What with all this talk about how proud people are of McCain for serving his country, I've been thinking . . . I didn't get to learn too much about the Vietnam War or U.S. involvements in Korea or Latin America in school (we spent too much time on the Civil War and world wars, not enough time left over after that I guess) and in college I only studied ancient history ('cause we hardly ever got to that in public school [and the Greeks and Romans were cool]). So let's talk about Vietnam. What exactly were American troops doing over there? How were they protecting the folks back home and making the U.S. a better place? And you frequently hear about the U.S. losing Vietnam, but complain as some of us might the U.S. and most other developed nations aren't actually run by commies these days, so what really went wrong? The Wikipedia article is bewildering. History books are often covertly skewed and can leave out important bits, and Wordforgers are more entertaining anyway. So let's hear about the U.S. in Vietnam! (or Korea, or Latin America, or whatever you like)
A war that never should have happened. Still not sure what exactly it accomplished. Thank the Democrats, including the Holy One Ver. 2 for starting it.
You are going to get a lot of divergent answers. As with most things, it depends on what you consider the threshold for victory, the definition of risk, etc. In my view, it was a war that in hindsight didn't need to be fought, but that for the leaders of the time, it seemed like something worth doing, far before the high cost became evident. As for who won? I don't think anybody won.
We went over there and lost alot of good men, but we saved South Vietnam from the Communists. Oh, wait!
Vietnam was begun as a war to bail the French out of yet another colonial fuckup, and also to get rid of one of "our" dictators who wouldn't stay on the reservation. It was predicated on the "domino theory" that if South Vietnam became communist, every nation between Southeast Asia and the United States would fall in sequence, and we would all wake up one morning to find Mao standing on our front lawn. You might consult The Fog of War. As one of the war's main architects, Robert McNamara knows at least as much as the average Wrodforger.
You'll have to ask the Department of Propaganda. This kind of bla bla comes from a carefully fostered, permanent sense of paranoia within the US population. Ever notice how there's always some world shattering threat to life, liberty and all the rest? And whoever questions it is an unamerican commie traitor...
Reading about the Truman Doctrine is as good a place as any to look into how we got involved in the Vietnam War.
That would be starting in the middle. You'd need to go back at least to the First Indochina War, and to understand that, you'd need to understand the French colonial period. Unless you just want to play: Democrats = Bad War Republicans = Good War I think Prufrock's question deserves better than that.
Never am, except when 'talking' to KIRK. As for the reasons for the war... there are plenty. I think the reasons for the escalation are pretty simple, tho: communist hysteria, the need for a proxy war and pride.
This is where "victory" + "defeat" are muddled. We pulled out and Saigon fell, but did the rest of the dominoes topple? Were the dominoes ever going to? You never can tell. On a personal level, when I joined the Air Force in 1980 all the senior NCO's were nam vets (actually Thailand where we had air bases, but part of the same war). Once when me and my buds were at this dude Ray's house (nam vet) we asked him if it was worth it. He said "yes, for one reason....he's sound asleep upstairs right now." He married a Thai woman and they had had a son. I imagine there are a lot of people who ended up having a better life (in the long haul) out of all the chaos and carnage. Feel free to mock now, if you so desire.
LBJ expanded JFK's military assistance into a full-blown war where we were taking the lead. Why it ever had to go that direction is not something I can answer.
I dunno. I think the fact that they didn't fall after the U.S. left Saigon suggests they weren't going to fall in the first place. Some have suggested that the leaders of the three superpowers used Vietnam as a safety valve. Cold War didn't satisfy everybody, so a shootin' war siphoned off enough energy, resources and manpower to keep the red in tooth and claw contented. I'd never mock a personal story that had such a happy ending. Guess I just wish your friend could have met his wife under different circumstances.
