Vietnam: they lost the war, but won the battle
Who are “they?” The Left.
What war? Vietnam.
What battle? The one that determines who gets to write history.
It’s said that history is written by the winners, and that’s true. But Vietnam just may have been the first war in which those who opposed the conflict “won” in the forum of public opinion by convincing their fellow citizens and government to abandon the war itself, and then got to write most of its chronicles.
Case in point: this piece in the NY Times Magazine, which states the following foregone conclusion [emphasis mine]:
In the decades after Vietnam, despite having been proved right about the war itself, a generation of Democrats who opposed the war nonetheless struggled mightily to find a credible response to armed conflict, to reconcile the breach that separated the antiwar left from the broader swath of Americans who disdained reflexive pacifism.
Proved right? Hardly. But the Left and even most Democrats consider it axiomatic that those who opposed the war have been “proved” right. I’ve spent many hours and many words discussing the proof that exists for the opposite side: that our abandonment of Vietnam in the mid-70s was an unnecessary tragedy and a shame (see the category “Vietnam” on the right sidebar). And I’m hardly the only one.
But word doesn’t seem to have penetrated a huge swath of liberals and the Left that there still might even be another side—much less that it might have some validity, and that it offers arguments that require responses.
I’ve encountered this “everybody knows” attitude about Vietnam many times before, including on the occasion of John Updike’s death. Updike, a liberal Democrat, had angered most of his fellow literati during the 60s by offering a principled and compelling argument that the war may have been a well-intentioned effort by the US to allow the South Vietnamese to maintain their freedom from tyrannical Northern Communists. Updike got much condemnation and little praise for his pains, even after his death, at which time I wrote the following:
Last night…as I was watching a Charlie Rose tribute to John Updike that featured a panel composed of Updike’s editor Judith Jones, former New Yorker editor David Remnick, and New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, the latter casually mentioned, amidst the praise and reminiscence, that “of course, Updike was on the wrong side about the Vietnam War.”
Of course. Everybody who’s anybody knows that.
[NOTE: See this for Updike’s position on the war, in his own inimitable words.]
One of my favorite themes, yet another verse: within their tribe, believing the right things about Vietnam is a form of social signalling. It has nothing to do with actual events, analyses, or re-evaluation. Such beliefs are passwords, or if you prefer, sign-countersigns that you are part of the tribe. “Many fall down/and few return to the sunlit lands.”
Conservatives fall into the trap of believing these things are essentially about content, because liberals believe this, and act as if this were true. Plus, when we say things, the content is a significant piece. But the phenomenon is better understood as having more to do with social acceptance than with content. Emotionally, liberals are essentially highschoolers. Frame your understanding in those terms.
Now you’ve done it neo – I’m feeling the urgent need to add a C96, a P38, and a P08 to my collection of toys…..the wifey ain’t gonna like this one bit!
On the far more serious issue of who gets to write history, my impression is that serious military historians take a much different view of the Vietnam war than writers on the left.
They look at the strategies, the battles, the skirmishes, and overall how the war was progressing from a strictly military standpoint.
The factor that is too often missing, or is mentioned but not delved into too deeply by military historians, is the political aspect.
They don’t seem to give the politics as much attention as they do the strictly military aspects of the conflict except to provide the political and social upheavals as partial explanations for why the war ended so badly – then they go back to talking about the generals.
This is a huge mistake, as it leaves the social/political arena of that time almost entirely up to the left to define and (mis)characterize as they wish.
The proper response is, I believe, to encourage and support historians who tell the story of Vietnam accurately, and to promote their work in the mainstream and somehow crowbar it into academia.
Put them on the defensive!
Of course, this means taking the socialist/conservative debate into academia itself and reversing the long march they’ve managed to successfully inflict on higher education.
If you have no representatives of the right in academia, however, this becomes far more problematic. It really is a fight that has to occur from the inside of those institutions.
This is not an easy task – but my impression is there was a general lack of resistance to the take over by the left, of academia, in the first place.
Any push back from the right, however, will meet substantial resistance.
