gibingus

With all the Swifties barking up the media and all the surrounding buzz and pundits banging drums, it seems appropriate to raise this question. Where do you really stand on the Police Action that was the second longest and expensive armed engagement in US history?

Prior to the election season, the pulse on public opinion was that more than two-thirds of the American population believed the Vietnam War was a clear mistake (source).

Instead of spreading his platform message, Kerry is forced to confront unsubstantiated allegations that question his record under fire. We have already seen the GOP machine tear down the patriotism of wounded democratic vets like triple-amputee Max Cleland, so Kerry's Purple Hearts are no challenge. The worst component of these attacks come after Kerry's protests of the war when he returned from it, especially his testimony before congress where he cited war crimes and atrocities by our troops. While we hear plenty about the dishonor and insult to his comrades-in-arms, we are not being reminded that the Toledo Blade ran an award-winning expose series on the war crimes committed by Tiger Force, which were covered up by the Army for decades.

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if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

Averett

I feel that Vietnam should have absolutly no bearing on this election. None. At. All.

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Bill O'Rights

I don't really have a stand on a war that was over in 1975, when I was in the seventh grade. Vietnam is part of our national history, just like....I dunno, the War of 1812. Although I do consider myself a history buff, I like to study it, not dwell on it. I prefer to live in the here and now. And for the moment...it seems to me that we have another war that deserves our attention moreso than Vietnam.

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It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

Seaver

We have WAY too many problems here and now than worry about what happened back then.

That being said we should not forget it, as the military definately learned a great deal. The reason for our military success now was due to our troubles back then (learning to use indigionous people, guerilla warfare, etc.). But that being said our election should hinge on the now not then.

Pacifier

Vietnam was a mistake and the USA is doomed to repeat this mistake because they are unable to look in this subject (it took them till now to report about tiger force...) and they tend to ignrore the past and refuse to learn the lessons. instead they insist that the problems "now" are much mor importand.
The USA need a high dose of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" (~"coming to terms with the past")

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

Sparhawk

I honor the soldiers, most of whom didn't have a choice, who fought and bled there. I am disappointed by the leadership, both militarily and politically, that made our situation there drag for 10 years. I pity the Vietnamese, the vast majority of which wanted nothing of communism and capitalism; they just wanted to live their lives in peace, free from fear of being napalmed, or dragged into the NVA or SVA against their will.

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"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."

Dwayne

I think it was the biggest mistake to go into vietnam. We were so scared about the spread of communism it made the USA do horrible actions. I have to problems at all with the soldiers there, they were just following orders, however the government should be ashamed of itself. This war should not have an effect on the election, but unfortianitly it will. I am sick of this campaign being about all these war records and whether or not Kerry Deserved a purple heart. Atleast Kerry experienced war so he knows how bad it is.

scout

As a small boy I remember watching the nightly news and seeing the dead and wounded being carted off the battlefield under enemy fire. I remember watching Dan Rather reporting from the trenches, the Tet offensive, the body bags, live fire, protests on virtually all the campuses, riots, protesters being killed, soldiers returning just to to be spit on. There was no returning "heroes" during that time. I remember Jane Fonda betraying those American POW's, etc., etc.. It was a terrible time in American history. Neither side can lay claim to glory during those dark days. For Kerry to proclaim to be a "hero" is a little far-fetched, for Bush to bash Kerry for his service is just as far-fetched. I doubt Kerry would have been so quick to throw away his medals if he had legitimately earned them. Bush at least didn't testify before Congress or falsify information further endangering the soldiers that couldn't lie to get the required three Purple Hearts to come home. As I stated, neither side can lay any claim to fame. For examples of true American Heroes look here and read a few of these for they are all truly American Heroes.

fuzyfuzer

you guys are welcome to disagree and i do agree with many and say that it was terrible with the amount of losses, but we gained many important things IMO. after world war two the usa was in a fairly regular schedule of war and that kept us brimming on the edge of technology. this left the USSR constantly trying to catch up not inventing new things which put us at an advantage. this was one of the major things that kept the cold war stable. i would imagine if the USSR had stated to pull ahead in tech. america might have started a war. we now know that the USSR had no real intention to attack us directly because they felt they weren't going to have to they were only going to have to defend themselves.

this may seem outragous to some of you, that we paid for a small amount of dominance with inumerable american lives, but my state of mind tends to look at the world and occurences that the ends justify the means.

sorry if any one is offended but just my view and opinion from intense study of history.