With the US withdrawal and betrayal of the South Vietnamese government, it fell as well. Why use the word betrayal? Because we cut all ties to them and refused to support them even with logistics or military sales due to the unpopularity of the war here. With US logistics and aid in 1973 the South Vietnamese actually made headway against the North. By 1974 that had been reduced, and completely blocked early in 1975. As far as the domino theory goes, you can argue either way. The failure of the US in the Vietnam war directly led to the fall of Cambodia and Laos to pro-communist forces in 1975 - the very same year that Vietnam fell. Of course, they later largely turned on each other for control of the region, with Vietnam fighting the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and even going to war with their former benefactors the Chinese later. It can also be argued that the horrifying cost that was paid by those regimes in bloodshed and terror set them back decades and that further domino effect was marginalized even though the US retreated due to the costs associated. We lost 57,000 troops. Vietnam lost 2 million of its population, and the Khmer Rouge butchered another million in their internal purges. Very few countries could look at what happened in that region and think that the Vietnamese victory was anything other than pyrhic. And of course the larger policy, containment, seemed to work, with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Was it worth it? Well, the proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan did keep the major powers from declaring outright war against each other, and showed the horrific cost of even the 'limited' warfare known as 'conflicts' or 'police actions.' It wasn't the creme of the British Empire bleeding out on at the Somme, but the human cost even in America was high. We'll never know what some of those drafted kids could have accomplished. Personally I think the strain on communism helped end it earlier, and as its one of the worst forms of government ever on a large scale you have to think that the sacrifices our soldiers made had some merit. Not much consolation to all the families that lost loved ones, or the far higher price paid by the families of the peasants of Southeast Asia over that time.
Yeah, looking back now, it seems like we won the war in Vietnam recently, with the Christening of the Vietnam Stock Exchange in 2000. But you'll agree that the key is to look at the picture through eyes of mid-sixties, not with the benefit of hindsight. Plus as Demi's post explains quite well (and any fan of alternate realities or dead butterflies because someone stepped off the path while hunting dinosaurs in the prehistory), we don't know how things would have turned out if Korea then Vietnam never happened. I recall when I saw things through simpler eyes - maybe it was as a 20-year-old in early seventies - I looked at at an atlas with political boundaries, the Communist states in red (heh), and took note how the war that we had "won" showed Korea as half red and half gray, but the war that we lost showed Vietnam as all red. Made me wonder how come if we "won," the whole Korean peninsula wasn't gray. Communism was a real threat because (aside from people disappearing in the wee hours) it presents an intellectually appealing system of government. On paper. Now that it's proven itself to be a failed and broken system, and Marx and Engel's ideas repudiated amongst all but the Lurkers of the world (in a post-industrial society, go figure), it seems obvious that Vietnam was a jungle not worth the thousands of Americans sent to die to protect french indo-china. But assholes like McCarthy gave legitimate concern of the threat of communist ideas a bad name. Even respectable Britain has historically taken several abrupt turns left during its history, and our own sad chapters include the friggin New Deal and Great Society.
We know what one young man who survived accomplished. He wasn't drafted per se, and he's not quite to his goal yet, but still....
While I don't agree 100%, this is a valuable perspective. If I can add something, from the point of view of someone who's a smidge older, by the time Vietnam arrived on our event horizon, many of us had developed a cynicism toward Official Gubmint Information Sources. Might have had something to do with Duck & Cover, which was an integral part of my grade school years and, I suspect, yours as well. Remember the sirens? Now, even as a kid, most of us knew that hiding under the desk wasn't going to save us from even a conventional bombing attack - hell, we'd seen all those John Wayne movies - much less a nuke. So while we went through the motions - probably more scared of the teachers than the Commies; at least we *knew* what the teachers were capable of - we were thinking "Yeah, right!" By the time McNamara arrived with his pointer and his maps, we were hardened cynics. If anything encouraged the antiwar movement in the Sixties, IMO, it was the hysterical overkill - McCarthy was only a symptom - of the Fifties.
I was watching Forrest Gump today and the hippies in DC reminded me of Garamet and what she was doing at that time.
A lot of "people" want to blame Dr Matin Luther King Jr for losing the war. We all know that this is not true, but there are those out there that choose to believe otherwise
I later realized it was just to keep us in neatly arranged rows, so the aurhorities could identify us when they dug our little bodies out of the rubble. If, of course, we were far enough from the blast that we weren't vaporized.