The Dems/progressives/liberals/anti-war protesters have still not accepted, all these years later, their responsibility for what happened in Viet Nam after their “victory” via our hasty retreat. We never hear them complain of the hundreds of thousands murdered and/or imprisoned and tortured in re-education camps. Or why so many Vietnamese were willing to risk their lives by going to sea in leaky rafts/boats to escape the warm embrace of the communists. Walter Cronkite is a classic example of an anti-war liberal who used his national bully pulpit to condemn untold numbers to death and misery without blinking an eye, or looking back with even one ounce of regret. When it comes to Viet Nam and the consequences of their actions, the left’s lack of empathy is stunning; their denial that they lack empathy is frightening.
http://jim.com/ChomskyLiesCites/When_we_knew_what_happened_in_Vietnam.htm
[This article illustrates that Chomsky was lying about when we knew what was happening in Vietnam, just as, far more seriously, he was lying about what we knew about Cambodia. He led the reader to believe that at the time no one even suggested a bloodbath was happening in Vietnam, when we all knew something terrible was happening in Vietnam, and some people most certainly did suggest a bloodbath was under way. In particular Le Thi Anh accused the North Vietnamese regime of committing a bloodbath in the course of their pacification of South Vietnam.]
National Review, April 29, 1977, page 487
——-
Second Anniversary
The New Vietnam
Le Thi Anh
It is two years ago this month since the communists overran South Vietnam. When Saigon first fell there was much speculation in the west about the likelihood of a bloodbath; as the months passed, however, and there was little news the speculation began to taper off Now two years later, Vietnam and its people have vanished almost completely from the American consciousness. Those once actively concerned about the war both doves and hawks, share a common interest in forgetting that faraway land of so many unpleasant memories.
U.S. antiwar groups don’t want to be reminded of Vietnam for fear of having to admit that their marches, demonstrations and successful cut-the-aid campaign resulted in death or detention for thousands of South Vietnamese, many of whom were their partners in non-Communist opposition to President Thieu.
–SNIP–
It’s not he fault of our soldiers, but Vietnam was a war we should NOT have gotten involved in. Vietnam was fighting French colonialism and had defeated it by 1954. The real war was over before the U.S. even landed troops in the country, and he subsequent conflict was fought to preserve an imposed partition of a country striving to reunify itself. Vietnam never invaded another country and was the victim of chemical and ecological warfare. Vietnam never sponsored nor encouraged terrorist tactics beyond its borders, within it’s borders it is not a crime to do so when faced with a foreign invader. The Americans in Vietnam employed ‘search and destroy’ methods and ‘body count’ and targeted civilians. The American-sponsored regimes in Vietnam tended to be strongly identified with one confessional minority (Catholic) to the exclusion of secular, nationalist and Buddhist forces. In defense of the Right, there have been those on Left who make comparisons of this to the Iraq Liberation. If Vietnam was our last imperial war, then liberating Iraq was a marked disengagement from that past.
nyomythus Says:
It’s not he fault of our soldiers, but Vietnam was a war we should NOT have gotten involved in.
Stopping the spread of communism is always the right war; politicians calling the shots from Washington made Viet Nam turn ugly (shades of Obama playing political games with Afghanistan). Maybe I’m older than you, but I’ve always understood the cruelty of communism, and why it must be defeated. So, I gather, did Updike, to his credit.
Just look at the deliberate self-inflicted casualties of Lenin/Stalin/Mao/Ho/Pol. There is no way anyone can tell me allowing those men/regines to rule tyrannically unopposed is the right thing to do.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. ~ John Stuart Mill, 1862
The Left does this all the time. At the time of the hearings, over 2/3 of the people believed Clarence Thomas and not Anita Hill. Given the ironclad proof that she had lied, it should have been 99%. But after a year long crusade by the news media celebrating Hill, the numbers were reversed. Liberals invested tremendous time, energy and money to change history. Conservatives did nothing.
See also, Alger Hiss, “red scare”, the south moved to the GOP because of racism, Bush as stupid, Algore or Kerrey are smart, Sarah Palin is stupid, Newt Gingrich is a bomb throwing extremist, Hillary is smart, Obama is smart, JFK was a great president, FDR saved the country from the depression, Reagan was a dunce, Reagan was responsible for the AIDS epidemic, AIDS is a threat to heterosexuals, Eisenhower did nothing, the sixties were great, war crimes were epidemic in Vietnam, global warming, 3 million homeless and the GOP is evil.
