1975: Saigon surrenders

[Az]

Hueij, It's not something that's good to look at, and it was completely useless. Noone here underestimates the horrors of war, and in any case, if one does, no pic could persuade him otherwise.

[Q Classic]

it's a shame that svietnam fell. communism, in the form that it is practiced in east/southeast asia, is a stain that should never have been allowed to spread.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Hueij

Nope, I saw pictures of what happened when my country was liberated by them

Edit: And to make you happy, I am planning making a thread on May 4 about our Remembrance Day and the US will be mentioned

Don't put yourself out.

[SlowwHand]

Hueij has his idiot days when he forgets he's lucky he still has a country.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Vietnam was fighting the Khmer Rouge the whole time they occupied the country. The Vietnamese are the only reason the Kmher Rouge didn't return to power. The Kmher weren't sitting around idling waiting to be caught. They waged a fourteen year guerilla war againt Vietnam.

Of course.

And in the course of that entire campaign, the Vietnamese did not capture even one member of Pol Pot's government that should have been tried. Right?

[Hueij]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Hueij has his idiot days when he forgets he's lucky he still has a country.

That's why I love Poly... There's always Sloww to remind me

[Ned]

Originally posted by Oerdin
If MacAurthor had stopped 20 miles short of the Yalu river like the Commies had told him to then the war would have been over shortly after Inchon. It's because the UN forces charged right up to the Manchurian border that the Communists invaded.

The "muffled" and unconfirmed Chinese warning said US forces should no go North of the 38th parallel.

"In retrospect the events on the battlefield in late October and early November 1950 were harbingers of disaster ahead. They had been foreshadowed by ominous "signals" from China, signals relayed to the United States through Indian diplomatic channels. The Chinese, it was reported, would not tolerate a U.S. presence so close to their borders and would send troops to Korea if any UN forces other than ROK elements crossed the 38th Parallel. With the United States seeking to isolate Communist China diplomatically, there were very few ways to verify these warnings. While aware of some of the dangers, U.S. diplomats and intelligence personnel, especially General MacArthur, discounted the risks. The best time for intervention was past, they said, and even if the Chinese decided to intervene, allied air power and firepower would cripple their ability to move or resupply their forces. The opinion of many military observers, some of whom had helped train the Chinese to fight against the Japanese in World War II, was that the huge infantry forces that could be put in the field would be poorly equipped, poorly led, and abysmally supplied. These "experts" failed to give full due to the revolutionary zeal and military experience of many of the Chinese soldiers that had been redeployed to the Korean border area. Many of the soldiers were confident veterans of the successful civil war against the Nationalist Chinese forces. Although these forces were indeed poorly supplied, they were highly motivated, battle hardened, and led by officers who were veterans, in some cases, of twenty years of nearly constant war."

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/kw-chinter/chinter.htm

[SlowwHand]

It's ok, Hueij. We have to fight off these foaming at the mouth Canuks daily.

To say nothing of the Mexicans. (MtG. U out there?)

[Dinner]

I'd like to point out that U.S. forces frequently faced 20:1 odds agianst the Communist forces and routinely beat the snot out of them. The field commanders constently asked for more soldier but Truman refused to intensify the draft for fear he would lose the upcoming election (An election which he lost any way).

[Ned]

Originally posted by gsmoove23


We couldn't have done anything to China whatever Truman said. What would you have proposed, escalate to full scale war, forgetting that China and Russia had a mutual defense pact. China was equally worried about escalation which was why they put nowhere near their full strengh into the field. Your ideas would have created WWIII.

gsmoove, and you ever heard of the word "appeasement?" Truman's attitude about engaging the Chinese, or more precisely, his groveling fear of doing so, was communicated to the Chinese when he told McArthur that he could not pursue North Korean air power across the Yalu River nor bomb North Korean bases in China. Had Truman authorized McArthur to pursue the North Koreans wherever they went and to bomb their bases no matter where they were, and also issued stern warnings the Chinese and Russians not the harbor the North Koreans nor give them material support otherwise we would declare war on them, I do not think that either the Chinese or Russians would have been very open in her support of the North Koreans.

I believe there is at least a Russia memo that says that they did not want war with United States. I don't know what the Chinese position was. But their actions in attacking us in Korea were emboldened and made possible because of Truman's weakness. Had we made it clear to the Chinese that if they attacked us in North Korea that we would declare war, it would have been the Chinese who would have risked World War III by intervention. In other words, the Chinese would've thought once, twice and three times before making any intervention. I don't think it would have happened.