The 30 second version: In the wake of the second world war, the French colony of Vietnam underwent a civil war, with pro-colonial forces fighting nationalist forces. Vietnam was partitioned between North and South in 1954, in the wake of the defeat of the French colonial garrison at Dien Bien Phu by a nationalist army (the 'Vietminh') led by Ho Chi Minh. This huge defeat precipitated France's military withdrawl from the country. President Ngo Diem, with American backing, took control of the South. Though corrupt and repressive, he was reliably anti-communist. The North authorized and supported an insurgency campaign by communists in the South (called 'Vietcong'). This insugency practiced widespread terrorism, killing anyone connected with the government of the South. As part of reassuring our allies that our doctrine of containing communism was serious, the U.S. placed combat advisors (the army's heralded 'Green Berets') into South Vietnam. These forces were intended to teach the South Vietnamese forces how to fight the Vietcong. In 1963, Diem was overthrown and killed by a military coup and governments in South Vietnam remained unstable for a couple of years. Following President Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson--who kept Kennedy's advisors on--continued the policy of support for the South Vietnamese and sent more military advisors there. In 1964, two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in two separate incidents. While the actual seriousness of these attacks is still debated (neither U.S. ship was significantly damaged), the Johnson Administration did seize upon this action as something of a casus belli and sought Congressional approval for military operations in Vietnam, which Congress overwhelmingly granted in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. A series of defeats of the South Vietnamese Army ('ARVN') led to the American commander, General William Westmoreland, pushing Johnson for an American takeover of the war effort, effectively sidelining the South Vietnamese and making the battle against the Vietcong an American fight. The U.S. engaged in prolonged saturation bombing of North Vietnam ('Rolling Thunder') in an effort to break the North's support for the Vietcong. However, North Vietnamese personnel and material continued to be supplied to the South via 'the Ho Chi Minh Trail' which ran through Cambodia and Laos. As the Vietcong were being slowly but systematically defeated, the army of North Vietnam ('NVA') invaded the South in the Tet Offensive in January 1968. While the invasion came as a surprise and the North gained ground quickly, they were ultimately turned back and defeated. Although the Tet Offensive was a devastating loss for the North, it was a public relations victory as it took much of the American public by surprise. Prominent newsman Walter Cronkite decalred that the Vietnam war had become 'unwinnable.' As American casualties escalated (30,000 killed by 1969) and the draft continued, the war became unpopular and the Johnson Administration was widely seen as having a 'credibility gap.' Johnson would decide not to run for re-election in 1968. Taking office in 1968 with a supposed 'secret plan' to end the war, Richard Nixon escalated it. In 1970, U.S. bombers began a secret bombing campaign against Vietcong forces in Cambodia. U.S. and ARVN forces briefly invaded Cambodia to destroy Vietcong bases there. Having instituted a policy of 'Vietnamization' (getting the South Vietnamese to engage in more of the fighting), the U.S. authorized ARVN to attack the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos, but the operation ended in failure. Westmoreland was made Army Chief of Staff and was replaced as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam by General Creighton Abrams. As the U.S. continued to reduce its troop levels in the country, the North launched another invasion of the South--the Easter Offensive--in 1972. Against many expectations, the South Vietnamese forces repelled it at tremendous loss to the North. Seeking an exit, the U.S. negotiated with North Vietnam in Paris to end the war. When negotiations stalled, Nixon ordered 'Operation Linebacker II,' a heavy bombing campaign against the North. Although many American planes and crews were lost, the North did resume negotiations. In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed and the Vietnam War ended. The U.S. agreed to withdraw all personnel from South Vietnam, which was complete by March 1973. American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his North Vietnamese counterpart were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In total, more than 58,000 Americans and over 1 million Vietnamese were killed in the conflict. Although the U.S. had pledged its committment to its ally South Vietnam, the Watergate scandal meant no help was offered to the South when the North invaded in 1975. The North's invasion completely overran the country in a matter of days and Vietnam was consolidated under communist rule.
I guess it is in California, but in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s, we had bombing drills the way schoolkids have fire drills now. Only difference was, they were scheduled city-wide (and, for all I know, state-wide, maybe even nationwide), and the air-raid sirens would go off for 15 minutes all over the city, just like in all those WWII movies. Then there'd be a few minutes of silence and the All-Clear would sound. Great way to traumatize an entire generation of kids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover
