The Vietnam War myth

[JasonC]

It is entirely about right and left, and entirely about right and wrong. And they are approximately the same thing on this subject. The war was just, and legal, and successful. But the left split over it and when it didn't bring the country with it, the left had a world-historical hissy fit. And they are still howling, to this day.

It isn't worth debating leftists. Neither reality nor morality means anything to them. I've long since ceased to care what any of them think say or do, about anything.

[Bear]

Wait forget it...I'm wasting my time here.
I have nothing left to say to you and your ilk. Talking to a fanatic or naivete here is too much and I'm too fraking old for this

I don't get it.

JasonC post his opinion that the war in Vietnam effectively was won (don't know if that is true; I haven't got the info and/or resources to check up on this) and the withdrawal was carried out without a military reason but because of a political one. He didn't say or post anything whether the war was legally right.

You don't react to his statements but you are protesting vehemently against the fact that the war never should have been waged at all.

I think you two are talking about different subjects.

But interestingly (for me as a non-US citizen), that war is appearently a deep rift in the US today.

The War in Viet Nam was immoral, since it was without a Casus Belli and that is a fact. And the war was the first time the U.S. gave the president war powers. The congress has the authority to declare war, not the President. So, no casus belli, and not congressional declaration of war yet the president went to war with only "leaders" of the congress endorsing it. And for years the public was behind it because it was subjected to rampant propaganda supporting the "Domino Theory", that is if communism is not stopped in asia it will sweep across the pacific and the U.S. and Canada will be faced with a Pan Asiatic Communist League. That is also historical fact of the 1960s.
In conventional and historical terms, the U.S. lost the war.
And I'm sorry to repeat myself, it was a geopolitcal adventure that was a victory. To demonstrate to the Chinese that the U.S. was ready and willing to shed it's sons blood for ideology and geopolitical reasons, and not only for self defense.
The U.S. war justification was theoretical in that it was to prevent a creep towards a greater war. The historical sample is Germany's annexation of "Sudetenland" of Czechoslovakia.
At that critical moment on the road to W.W.2, ironically the Soviet Union was the only nation deliberating that Germany created a Casus Belli. England, France, U.S. and Poland were not tuned in to this reality at the time.
The bottom line, the war was a stalemate. But if one believes that potential Chinese expansionism and arrogance was thwarted then a major regional or world war was circumvented. It is imperitive to say that the Viet Namese people suffered casualties in the million or more and I (we) should have some empathy for those people, who btw were predominantly Roman Catholic wearing their crosses into combat.

Btw, my statement of past service was not meant as a boast or holier that thou posturing. I injected my role only that I was a first person witness to what was REALLY going on in the field. And some of it, I'm advised is still classified.

[JasonC]

The just cause of the war was the undeniable fact that North Vietnam was engaged in continual direct military aggression against South Vietnam, a US ally with every right to defend itself, including by calling in the aid of its allies. The US congress fully authorized the war and did so repeatedly. Nor was it remotely the first time the US president had directed US armed forces into action with less than a declaration of war. That honor goes to Thomas Jefferson in the war against the barbary pirates 200 years ago. And it continued forever, in scores of military campaigns in Latin America, not to mention the more immediate precedent of Korea.

The opponents of the war pretended that it was a domestic conflict within South Vietnam rather than an external aggression directed from the North. This was a flat out lie and they knew it at the time. They simply wanted an excuse to hang their preference for a northern victory, or at the least for the US staying out, on. The same it true of all the legalistic crap.

The surreal declaration that the Soviet Union was the only legalistically correct belligerent in WW II reveals a stunning bias.

And no, the war wasn't a stalemate. The VC were destroyed by the end of 1968, and the NVA pushed out of the country into enclaves in Laos and Cambodia by the time US ground forces left. South Vietnam was free, sovereign, protected by its own military, and in control of its territory. When North Vietnam attempted direct cross border invasion in the Easter Offensive in the spring of 1972 anyway, US air power intervened massively and smashed the attempt. With support of that magnitude, the ARVN were entirely able to hold, and hold they did. The North Vietnamese were not willing to sit still under continually B-52 strikes on downtown Hanoi to keep your precious "stalemate" going, and they sued for peace.

The massive cross border invasion in 1975 is the only thing that conquered South Vietnam. And it could have been stopped just as the Easter Offensive had been stopped, and it would have been had Nixon still been in the White House. (In fact they would not have tried it, had that been the case). Saying the war was a "stalemate" is like saying Germany didn't lose WW I, because after all it conquered France in 1940. It took a separate attack 2 1/2 years later with the combatants changed by US political processes, for the North to win anything.