History is legion with examples of weakness and appeasement inviting attack. (For example, Osama bin Laden cites Clinton's withdrawal from Somalia as justification for his attack in New York on 9/11.) Truman brought the Chinese into the conflict because of his own appeasement of the Chinese.

McArthur was not a lunatic. Truman, rather, was a weakling, unworthy of being president of the United States. Truman was no Roosevelt.

[gsmoove23]

I assume you're referring to after Seoul changed hands for the third time.

Interesting thing I found, a website with the war from a N Korean's perspective...

http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/eyewit18.htm

I get to know Comrade Choe very well. He is 35 years old - his family was killed by Koreans working for the Japanese in Manchuria. He joined the Chinese 8th Route Army at the age of 14. I met him a few days earlier in the meadow across from my house (back of the Hamhung Medical School - an army hospital now). As usual I was chatting with a group of wounded soldiers sun bathing in the meadow. I asked about the famous Chinese 8th Route Army - using the derogatory "Ddong ddae nom" (dirty chinaman).

One of the comrades gave me a tongue lashing for using this term. This comrade was Choe. He told me his story - how he was taken care of by Chinese peasants when his family was wiped out in Manchuria. He went on to relate his war experience in China and S Korea. Choe says that the American soldiers rely on tanks and air planes. They are no match for us - man to man, but they do have more tanks and planes (which we don't have). He points to a wounded tank commander sitting next to him. His tank shot down an American B29 plane, but not before he was wounded.

Comrade Choe says that the American soldiers are afraid to die. At the first sign of a trouble, they panic and abandon their weapons. The Americans like to play opossum. Choe recommends shooting "dead" Americans at least twice in the head. The Americans are afraid of night fighting because their air planes cannot help them during the night. They depend on trucks and jeeps for mobility - they don't like to walk any long distance. You destroy their vehicles and they surrender without fight.

Choe's winning secret is to slip a few men behind the enemy positions and fire a few shots. This spooks the Americans into daze and frantic calls for help. Choe was leading an attack when friendly covering fires by a green-horn gunner hit him on the left foot. Choe has no bad feelings towards the gunner: he is eager to rejoin his unit.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I'd like to point out that U.S. forces frequently faced 20:1 odds agianst the Communist forces and routinely beat the snot out of them. The field commanders constently asked for more soldier but Truman refused to intensify the draft for fear he would lose the upcoming election (An election which he lost any way).

As Truman's popularity declined to subterrean levels never before seen by a sitting president, and as he saw MacArthur's own popularity rise with talk rampant that MacArthur would run against Truman in '52, he fired MacArthur for insubordination.

Yeah, right.

[gsmoove23]

Ned, China or Russia didn't want war with the US but that proves nothing since the US didn't want war with China or Russia. Passing the 38th parallel was certainly not appeasement, Going right up to the Chinese border was madness. China was not quaking in their boots at the idea of a US attack. The legacy such reckless diplomacy would have left the US is plain idiocy. Imagine the amount of troops that would have had to have been called up, the amount that would have died on the battlefield as if over 50,000 in 3 years wasn't enough.

[Ned]

panag, I suppose you cited the article to show that Kennedy had approved a withdrawal of 1,000 American troops in late '63. I also think that had Kennedy lived, he would have continued the trend to "Vietnamization" that Nixon pursued when he became president.

There is a movie called JFK that theorizes that "elements" in the US government assassinated JFK because he intended to withdraw from Vietnam. Of course, I think this is theory is complete leftist rubbish.

It was Johnson who later decided that the loss of 1,000 Americans per month, with no strategy for victory, was acceptable.

[Ned]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
Ned, China or Russia didn't want war with the US but that proves nothing since the US didn't want war with China or Russia. Passing the 38th parallel was certainly not appeasement, Going right up to the Chinese border was madness. China was not quaking in their boots at the idea of a US attack. The legacy such reckless diplomacy would have left the US is plain idiocy. Imagine the amount of troops that would have had to have been called up, the amount that would have died on the battlefield as if over 50,000 in 3 years wasn't enough.

As I said, the Chinese would not have intervened and there would be no North Korea had Truman had any balls.