Liberals pound these memes repeatedly and conservatives never respond.
nyomythus,
“It’s not (t)he fault of our soldiers, but Vietnam was a war we should NOT have gotten involved in.”
I agree – but once involved we should have pulled out all stops to win. The price of losing was seen as too high, and that belief was proven correct in innumerable ways in the following decades.
Eisenhower made the correct decision to not commit combat troops to this war – a decision that was reversed by subsequent presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
“Vietnam was fighting French colonialism and had defeated it by 1954.”
Correct, up to a point. The French reneged on their promise to give up their colonial aspirations in Vietnam if the Vietnamese would help fight the Japanese in WWII.
The Vietnamese in general had a legitimate gripe.
“The real war was over before the U.S. even landed troops in the country, and he subsequent conflict was fought to preserve an imposed partition of a country striving to reunify itself.”
Vietnam was never a “country” in any real sense up to that point in the region’s history. It was a tossup as to who would control what. You already had armed communists in the region attempting to impose communist rule at the point of a gun.
The “partition” that occurred was directly the result of communist insurgencies active in the country attempting to impose communist rule as proxies of the USSR.
The soviets with Stalin at their head were quite active in such matters immediately after WWII.
Pro-western and Pro-communist forces could not co-exist, so the new nation that outsiders had created was partitioned with supposed freedom for people to move to the region they preferred – most with a choice either stayed in or moved to South Vietnam. Many were never allowed to leave North Vietnam in direct violation of the agreement, and thousands were murdered in the North after the communists consolidated power.
“Vietnam never invaded another country and was the victim of chemical and ecological warfare.”
Other than the short period before it was divided into the nations of North and South Vietnam, again it wasn’t really a nation in a unified sense.
It was a former French colony.
“Vietnam never sponsored nor encouraged terrorist tactics beyond its borders, within it’s borders it is not a crime to do so when faced with a foreign invader.”
You are obfuscating between the former French colony, and the pre-division era before the North and South were split into separate nations, with a single unified nation of Vietnam today.
South Vietnam, where guerrilla activities occurred and the target of things like the Tet Offensive, were clearly NOT within the borders of North Vietnam.
North Vietnam clearly was going outside it’s own borders fomenting death and destruction in South Vietnam.
Aided and abetted by US politicians on the left, they ultimately succeeded.
“The Americans in Vietnam employed ’search and destroy’ methods and ‘body count’ and targeted civilians.”
And while they may have dressed it up with different names, the NVA and VC did likewise.
Village leaders who rejected VC domination tended to end up dead at the hands of the VC. The rest of the villagers took the hint and fell into line. The military age men ended up being drafted by the VC and NVA.
After division into 2 nations, the identities solidified. At that point, North Vietnam WAS invading South Vietnam in an attempt to overthrow it.
To my recollection, South Vietnam never invaded North Vietnam, nor did South Vietnam ever attempt to overthrow the government of North Vietnam. They fought a war of self-defense.
South Vietnam ultimately lost that war when the North invaded after US combat troops left – and US politicians refused to honor the promises of aid and air support that had been assured South Vietnam.
When North Vietnam invaded, the South Vietnamese could not win without US air support, and replenishment of supplies.
Support and supplies were not something the North Vietnamese had to worry about the USSR not providing as their tanks rolled into South Vietnam.
Pingback:lead and gold
Pingback:Everybody knows « Whispers
I’m a longtime reader, first time commentor.
neo-neocon said:
“It’s said that history is written by the winners, and that’s true. But Vietnam just may have been the first war in which those who opposed the conflict “won” in the forum of public opinion by convincing their fellow citizens and government to abandon the war itself, and then got to write most of its chronicles. ”
I would submit that this is actually incorrect. That the victor did in fact write the history books about Viet Nam.
Given that the “common-everybody-knows-we-lost” meme is pushed by both academia (the bulk of it, anyway) and media, and that many of them, from Chomsky to Fonda were in the least sympathetic and at most, predisposed to help with the propaganda, I’d say the winner of the war did, by proxy, write the history.
