Comments on: No More Vietnams

By: Ivan Ivanovich

Ivan Ivanovich — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:42:21 +0000

joeallen
Well, two (of us) out of 300 million ain’t bad. I thought I was the only one. Can we add the Bejing Olympics to the list? Things like that would have been unthinkable in the 60′s. Now if we can establish and keep a base in Iraq, we will see peace in the middleeast. Can anybody say Ramstein, Zweibrücken, or Spangdahelm? John McCain says 100 years in Iraq. It’s been 63 years for Germany.

By: joeallen

joeallen — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:55:17 +0000

ONe of the outcomes of our victory in Vietnam was the cessateion of communist insurgencies throughout SE Asia by the NVA and Red China. Countries of the Phillipines, Singapore, Malasya, Thailand, and Indonesia are free countries today due to our pinning the NVA in their homeland. All these insurgencies died out after our win in Vietnam. This is now apparent 30 years after the war’s end.

A consequence of our retreat from SVN was that the world became more unsafe. Russia invaded Afghanistan, thereby leading to the breakup of the russo empire. Which was a good event. Islam (warlike political movement that it is) showed its true face to the world. Civil wars broke out in most African countries, and the Irish civil war went into full gear.

Now we have to deal with environmentalists, who are mostly communists who have resorted to peaceful means to defeat the west, because they couldn’t do this by military means. They want to silence their critics with jail terms. Sounds like a communist system of government to me.

George W. Bush has kept us safe. Hang the cost, defeat would have been far more costly.

By: jfking

jfking — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:14:59 +0000

When the Tet offensive was over Westmoreland wanted to invade North Vietnam and LBJ stopped him. Mr. Luken is correct the Viet Cong was destroyed by the American military. They were never a factor militarily again in the war.
How badly were the North Vietnamese defeated during Tet. The architect of it General Giap offered his resignation to the politburo in Hanoi. The politburo also gave orders to review the exit plans for an escape to China.
This was all in Giap’s diary. He had opposed the Tet Offensive initially preferring to maintain the guerilla operations because the number of people in the US that wanted out of Vietnam had increased from 25% on January 1, 1967, to 45% on November 30, 1967. He said that any full scale offensive could and probably would lead to a military disaster. He wrote letters of his worries on this matter to at least two other Generals in the North Vietnamese Army.
By June of 1968 the Vietcong were destroyed as well as the North Vietnamese supply lines, and one division of their finest infantry.
The road to Hanoi was open and LBJ said no. The main reason came from McNamara who countered Westmoreland’s entreaties by reminding LBJ that in November of 1967 speaking in front of the National Press Club Westmoreland had stated that the Vietcong and North Vietnam could not launch a major offensive in South Vietnam. Westmoreland was known for his major foot in mouth disease.
LBJ should have fired Westmoreland as Bush did with his Generals when he brought in General Petraeus. However, President Bush gave one simple and standing order to Petraeus, “Win”. LBJ threw up his hands and capitulated to North Vietnam’s demands.
We had them beat we just had to administer a “coup de grace.”

By: Ivan Ivanovich

Ivan Ivanovich — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:56:53 +0000

If it is revisionist to say that the Viet Nam war was between the democratic/republican system of the USA and the communist system of the USSR and China, then I am guilty. The question is: revision of what? I would say that it is a revision of the leftist view, which pretends to be pacifist when it meets their needs. I won’t bother to list the body count for the left.

By: Dr Kilovolt

Dr Kilovolt — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:09:36 +0000

To pretend that we ever won anything in Vietnam other than body counts is revisionist history. We should have learned the lesson that the French ultimately learned at Dien Bien Phu: a foreign power has no business attempting to impose a form of government on another sovereign nation. People have the right to self-rule, even if the form of government they choose doesn’t look the way we would like to see it.

If we had truly learned from the Vietnam experience, we would never have entered Iraq in the first place, something that Bush the Senior was smart enough not to do in 1991.

By: Ivan Ivanovich

Ivan Ivanovich — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:06:18 +0000

You rightfuly mention the Soviets. I submit that the USA won the Viet Nam war on December 25, 1991 when the red flag was lowered from the Kremlin. If our victory over Islamic radical terrorists ends this way, so be it. If we truly lose this fight, woe be it to the women, gays, and John Edwards types.