ReaganSmash

I feel today the legacy of the Vietnam War has been hijacked by the media, and in effect, people view the war as a tragedy and a waste of human life.
Back in the 60's and the 70's we were still fighting the cold war, we were fighting an enemy dead set on the collapse of our free society and the imposition of theirs.

While Indochina did fall, we lasted 8 years, 1965 to 1973, fighting and dying in order to stop the Communists from advancing, we proved to the enemy that we were prepared to sacrifice our lives for a strategically unimportant country. Up to that point in the cold war, with the exception of Korea, we had our proxy and surrogates fight our battles, sooner or later we would have fight them ourselves.

The Vietnam War was not wrong nor a waste, and I find insulting to say 58,000 Americans died for nothing, they fought in order to stop a Communist conquest of the world.
(Btw, im not American)

Disscuss.

Sankari

America lost the war and South Vietnam became Communist. How was it not a waste?

Wenge

The United States did not lose the war. The people of the defunct nation of South Vietnam lost the war. The United States was victorious in every encounter they had with the North Vietnamese and with the Viet Cong.

To say that The United States lost my generation's war is a truly ignorant statement.

ReaganSmash

Completely right.

Personally, I consider the Vietnam War a geopolitical victory, but a moral failure(congress passed a bill that stopped financial and military aid to South Vietnam, so the North invaded and spent 3 months attempting to break the South defenses, America could easily started bombing the North to force them to back off).

Rasputin1234

"You know, we won every battle."

"That may be true but it is also irrelevant."

This jingoism is pointless. If America failed in its military objectives, America lost. We could debate whose fault the defeat was, but to say we didn't lose is to deny basic facts.

60,000 soldiers died in vain fighting a war that was none of our business. Our failure to learn from that is arguably the greatest mistake this country ever made

Gile na Gile

Different prisms of perspective isn't there. I mean there was the obvious overarching ideological divide between the two superpowers but too often caught within the crosswires were innocent peoples simply seeking to carve out a bit of freedom for themselves. Ho Chi Minh, for example, always insisted he was a nationalist first and only secondarily a communist. The Russians too weren't terribly interested in the place. Even Khruschev warned Kennedy not to escalate troop presence in Vietnam not because there was an impingement on presumed spheres of interest but because he genuinely believed US entanglement there would be counter-productive to America's own interests - this was during the thaw after the Cuban Misssile Crisis.

The Cold War also coincided with the advent of decolonisation and the imperial question of disengagement in many regions was accompanied by the birth of new nationalisms. Much US involvement aimed at delaying this process for fear of a new regime reverting to communism or being financially supported by China or Russia, in fact shortly after the war US policy began to view the hitherto frowned upon British Empire as an ideal bulwark to prevent the spread of the 'Red Plague'. While this looked good on paper it didn't appreciate much the position of native nationalists striving for independence for their own countries. The Viet Cong was originally an anti-imperialist nationalist outfit which fought the French into retreat during the Indochina wars gathering it's support from many intellectuals who naturally saw the communist camp as more sympathetic to their goals.

Nelson Mandela said the same thing at his trial in Livonia in 1964; that though he admired Western democracies and all that they had achieved in promoting and protecting rights within their own countries when it came to drawing in concrete support for the anti-apartheid struggle the West was largely silent; only the communists stood into the breach and provided arms and financial support. The thing is that while most Americans were undoubtedly fighting "against communism" many of their foes were fighting "against imperialism" (being largely indifferent to the ideological dimension) and as long as proxy colonial governments were superimposed on unwilling and restive native populations perpetual protracted wars were ensured.

From America's point of view they were promoting freedom but to many within whose countries they either fought or within whose boundaries they flooded with arms and munitions their presence represented the antithesis of freedom. They were the attack dogs of a despotic colonialism who used anti-communism as a pretext to preserve intact often non-indigenous hegemonies.

Disciple

The Vietnamese mainly wanted other countries to stay out of their lives. Kind of like Americans wouldn't want a foreign power in our country. They didn't give a rats patootie about changing Americans way of life. Vietnam's war from their perspective was a war of independence. Incidentally Ho Chi Min sought American support in ridding Vietnam of French rule. When the US refused he turned to the Communists.
Of course America hates Communists so much that we owe them trillions and just about every thing we buy these days is made by them these days.
All That being said I don't think we "lost" in Vietnam. We didn't care as much about Vietnam as we did The Phillippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma and in some respects India. The Vietnam war was about containment. The Vietnamese people were the victims, the collateral damage if you will. Very much as the People of Iraq are the victims of Neo-Conservatives war on terror. As we all know Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I doubt that will be much consolation to Iraq's dead.

MrKap

What I find remarkable are the protests which were against US involvement in Cambodia.

I have to wonder what sort of literature was floating around during that time, and whether or not I can believe any of the literature I'm reading today.

I guess the casualties must have been too high for American citizens to want to continue the war.



I'll go out on a limb, and pull a conspiracy theory. I don't see anything about Richard Nixon, in his demeanor, or his presentations, ideas, or policies, to suggest he was a crook. I think they got him out of office with purpose because whatever he was doing, was really causing problems.

In fact, when the guys says, he is not a crook, I believe him.

I am not sure I can justify the war in Vietnam without upsetting a lot of people who held the value of American life in high regard. It was a war of principals perhaps, instead of a war of purpose. I just don't know.

Jake10

The problem was that we should not have been the ones fighting. Vietnam was very different from Afghanistan, in the sense that the US was not directly attacked by the Vietnamese. It would have been fine for us to provide support, weapons and training to the South, but the whole idea of going in to fight for them was flawed, especially when we realized that the South was corrupt. We were stuck with them as military allies, and they came to expect us to do all the fighting for them. In some ways, some Southern Vietnamese started relating more to the North than to us simply because of the familial culture factor.

Did we lose? No, we simply didn't finish what we started from lack of home support. The media and politics got in the way.

corrocamino

The dead, disabled, diseased, orphaned, and widowed lost the war, I'd say. But the sacrifice was worth it, right? ...Right?

...............Right?

Into every life some war must fall? (Morbid.)