The United States lost the war after backing out. We left the South Vietnamese to be massacred by the winners. But in the halls of academia and on the toobs, we lost, we never should have been there, etc., etc., etc.
Those that push this meme may have American citizenship but are still Fellow Travelers at heart. And their North Vietnamese darlings won.
Stopping the spread of communism — but it’s what the majority of people their wished for, why would they chose democracy when democracy was committing all the atrocities I listed?
NOT within the borders — is not like invading and/or annexing another country.
nyomythus,
Are you suggesting that the communist North Vietnamese did not commit atrocities within their own nation of North Vietnam in order to consolidate power unto the communists?
Are you suggesting that guerrilla forces created, supplied, and supported by communists in North Vietnam did not commit atrocities in South Vietnam as they conducted their guerrilla war?
Are you suggesting that when North Vietnamese forces invaded the sovereign nation of South Vietnam that they did not commit atrocities?
Are you suggesting that North Vietnamese forces did conduct a campaign to exterminate the Hmong tribesman after they successfully invaded and defeated a South Vietnam that pleaded in vain for the United States to honor it’s commitment to support them in their time of need, as North Vietnamese troops, tanks, and aircraft rolled into South Vietnam?
Are you suggesting that North Vietnam did not commit to a campaign of intimidation, terror, murder, ruthless annihilation, assassination, and extensive *re-education* of the subjugated South Vietnamese after they defeated South Vietnam?
Atrocities, indeed!
“NOT within the borders – is not like invading and/or annexing another country.”
They WERE 2 different countries!
Stan upthread nails it. Reds always try to make their view seem the accepted, “hip” one, because doing so induces the weak-minded to parrot that view in an effort to belong.
nyomythus: I’ve written over fifty posts on Vietnam. Go to the right sidebar, click on “Vietnam” under “Categories,” and start reading.
“I’ve encountered this “everybody knows” attitude about” X
Keep in mind, this is their game / they do this with everything.
It’s the basis for PC speech…. And Stalinism… if we just make everyone say it (2+2=5) we are right.
This particular “everybody-knows-we-lost” meme is of fundamental importance to the left because it supports and justifies their Weltanschauung or world view.
If they were to acknowledge, most of all to themselves, that the Vietnam meme is debatable it would force them to reexamine everything they hold to be true.
People find it very difficult to re-evaluate their cognitive ‘reality map’. Just ask neo-neocon or any former liberal how easily they found the process of reexamining their presumptions to be.
Few possess the intellectual integrity and strength to survive being philosophically adrift, without ‘anchor’ and to brave the uncertainty of crossing an ocean of doubt, in hopes of reaching a far distant shore that may not even exist.
That is why “When it comes to Viet Nam and the consequences of their actions, the left’s lack of empathy is stunning; their denial that they lack empathy is frightening.” they do so, it’s just too scary hard and demanding to re-examine one’s presumptions.
It takes an exceptional intellect to do so.
Are you suggesting that guerrilla forces created, supplied, and supported by communists in North Vietnam did not commit atrocities in South Vietnam as they conducted their guerrilla war?
I’m sorry buy the Geneva Convention allows for this when faced with a foreign invader.
North Vietnam never invaded another country? Where’d the Ho CHi Minh trail run? You don’t seriously believe that that trail ran through Vietnam do you?
nyomythus: I’ve written over fifty posts on Vietnam. Go to the right sidebar, click on “Vietnam” under “Categories,” and start reading.
Doing it now :\
North Vietnam never invaded another country? Where’d the Ho CHi Minh trail run?
Who said Vietnam was two countries? The South Vietnamese Status Que and the West, or the Vietnamese people?
I’m not saying these thing as some one who is hostile to the West, or Democracy, or Conservatism … but they are things to thing about if one can objectively do sso, and take a scalpel can cut the lies from the truth and hold that truth up.
an old fav from the early 80’s
http://www.goear.com/listen/6b57874/Streets-of-Saigon-bmo
nyomythus: I noticed that this one was missing from the list of Vietnam posts. I’ve added it. You might want to take a look at it, because it discusses atrocities. Also, here’s another one that seems particularly relevant.