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"Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

Zeld2.0

Vietnam was a mistake - one that we learned much from but one that we also have largely forgotten.

On the one hand, fighting in Vietnam slowed down communism from spreading to the rest of Indochina (which it did after we left). On the other hand, the end result was little to none - Vietnam ironically helped patrol the area against the Khmer Rouge for instance.

An interesting proposal would have been that we should have set our defensive border not at the parallel between South and North, but rather at the Cambodia and Laos border. There, we would've had better terrain to fight on as well as a indigenous population that hated the Vietnamese.

The war within Vietnam itself was unwinnable for it was a South Vietnam that was hardly democratic and had little support of its own people. With political factors put in to limit this war, there was no way we could have won. Had we not withdrawn, the war honestly could've dragged on into the 80's even if the country didn't implode then.

It was truly the most divided and chaotic time in American history since the Civil War a hundred years earlier.

I think what hurts most of all is not only the fact that after years of fighting and literally destroying an entire country, millions of soldiers came home from the fighting there with wounds slow to heal (if at all) and a country that gave them no parades, no honors, nothing.

The fact that they didn't get honored in a parade until the Gulf War, 16 years after the war in Vietnam was over, is pretty telling.

I don't think forgetting the war does anything - rather than let it turn into another Korea, people should remember the war and learn from it.

guthmund

I was going to post this in the "527" thread, but figured it would be better suited here.

Vietnam was before my time. I have no personal standing from which to speak. However, from the information I've assimilated from literature and personal accounts I would have to say that Vietnam is a dark stain on America history.

Since there are certainly more qualified members of the board to discuss the social, politic and economic repercussions of our foray into the jungles of southeast asia, I won't comment any further except to say this.

During the 2000 election when then Gov. Bush's past was brought to bear on how he would run the office of the President we were told that the past is the past. Men change and the events of 30 years ago have little bearing on who that man is today. We were encouraged to look past the drinking, drug abuse and the business debacles and elect Gov. Bush on the merits of his life today and not to dwell on the past.

That being said, I wonder why we all seem so focused on John Kerry's past some 30 years ago. The record has stood for 30+ years without question, but now seems to be the issue of the election.

While it is true that Sen. Kerry has done his fair share to keep this in the limelight, I can't help but think that 2/3 of that maneuvering has been in defending his record.

So, I guess to sum up....Vietnam is a deep dark stain on American history, but should ultimately have no effect on the election.

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Scipio

I have more of a realist take on the cold war. I don't think that a good vs evil analogy is the best way to understand it. Despite their tough rhetoric, and sometimes brutal practices, I think that on a gut level the soviets were just as scared of war as we were, and that like us, they were acting in a primarily defensive mode.

So what about Vietnam? In broad strokes, I think the US was unable to see past the fact that Ho Chi Minh was a communist. The underlying truth was that he was a nationalist, and wanted to see a unified Vietnam, not a soviet whipping boy. Second, we were unwilling to resort to the total war measures necessary to win the war there. Public support for the war declined, and we pulled out. I suppose you might call it a victory for democracy.

We could have just pounded them into the stone age, but that would hardly have been a victory.

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braindamage351

It shouldn't have happened, but we didn't know what the situation was over there. If we HADN'T gone to war the public probably would have crucified the president for being weak on communism. Of course a war that tries to put a vicious dictator in the place of a beloved leader just because the dictator isn't communist is a bad idea. We also didn't take into account that the vietnamese were largely farmers, and didn't give a flying fuck about money.

It was inevitable really.

moonstrucksoul

I view Vietnam as one of those things that sounded like the right thing to do, but wasn't what you thought it would be, or be as easy as they thought. As far as I know, it one of the many times we thought we were trying to fight Communism. pure and simple.

hindsight is always 20/20.

