finally went after the Khmer Rouge, they took Phnom Penh in one week, start to finish.

What planet are you from?

When the North Vietnamese soldiers conquered South Vietnam and found out how wealthy and advanced the population really was, they said "You should have come liberate us in the North".

I've never been able to decide whether or not there was any ratinoal cause in Nam. I've seen interviews with South Vietnamese who claimed they were sharecroppers under the old regime with no possibility of owning land, that the VC split up and old plantatations and pretty much gave them the land that they'd been working forever, and that then the south (temporarily) retook the area and immediately gave all the land back to the absentee landlords.

It's called private property, and in our country it's protected by the Constitution at least it was. But the VC never really held much land, by the time the communists did hold significant areas of land, the VC were no more (basically they were no more after Tet '68). The VC did "tax" the peasants, (In the way the Danes or the Barbary pirates taxed folks) and if you didn't pay your taxes, they came in and killed you.

The "agrarian reformer" tall tale has been told by many a communist movement. Fidel's for instance. In the end, the state owns everything, and the peasants are then really sharecroppers, with no civil rights at all. Eventually the government makes such hash of things, everyone starves, either through mismanagement and corruption (See Cuba, Russia, N. Korea) or as deliberate policy (Ukraine, Georgia etc)

Wow!!! Is history every upside down!! Fact: the former Saigon government instituted a land reform program in 1970 that distributed-FREE-about 2,500,000 acres of rice land to about 800,000 formerly landless tenant farmers. Land tenancy rates went from about 60% to 10% in the Mekong Delta. The communists talked a good 'land reform' program but it was a hoax and cadre were told never, EVER, tell the people about collectivizing land. Why? It will make farmers mad that's why. Both rice acreage and rice production increased between 1965-1975 in S. Viet Nam. After the Hanoi idiots took over rice production plunged, and never equalled 1975 totals until 1985, after which severe malnutrition created high infant mortality rates. The myth that Hanoi-or Mao Tse-tug-or Lenin-"gave land to the peasants is whole cloth monumental deceipt. The opposite occurred. Guess what? I was a dove before I went to Viet Nam, the first time, and became what some would call a "hawk." Why? Easy, the communists are ruthless, lying idiots. Always were, still are.

A real war between the US and North Vietnam should last a year, tops. Moreover, there is no rational way anybody can ask draftees to fight in such a thing or draft the boy next door and tell him it's somehow or other his patriotic duty to go into harms way for something which clearly amounts to a geopolitical game with no semblence of a declaration of war or a real commitment.

Exactly. If someone wants to put his butt on the line exclusively for the benefit of another country, let him be a mercenary.

Our military exists to serve our national interest, and it was either a stretch or complete BS to suggest Vietnam was an important national interest.

And after all these years, why haven't the Vietnamese taken out the commie bastards if it was such an important cause? Are they waiting for us to save them from themselves, like the Moos keep begging us to do?

Dear Judy,
We have yet to read of any refugees streaming northward in VietNam. We have, however, read of many people executed by the communists after their takeover, and the imprisonment and other punuishment of many more.

There is also the troubling question of the massacres in Cambodia, in which the numbers of dead and disappeared were only equalled by Hitler and Stalin.

Yes, we made many an error in VietNam. Chief among them was our refusal to fight to a finish and win, based on what turned out to be a faulty assumption that this would lead to intervention by China and Russia. The quarter-century between Korea and VietNam did not, in that regard teach us much.

But it did teach our enemies ... actual and potential ... that we no longer had the guts for military solutions to military problems. It also taught our enemies that our policies could be manipulated by an alliance between them and our media.

'...there is no rational way anybody can ask draftees to fight in such a thing or draft the boy next door and tell him it's somehow or other his patriotic duty to go into harms way for something which clearly amounts to a geopolitical game with no semblence of a declaration of war or a real commitment."

I dunno' Judy, it worked for me.

... I've seen interviews with South Vietnamese who claimed they were sharecroppers under the old regime with no possibility of owning land, that the VC split up and old plantatations and pretty much gave them the land that they'd been working forever...

Really? Communist gave the land to the peasants? How does that work? The state owns the land under communism.

... A real war between the US and North Vietnam should last a year, tops.

Vietnam started out as a proxy war and stayed that way for fear of all out nuclear war. Those were the rules in the 1960's, limited warfare. Learn your history.

...Moreover, there is no rational way anybody can ask draftees to fight in such a thing...

At the time, the US Military was made up of volunteers and draftees. Fighter pilots and most servicemen in responsible charge of men or important equipment were volunteers. Do you think the NVA were conscripts or draftees?

2/3 of those who served in VN were volunteers. Ask me how I know...And in forward units, ratio was even higher.