So, taking my scalpel, it is your assertion that Vietnam did not invade Laos but instead, somehow took a route by force that they then used to supply other people in, ummmmmmmmmmmmm, Vietnam? I don’t particularly care who or what you are hostile to, but that obfuscation is down right silly.
Seems to me that you didn’t address the original point, but we’ll do it your way. Vietnam, as represented by the government in Hanoi undertook to supply some Vietnamese in the south. They did not do that by using the land that was Vietnam, but by INVADING another country. Sorry you can’t see that by cutting away with your scalpel to get to the truth. Probably be best to put the scalpel down if you want to pretend that the Ho Chi Minh Trail did not go through somewhere NOT Vietnam.
neo shoots – she SCORES!!!!!!!
nyomythus stands to one side, looking silly…..
nyomythus,
BTW, North Vietnam was charged with violating the Geneva convention….look it up.
Messup on previous post. Please delete, Neo.
nyomythus
Are you talking about the Famous May 1975 Plebiscite. ? Tell us about the Vietnamese people voting for unification, nyomythus.
Such as the genocide in Cambodia. Such as the massacre at Tet. Horowitz and Collier, in their Destructive Generation, have a chapter on two Vietnam vets, which reoounts some Vietcong atrocities. Tell us about it.
Chapter and verse, please.
I was a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War. Had my draft board not granted me 1-O ( C.O) status , I would have chosen to refuse induction and go to jail. The genocide in Cambodia changed my mind about Conscientious Objection, and about the Vietnam War.
Thank you for that neat Man from Uncle video clip!
they claim a win for the same reason they dont like the wall coming down..
USSR ‘secret’ Vietnam soldiers speak out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wprT66Yjxs
“more than 3000 soviet troops fought against the american troops in vietnam”
the news coverage was for their reunion…
so in essence they werent fighting for north vietnam, they were fighting on the side of the motherland soviet russia.
oh…and if you take the time now, you will find out that they were fighting us in other conflicts too, except it was kept pretty secret, and if not that much, then at least not brought up much at all.
however, this wont change anyones discussion thread. it will be picked up, put down, and then forget about it. i think its called “latent inhibition”.
you can find a lot more on things like isreal and their conflicts too.
BTW, North Vietnam was charged with violating the Geneva convention….look it up.
If we’d we’d not been in their backyard, would it have happened? It doesn’t excuse the act, but we can’t forget the reason why we were they in the first place either. Nevertheless it was a long time ago, we’ve behaved well since then, we should remember to continue to behave well in the future.
Soviet Involvement in the Vietnam War
historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?action=read&artid=180
Soviet aid began flowing to North Vietnam in early 1965, the magazine said.
In August 1965, Soviet forces shot down the first U.S. planes. But after 1966, it said no Soviet troops directly participated in combat because the Vietnamese forces had been trained to handle the Soviet equipment.
North Vietnam independently planned and carried out operations in South Vietnam, according to Shcherbakov and Col.-Gen. Vladimir Abramov, who led a group of Soviet military advisers in the region. The two said they were not even told of the Vietnamese commander’s plans.
The war began in 1954 and ended with a Communist victory in 1975.
and as to the north south issue
The Geneva Conference recognized the independence of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel. In 1956, internationally-supervised elections were to be held throughout Vietnam to vote on such issues as reunification. In the meantime, military forces were to be regrouped and populations exchanged. Military bases of any country, the introduction of new military forces, and adherence to military alliances was forbidden to both sides. An International Commission of India, Poland, and Canada to supervise truce.
The truce line became permanent. Those who had been close to the French colonial government or refused to be controlled by Ho Chi Minh moved south while others moved north.
that was 1954… after ho chi minh asked for help, after wwii japan took the place over, and so forth.
after that, we supported the south, pouring over 1 billion into it. the guy we supported, diem, he started out one way, and by the time it ended was quite the other way… as he could not accept losing and changing of the guard to a new leader that would continue the way it is. during this time there were active measures from both sides against both sides.