Once again, the war was lost in the Watergate building and the US congress and not in South Vietnam.

Never forget that the ARVN were the last to give up. Trying asking them whether they were abandoned - those that lived and made it out to freedom. As for the moral equivalence in the previous poster's Soviet apologetic legalisms, its obscenity is highlighted by the million dead innocents in the aftermath of the war. Tell them that the US side in the war wasn't the just one.

And no, no danger of "creep" toward anything was or is required for one free nation to go to the defense of another nation unjustly attacked by a foreign tyranny bent on conquest. Then or now. And all the lies in creation won't make it unjust.

[FM WarB]

"South Vietnam was free, sovereign, protected by its own military, and in control of its territory. When North Vietnam attempted direct cross border invasion in the Easter Offensive in the spring of 1972 anyway, US air power intervened massively and smashed the attempt."

If South Vietnam was protected by its own military, why was massive US airpower intervention required to turn back the North Vietnamese in 1972? Why, after three more years of standing up while we stood down did the ARVN collapse like a rotten house of cards without such intervention in 1975?

[wildb]

And the war was the first time the U.S. gave the president war powers.

The first use of such powers was done by Thomas Jeffersion in the war with the Barbary pirates. After dispatching a US fleet - Jefferson informed congress but there was no declaration of war. For a while there were joint operations with the Swedish navy in the fight against the Barbary pirates. This war is the source of the line - to the shores of Tripoli in the Marine Corps Hymn.

[Bear]

And the war was the first time the U.S. gave the president war powers.

The first use of such powers was done by Thomas Jeffersion in the war with the Barbary pirates. After dispatching a US fleet - Jefferson informed congress but there was no declaration of war. For a while there were joint operations with the Swedish navy in the fight against the Barbary pirates. This war is the source of the line - to the shores of Tripoli in the Marine Corps Hymn.

The action on the Barbary is not comparable to the War In Vietnam. The were 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam trying to secure an imaginary line i.e. Mason Dixon to secure the "freedom and liberty of the south from the north. Quite arbitrary in macro historical terms. Ho Chi Minh did make formal requests to the U.S. for diplomatic and trade relations in late 1950s but was not dealt with appropriately. That is when we turned a school teacher into the lap of the Chicoms. The U.S. then ended up with a dead dog in the South, even the C.I.A. had to assasinate the President of the South because he was too "bizzaro" to take care of business. A true cluster fk from every angle from French Indo China, Japan and then the U.S. The French tried to warn us but U.S. arrogance was fueled by the Military - Industrial combine (Act 1). Twenty five years later the new CEO of the Combine, Bush steered the U.S. into Iraq in the name of his father and oil contracts.

[wildb]

It set the precedent for presidential use of military force without a declaration of war. Other examples include president Wilson in Veracruz in 1914, the US marines in Nicaragua in the 1920s, and other actions by US forces in Latin America. In terms of presidential use of the military, the declaration of war by Congress is the exception, rather than the rule.

[JasonC]

ARVN wasn't a rotten house of cards. The North Vietnamese just invaded with more Soviet supplied heavy armor than Germany had against Poland in 1939. Again we see the insane slander of free men in favor of murdering communist bastards. Next the usual suspects want to pretend that the murdering communist bastard Ho was George Washington, which is a crock of excrement. He was a bloodthirsty butcher. And the border was not "arbitrary", it was paid for by a million lives, and the unjust attempt to overturn it was nothing but mass murder. As usual, though, the commies are all in favor of mass murder as long as they are doing it, and come up with their legal niceties only as a suicide pact for free men or the west.

As I already said, leftists aren't worth arguing with, they have no arguments, only reckless endless slander. Their ideas as as contemptible as their murders are dreadful, to paraphrase Burke. And the scandal is that anyone give their stale propaganda the time of day. But men will believe anything that justifies their own moral failings and especially their own unjust attacks on better men than themselves.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the poster who spoke of houses of cards isn't fit to kiss an ARVN soldier's boots...

[FM WarB]

Silly me, for even hoping a well reasoned, civil discussion might ensue on a thread like this.
Maybe there will only be one "history" a hundred years from now, but for now there are clearly two.

No point in taking the bait and descending to an insult fest or attempting inteeligent response. Think I'll start a Monty/Ike thread for some peace.

[Crossroads]

Think I'll start a Monty/Ike thread for some peace.

LOL

Thanks for the good discussion and a variety of views! :thumbs_up:

I am sure, should I somehow be able to remove the little hooks and jabs, the discussion would have a even higher rating than what it currently has. :chin:

Live and learn... That goes for all of us?