Was it inevitable that the US lost the Vietnam war?

[Ned]

Originally posted by General Ludd


I rest my case.

GL, my reply is in the previous note. You guys on the left favor one foreign policy: appeasement. That kind of foreign policy never brings succees. It just buys time.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Ned


GL, my reply is in the previous note. You guys on the left favor one foreign policy: appeasement. That kind of foreign policy never brings succees. It just buys time.

No? The soviet Union ultimately collapsed through "appeasment" India became independant due to "appeasement", and that's only two examples... not to say that my "foreign policy" revolves around what you call appeasement.

What has the idea of brute force to solve everything achieved in the past century? WW1, WW2 and the holocaust, korea, vietnam, afghanistan, ect... all of which has failed to solve the problems it set out to, and lead to more and more and more problems later on.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
Speaking of risking nuclear war, I point to an actual leader: Kennedy.

Thank god he was assassinated.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
And, btw, had Kennedy lived, I think he would have done the same thing as Nixon. He was not an idiot like Johnson.

Kennedy couldn't have gone to China, only someone like Nixon or Reagan could, since they wouldn't be accused of being soft on Communism.

[Patroklos]

I have never heard any top military explaning that protecting the SV without invading NV was not feasible : first military failure.

Thats because for any military official of any rank to publicly say something like that, which is a complete about face of what their civilian bosses say, is against the rules. Remember McArther.

However the suggestion to invade the North was brought up at nauseum by the military throughout the war.

The military got 99.9% of what it wanted

Whats the good of having it if you won't let them use it?

The only part of NV that was off limits to aerial bombing was a ten-mile corridor along the China-Vietnam border

Nice selective time keeping. This was only true during the line-backers. For the vast majority of the war most of NV was off limits, for years at a time.

They say that today, but at the time the military firmly believed that invading the North would invite a Chinese response. Only a couple of years ago

I love how you rail against conservative storytelling by bringing the classic liberal not-ahh arguemnet. You are bringing out the same flavor liberal auto response.

Amazing that the vast majority of military historians disagree with you.

Finally, 95% of the people of South Vietnam opposed the Southern dictatorship

I notice you went from arbirarily stating 99% to 95% to try and give your imaginary story a little believability. But if you were going to do something like that, why not something that doesn't automatically set off the BS alarm like 85% or 80%?

The fact is everytime all out bombing of the North was conducted NV ran to the negoriating table. the Viet Cong had nothing to lose, but Hanoi had done pretty good for themselves since independance and were not willing to see their country go up in smoke.

A political victory against the North was possible. And lets not forget about the pitiful state of the Veit Cong by the time of the pullout. There is a reason that NV regulars were taking up the slack south of the DMZ in the end.

And btw, if the only way to win the war was to invade the North thus provoking a Chinese/Russian response ergo WWIII, it is again the politicians fault for getting the military involved in such a situation.

[Patroklos]

hat has the idea of brute force to solve everything achieved in the past century? WW1, WW2 and the holocaust, korea, vietnam, afghanistan, ect... all of which has failed to solve the problems it set out to

WW1 - agreed

WW2 - I don't see any goose stepping nazis out my window

Holocaust - Agreed, thouth I would put this in another category.

Korea - Last time I checked the South was still free, which was the main objective.

Vietnam - It unfortuently turned out that way

Afghan - Eventually you libs might try to learn something about that place

[Max Webster]

Originally posted by Dissident
They are all gung ho flag waving pickup driving good ole' boys.

Alot of them are just very young men who don't know any better. They don't think too much about the political end of it. They want a job, a good life, the american dream, they think the military can help provide that for them. Sometimes it does, sometimes it puts them six feet under the ground.

[Patroklos]

Alot of them are just very young men who don't know any better

My experiance is that they do, and that is a reason, among many, that they joined.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Kennedy couldn't have gone to China, only someone like Nixon or Reagan could, since they wouldn't be accused of being soft on Communism.

Che, you have your era mixed. At the time, Kennedy was considered a hardliner on communism. He was even more of a hardliner than Nixon and that is why he won the election of 1960. Democrats did not become the party of appeasement until 1968.

[Ned]

Originally posted by General Ludd


No? The soviet Union ultimately collapsed through "appeasment" India became independant due to "appeasement", and that's only two examples... not to say that my "foreign policy" revolves around what you call appeasement.

What has the idea of brute force to solve everything achieved in the past century? WW1, WW2 and the holocaust, korea, vietnam, afghanistan, ect... all of which has failed to solve the problems it set out to, and lead to more and more and more problems later on.

I gave you whole series of examples of how conservatives have a much more sophisticated foreign policy than the Democrats in reply to summarizing conservative foreign policy as nothing more than using brute force and then criticizing that policy as being Neanderthal or probably simplistic. What you do here, GL, is nothing more to setting up a strawman and then knocking it down.

[Ned]

Patroklos, Westmorland actually was implementing a plan to invade the North when Tet occurred. Khe Sahn was phase I.

[Ned]

Che, as to the populace of Vietnam supporting the Communists, even from the early days, anybody who do not agree to support the Communists was brutally killed in public executions. This began right after Ho Chi Minh moved into Vietnam at the end of World War II. The tactic continued with the Communist invasion of South Vietnam so that if any villager even looked as if he was going to support the Republic of South Vietnam, he risked his life. The only way one would be really know whether a person would support the Communists voluntarily would be to provide that person security and a secret ballot. But to do so would not be in a communist way of voting which requires a public affirmation of your loyalty to the party leader.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Thats because for any military official of any rank to publicly say something like that, which is a complete about face of what their civilian bosses say, is against the rules. Remember McArther.

However the suggestion to invade the North was brought up at nauseum by the military throughout the war.

The rules refer to legal and moral orders. But all officers must be prepared to refuse illegal or immoral orders. The problem in the Vietnam case was to decide whether the order was moral, if it was admissibly legal.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by JohnT
The US lost because the political will to do what was necessary to achieve victory wasn't there.

It wasn't there because there were no clear determination of what "victory" meant.

Ditto.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Dissident
after chinese intervention in the Korean war, I don't think anyone supported a takeover of N. Vietnam. And even then I don't think we could have won if we had occupied the whole country.

And the chinese would have kicked our asses again had they got involved.

Diss, you know this would not be true.