Diem abolished village elections for fear that democracy would mean he would lose support and appointed officials instead. Those who openly opposed him were jailed. Opposition newspapers were closed.
so he went from a elected official into one that would not leave. and well, things from that point on went from bad to worse.
In response, in 1957, anti-Diem insurgents begin terrorist attacks. In 1959, North Vietnam began sending aid to the Communists in the South. In 1960, the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) is formed in the South. Pressure built on the US to decide how far it would go in supporting the undemocratic government in Vietnam.
they had invested billions, and expertise and such. only to have ended up with someone not acting up to the values they wanted.
they were in a no win situation… the leader was becoming more despotic, he wouldnt succumb to honest elections, and the US couldnt oust him and take over the country! Diem played a mean game between all this and by this time kennedy is upping the experts, while the communists are turning up the heat. (that is refusing to let it cool so that the official can be removed. the hotter they made it the more despotic Diem got).
The US began to think about withdrawing it support of Diem. There were indications that he might negotiate a peace with North Vietnam. When South Vietnamese generals began talking of overthrowing him, the US did not demur. He was overthrown and murdered in November, 1963. It wasn’t long before the new government was also overthrown.
so now you have north wanting to move in as they stopped recognizing the geneva accord, and the south in turmoil as the leader was removed by the military and the new leaders were weak.
[indonesia had its run ins with soviets and chinese and generals ousting leaders too]
then kenedy was murdered…
and LBJ sealed the deal with his bad move hiding the truth about tonkin.
ok.. i want nyomythus to read this next paragrap as to what LBJ a DEMOCRAT did to CREATE VIETNAM, a war that later the same group wanted out from!!!
Lyndon Baines Johnson, who became President when Kennedy was murdered, increased support for South Vietnam, for he saw US honor at stake. In early 1964, the Vietcong controlled almost half of the country. The US began a secret bombing campaign in Laos in an effort to destroy Vietcong supply routes. On August 2, 1964, the warship the U.S.S. Maddox was attacked. Then on August 4th, the Maddox and another destroyer moved into North Vietnamese territorial waters in the gulf of Tonkin, a violation of international law and an act of war. They were fired on. Johnson, however, hid the truth and reported to Congress that the incident constituted an attack on the United States. Congress by a vote of 466-0 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution on August 7th, gaining the President of the United States the right to respond to attacks as he saw fit. This was the legal basis for the Vietnam War. When Congress repealed the resolution in 1970, the US continued to fight the war.
so the side that ultimately is fighting to end the war was the side that made the war worse under false pretenses so as to escalate. once committed, there was no easy way out.
but the left milks this puppy from both ends.
In February, 1965, a Vietcong attack on the US military airfield at Pleiku brought a carrier attack on North Vietnam. The US launched Operation Rolling Thunder , bombing north of the 17th parallel in an effort to get them to quit aiding the Vietcong and/or fighting in South Vietnam. The US would drop more bombs on Indochina than it has dropped in World War II. Johnson increased the US ground troops.
By early 1966, Senator J. William Fulbright (Democrat from Arkansas) began to hold hearings on the war. As they progressed and Fulbright found more of the truth of the matter, he became a vocal critic of the war and delivered a major address about “The Arrogance of Power.”.
note that fulbright is the same one who was investigated for spying, and who sent clinton to the soviet union as a way to avoid vietnam..
so some of our people were trained by there people. just look it up.
and so thats how the thing was starting to be a candle burned at both ends against the middle.
In November, 1968, North Vietnam had responded to the start of negotiations in Paris by withdrawing 22 of 25 regiments from the northern 2 provinces of South Vietnam. President Johnson kept up the bombing pressure, and the withdrawals ceased. Thieu of South Vietnam stalled at sending delegates; he was afraid the South would lose. When his delegates finally arrived, they stalled for five more weeks by arguing over the shape of the table.
and then came nixon with his secret way to win the war.
sounds a bit different than nyomythus…
i would be remiss if i didnt point out to nyo that LBJ also gave us the medical problems of today, escalated the war, and created the welfare state which has grown to support almost half the populatoin (as well as destroyed black families, and created opportunities for Acorn to reap). got so bad that my chilhood was dotted with race riots.