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theusername

So many good points in this thread. We let the politicians fight the war and our men were slaughtered because of it. In war you either commit to do whatever is necessary or you don't go to war. Obviously, it was a mistake to go to war because we made mistakes fighting the war.

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jcookc6

I started another post about making a parking lot, etc. people got upset, innocent people etc. Well the last war that this country fought that we didn't worry about being politically correct was WWII. We didnt worry about innocent people, German people and Japanese people were the ENEMY. Then we come to Viet Nam. If we made the same effort we made in WWII, the war would of lasted 6 months. The same is in effect in Iraq. We worry about the political correctness and worry about what other countries think. Hell, the muslims sect's don't even like each other(sort of same as N.Ireland w/Catholics and protestants). We should have finished the thing back in the first gulf war.
So we should go by the lessons of the Vietnam war, and just go in finish the thing, then go in and pick up the pieces and rebuild the country, just like we did in Europe and Japan after WWII.

Zeld2.0

Difference being that Germany and Japan were viewed as complete enemies - in the Vietnam War, they weren't complete enemies - we were helping one country while fighting the one on the other side of the border. Much like Korea, you don't defend your country by destroying its other half.

And we never had the intention of helping Germany and Japan - that is a BIG difference - we largely helped them at the end of the war for two reasons: a) to prevent a repeat of WW1 where a vengeful nation would arise and b) to prevent the spread of communism (by making our side look better).

However, we had the intentions of helping Korea and Vietnam just as Iraq today - you don't go in saying you're going to help a people by destroying their country.

There is a reason why there is a difference between total war and limited war (no matter how wrong or stupid it might sound).

Scipio

You stop short of pointing out a key difference between limited and total war, and between WW2 and Vietnam. That key difference is that in WW2, our survival was at stake. Had we simply given up, Japan would have conquered Hawaii, and would have started bombing California. No such scenario exists in Vietnam.

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Zeld2.0

Yeah I forgot to mention that Japan and Germany had actually attacked us directly (be it Pearl Harbor or U-Boat) - thus, it was time to return in kind.

And another difference is there was no Cold War versus there is a Cold War.

bish

I couldn't agree with you more, but Kerry is using his service in Vietnam as his platform for being president. Why won't he talk about his voting record in the Senate? Why won't he tell us his ideas for national security? Kerry has made Vietnam a huge part of this election, not Bush. Bush has never questioned Kerry's service to his country. When a candidate tells the people he should be president because he won medals in Vietnam, shouldn't we be a little worried when 200+ vets say he stretched the truth to get those medals?

Zeld2.0

Where does 200+ say he stretched the truth?

Not to mention, Bush has questioned Kerry - maybe not directly, but he's supported ads and groups that have questioned it whether directly or indirectly.

Anyways, unless you can find 200+ that served on his ship with him, *that* would be stretching it.

assilem

Ditto. Except for the fact that John Kerry has made it an issue, and his service the center piece of his campaign. He made the bed on this one. All this swift boat stuff, true or not, could have been avoided if he had not opened his mouth about about his service.

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Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels

roachboy

vietnam--an immoral, unnecessary, disatrous colonial war fought under the pretext of the cold war but in fact for no good reason. notable problems include the fabrication of the tonkin gulf incident, the tonkin gulf act, which transferred an obcene level of power the the president, a campaign of domestic disinformation deisgned to prop up support for the ridiculous war, many many many civilian casualties, war crimes abounding but curiously never prosecuted...up through now, sounds like iraq, doesnt it? formally, i mean. with any luck, the present war will follow in the tradition of vietnam and bring down the president who prompted it (see "the fog of war" (for example) which gives a snapshot of johnson's role in accelerating the war, reversing the withdrawal course that kennedy had decided to take).

among the more thoroughly repellent factors in contemporary politics is the right's revisionist history of the war (a noble cause stabbed in the back by outside agitators, a recycling of the fascist revisionist story of world war 1). this revisionist history has much to do with such delights as the pool of press lackies "covering" the iraq war, increased censorship and the demonization of dissent as "anti-american". and more.

obviously, there are many many particularities of vietnam that do not map onto iraq, and i am aware of them (no need for a lecture on the matter)....like kissinger torpedoing a 1968 agreement with the north that could have ended the war, only to sign almost the same agreement in 1975 with massive additional casualties.

the war is a good lesson in the american attitude toward national sovereignty when applied to poorer nations as well: no hesitation to bomb laos, no hesitation to bomb then invade then destablise cambodia. no hesitation to blame other forces for pol pot coming to power as a function of that destabilization. no problem. they are just poor folk far away. this is the united states of america. we are nice people.

now the americans do it economically. the label is "globalization" the effects the total economic and social devastation of "third-world" countries in the name of "free trade," following "structural adjustment" policies implemented by the imf, world bank etc. but here too the victims are far away and rarely turn up on tv, so they do not matter.

of course when it comes to the states itself, sovereignty is an important category--central to the hyper-nationalism of such Important Intellectuals as george w bush and his cadre of mayberry machiavellians. it is typical of such Important Intellectuals, it seems, that they prefer the revisionist line on vietnam. maybe this is one reason why they seem to have so blindly repeated many of the formal errors that led the americans into it.

as for kerry's record: he seems to have acted with individual courage in a shitty situation. good--i do not know if i would have been able to do it--do you know if you would be able to?
what i respect is kerry's willingness to criticize the war, publicly, after the fact. it take more courage to oppose such a thing than it does to cheerlead. it take more courage to oppose than it does to hide in the national guard units for the wealthy (though you cant do that any more---pace ronald reagan--national guard and reserve units are deployed in combat areas, hi ho) or to accumulate deferrals in the cheney mode.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Tophat665

While Vietnam was a mistake, I think it was an inevitable one. The long road by which we got ourselves enmeshed in what, looking back superficially seems to be a loosing battle against communism has much more to do with The state of our relations with France as far back as the Hoover administration. After WWII a traumatized France was in a position to call on the US to help it attempt to regain some of its lost self respect, not at rolling over in the face of the Germans - Blitzkrieg was an innovation the French were not uniquely ill equipped to deal with, though they were uniquely placed to get one of the first viewings - rather at kow-towing to them and releasing the ugliest side of the French character in the Vichy administration. This is a side of their character that had hitherto found its expression in their colonies abroad. So, after WWII, lacking a navy, but being one of the victorious allies squaring off against the initial cold snaps of the cold war, France could basically demand that the US ship French troops to Indochina. There was a time (and I'll be damned if I can remember where I read it) that Ho Chi Minh offered to ally with the US against the communists if they would only leave the French in Europe. (Ahh! Now I remember: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345308239/qid=1093564153/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-4704480-7235959"><i>The March Of Folly: From Troy to Viet Nam</i> by Barbara Tuchman</a>)

So we mishandled the foreign policy at the outset, misapprehended the necessary tactics, failed to understand the cultures with which we became entangled, lacked the will to commit everything to win, sold it to ourselves as a war against communism when it was really a war for colonialism, and treated the returing fighters like dirt. I believe we learned the lesson from that last point, at least what there is of a peace movement does not seem these days to have anything but thanks and praise for our soldiers and veterans (and rightly so. Give me armed forces that do what the civilian gov't tells them to do even if it is moronic. That is much better than any other alternative.) But everything else: sloppy intelligence, slipshod foreign policy, post facto justification, cultural insensitivity, linguistic barriers, and stategic confusion look really familiar from where I sit. Even lack of commitment seems familiar (though I doubt that there was any level of commitement that would have allowed us to prevail in Viet Nam. Hell, they took 1000 years to send China packing.)

But , at the base of it, the only reason that Vietnam is important here is that Kerry Voulentered to fight and showed up and performed, and Bush voulenteered to fly domestic milk runs, didn't show up, and seems not to have performed. Kerry came back from Viet Nam convinced that we had made a mistake and tried to get us out of a war. Bush never went and got us into another mistaken war.