LBJ wiretapped martin luthor king, pandered deals to from the white house like leasing his jet, and other titbits.
put roosevelt, lbj, carter and obama together, and boy do you get four times that the left visited blows and conditions that became huge problems for us rather than any kind of better anything.
with friends like that who needs enemies?
I’m not a Leftist, and I’m fond of Conservatives, so no need for a lecture on that matter.
nyomythus, this hasn’t been your best thread.
nyomythus,
So let me get this straight…
You’ve backed off the claim that North Vietnam wasn’t violating the Geneva Convention – yet now claim that because the US was in their “back yard” that the behaviour on their part is excused?
And then you claim we’ve behaved since then – as if we were not behaving then?
What other nation on the planet throughout recorded history has shed so much blood and treasure on behalf of other nations in so many different conflicts that we could have legitimately avoided?
BTW Artfldgr, Soviet pilots flew against us in Korea as well – and US pilots flew for Israel.
Nyomythus,
It should also be obvious that South Vietnam did not want to be part of the communist North Vietnam. They continued to fight well past when *we* had left and were only supplying them with materials and money.
Indeed, they continued to *win* through all of that. It wasn’t until *we* quit doing that that they lost. Further one will note the sheer amount of people that died in an attempt to stop it from occurring even after it was obvious and inevitable that the fall would occur. You do not fight to the death to stop something you want from happening.
Further Vietnam was, at that time, a nation that really only existed on paper. So you can not say that the country of “Vietnam” existed and we broke it into artificial countries in order to fight over it – indeed they were ideologically *MORE* separated than the initial country of “vietnam” was (and is one of the reasons why we ended with such a war there).
Nor does us being there in any way excuse the atrocities of the NV. In fact, the main atrocities such as the boat people and millions massacred were *after* we had left and was a reaction of the totalitarian communist govt to stamp out dissident – not a reaction to us being there. *That* was what we were supposed to be preventing.
I’ll agree we did a *really* piss poor job of doing that and I’ll even buy that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. But that type of rationalization of what happened is, well, foolish.
The Communist sought to gain control of Vietnam through a violent revolution. More than 50% of the population obviously didn’t want it. The SV were obviously content to stay in their land, the NV were not. The NV committed a huge amount of atrocities that had little to do with any fight against us, the SV did not.
They didn’t want another case of Germany or Korea where it was obvious which side was superior and where everyone outside of those with the power would rather be someplace else – been there, done that, and they were loosing in the long term. The only real difference here is they knew we would blink and we did (well, that and Kennedy/Johnson made really poor war time Presidents) – we had as much right and moral authority to be there as in Korea. Indeed, more so – it wasn’t until later than NK really became the crap collector it is now and East Germany didn’t get a full-on cleansing.
Good Liberals are unaware that there is another side to the Vietnam War. They have never read an account and remember only the enchantment and fun of protesting.
Mark Moyar’s “Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965” is a highly praised new analysis that overturns much of the historical orthodoxy. All kinds of new evidence from primary sources, new analysis, unmatched in any other study. Second volume to come.
Peter Braestrup’s “Big Story” tells the story of the Media treatment of the war.
Always helps to read up.
Scottie,
i do know that they did, and we did. that was why i mentioned isreal in the post. but many dont like long posts by me, so if i try to be thorough, then they whine. if i am not thorough, others use whats missing… no win either way..
i just didnt have time last night to show all the weird stuff that we as a people generally have no knowlege of and as such, do not come into our assesments.
You’ve backed off the claim that North Vietnam wasn’t violating the Geneva Convention – yet now claim that because the US was in their “back yard” that the behaviour on their part is excused?
Heh?
nyomythus, you need to address the central point of the post, which is that many people think they know something about Vietnam, but what they really know is the Left’s meta-narrative about Vietnam, reinforced by dint of repetition until it becomes “what everybody knows.” Simply recycling talking points that come out of the Left’s version doesn’t get the job done. You need to argue that: a) the conventional Leftist narrative (“what everybody knows”) is right, b) that it is right in some points but not others, or c) God knows what else.
Neo’s point is that unstated arguments cannot be considered to be “proven.”