Now, what is interesting to me is the recent article about one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush who has been the most vocal (the name escapes me. Pretty sure the article was in the Washington Post last week) also got a Bronze Star for Valor under fire on the same occasion in which Kerry got the Bronze star for valor under fire and on which occasion that jackass maintains no one was under fire. Now, I am sorry for the name calling, but that really does seem asinine. Two bronze Stars, both for valor under fire. If there was no fire, then both men are liars. If there was then only the Not So Swift Boat Vet is.

Now, all that aside, Kerry has mishandled this. He should have come right out and said: "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are lying to you about a war that happened thirty years ago. That's not important right now. What is important is that we discuss the war we were mislead into fighting now." Then he could have had any number of much higher profile ex military types come out of the wood work and thoroughly discredit these jokers. He didn't. It seems important to him that he win a pissing match with the agents of his adversary. That's a mistake. However, I don't think it will lead to anyone dying, so he's still ahead in my book.

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Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

smooth

Tophat, I just wanted to give you a title of a book, written by a vet, Lembke, called The Spitting Image.

He's a sociologist at Holy Cross and his text documents how the right consistently revises history to portray peace activists as being anti-patriotic and atagonistic toward whatever country's troops. You pointed out that activists have at least learned that much, so I wanted to give you this so you could see the documentation that we haven't, in fact, changed. The story just keeps being recycled. It's a short, and very interesting read.

He actually documents how the then current administration began a campaign to create the fiction of the "crazy" vet as opposed to the "sane" vets (those opposed versus those in support of the war, respectively) because, if we remember, vets were the first protesters (especially since the war had been going on for a the better part of a few years before the public was even aware of it) and people fighting a war and coming home to speak truth to power presents the largest threat to jingoistic hegemony.

But I hope you read it because it really is interesting but I don't want to retype a synopsis of it. I already did that on previous TFP versions and the info has been lost.

As for Kerry's position, I don't know what the ramifications would have been if he had done what you suggested. I'll have to marinade on it some more, but at first stab I would suspect that he would have been accused of negative campaigning and not sticking to issues, & etc. The right's favorite position of doing something and sitting back and playing the victim. Then we would be discussing how Kerry had to resort to defending himself in that manner instead of the way he is doing it now.

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roachboy

tophat: a supplement to smooth's post, above.....

James William Gibson: Warrior Dreams

check this book out for a more extended history of right revisionism on vietnam, which traces it back to the end of the war.

you have things scrambled on france as well--more on that later maybe.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

william

Vietnam was a mistake in the domino theory. The Ruskies thought they needed the country, and we thought we needed to stop them from taking it. And yet, where is that country as far as global positioning? The same mistakes were/are being made about Korea. Difference - Korea is still fighting the "cold" war w/our troops. That's a fight that's still close to the boiling point, but we can't look at that because we are in the Iraq quagmire.
Vietnam was a mistake to get involved in. Iraq was a mistake to get involved in. Now we're stuck, and who are our real (troops/money) allies, besides Halliburton, et al.?

Tophat665

Thanks Roach. I'll check that out for sure.

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Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Stompy

IMO, Vietnam is just another case of the US not being able to swallow its "pride" and trying to show the world who's boss.

The cons exponentially outweighed the pros, and as a result, nothing came out of it.

You either surf, or you fight.

[edit]
As far as Vietnam and our current elections, I have honestly NO idea how it has any bearing whatsoever. Seriously, it's puzzling. I just look at all this babble going on back and forth between the parties and the only thing that comes to mind is "goddamn people are stupid..."

This war was 35-40 years ago. Get over it. It's a big smoke screen set up to avoid the real issues at hand. We're not dealing with Vietnam anymore, we're dealing with Iraq. If this were 1968, it would be different.

Kerry could've flat out DODGED Vietnam for all I care (I would've too) as it has no bearing on one's ability to lead. After all, look at Bush. His military experience is pretty shady. Either he did serve, didn't, or went AWOL, etc.. no one knows, but the fact is Kerry did serve, so what's the big deal? Because he has an opinion on the war? Wow, what a bad person! I guess that flat out proves right there that he's not fit for president, huh?

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uncle phil

To preface, I spent a couple tours in "the nam." My thoughts on that whole fiasco are excellently iterated by David Halberstam in The Best and the Brightest.

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"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
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"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
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never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

Zeld2.0

great book