Vietnam

RockinInCanada

farfromglorified wrote:

So in other words you have none.

The primary manifestation of fear is aggression. The United States woke up on 9/11 to the fact that there are elements of distant societies unattached to nation-states that wish to do us harm. The events of that day struck fear into America that these elements could one day work with nation-states to acquire significant weaponry without the concomitant accountability that comes with the possession of such weaponry by vested interests such as traditional nation-states. Rather than logically question the viability of or the reasons behind such behavior, the United States chose simple aggression with the purpose of spreading "free society" throughout the Middle East in the hopes of lessening the influence of such elements and to increase the transparency of Arab regimes.

If this was a "war for oil", I'd be much happier. We'd have abandoned it by now. Unfortunately, the people driving this war actually believe what they're saying.

I think America and some other world nations (including my own) need to realize that to combat "cultures" that are not nation states needs to be done differently than combating nation states (ie. Germany in WW2).....you will never win a fist fight with them.....that will only strengthen them......it has been proven in the past and will be proven again (which I do say with no hint of happiness though)

farfromglorified

Saturnal wrote:

This is my point. Niether of us have hard evidence on this. We might in 30+ years when documents have been de-classified, but right now we both rely on assumptions. You rely on the assumption that agression is about fear. I rely on the assumption agression can be about other things. There's arguments that back each of these assumptions up, but there's no real evidence.

The documents, statements and actions are right in front of your eyes.

Aggression is always about fear.

farfromglorified

Rockin'InCanada wrote:

I think America and some other world nations (including my own) need to realize that to combat "cultures" that are not nation states needs to be done differently than combating nation states (ie. Germany in WW2).....you will never win a fist fight with them.....that will only strengthen them......it has been proven in the past and will be proven again (which I do say with no hint of happiness though)

Completely agreed. Vietnam teaches another important lessen there. War lost the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. Capitalism earned them, as is evidenced by the direction Vietnam is now headed in. Culture is best fought with culture.

RockinInCanada

farfromglorified wrote:

The documents, statements and actions are right in front of your eyes.

Aggression is always about fear.

I also think maybe it lies in the ego of a nation as well (more of its leaders).....

fada

Anyone feel that the US don't need to solve all the worlds problems. We have different theories into different attacks. Vietnam Communism against people fighting for independence. IRaq getting rid of dictator or oil. Will the USA turn to the Congo next or is it of little importance?

farfromglorified

fada wrote:

Anyone feel that the US don't need to solve all the worlds problems. We have different theories into different attacks. Vietnam Communism against people fighting for independence. IRaq getting rid of dictator or oil. Will the USA turn to the Congo next or is it of little importance?

Don't expect the USA to turn to the Congo. But also don't expect the USA to stop trying to solve a lot of international problems. As the world's primary power, the US is in a lose-lose situation. When we help, we get accused of alterior motives. When we don't, we get accused of other alterior motives.

The USA needs to tell the entire world to fix their problems and then focus on our own problems. Furthermore we need to stop actively contributing to the world's problems. That means no more regime changes, no more proxy wars. The world is a much different place than it was 100 years ago.

fada

But do yee Americans feel that yee actively have to get involved in most things however trivial?

farfromglorified

fada wrote:

But do yee Americans feel that yee actively have to get involved in most things however trivial?

No, and we typically don't get actively involved in the trivial problems and conflict of this world. We just often find ourselves attempting to solve large problems we can't solve or making the problems worse in the process.

tybird

farfromglorified wrote:

Don't expect the USA to turn to the Congo.

That may depend on what natural resource gets uncovered there.......we did prop up Mobuto Sese Seko during his run....we also interfered in the Katanga crisis........internal Congo business........yes, that was during the cold war.

catefrances

fada wrote:

Anyone feel that the US don't need to solve all the worlds problems. We have different theories into different attacks. Vietnam Communism against people fighting for independence. IRaq getting rid of dictator or oil. Will the USA turn to the Congo next or is it of little importance?

vietnam wasn't about communism no matter what washington told its people. but as you know, there isn't a bigger red flag to the american people than communism.(no pun intended) it was a nationalist push from within south vietnam to reunite the country after it was arbitrarily divided in two by people who yet again thought they knew better and who had no business doing it. and that is after they supported the corrupt south vietnamese government and continued doing so even in the face of human rights abuses. the vietnamese had spent years fighting the french imperialists. did the americans think they would fare any better? well i guess obviously they did.
you know vietnam was one big fuck up from the beginning to its sad inevitable end. fighting a war without regard of local conditions, doing so as if it were just another ground war and on a very shaky premise to begin with, at best just begs for trouble. the US and friends got their arses kicked and yet they didn't learn a god damn thing did they?

bluejourneyman

The US politicians and the corrupt south Vietnamese government got our arses kicked for us; we did not loss one decisive battle in that war. The French got their ass kicked.

catefrances

bluejourneyman wrote:

The US politicians and the corrupt south Vietnamese government got our arses kicked for us; we did not loss one decisive battle in that war. The French got their ass kicked.

i disagree. what got your arses kicked was trying to wage a conventional land war when it was clear that you were dealing with an unconventional enemy. it was american arrogance and unwillingness to adapt. and when you realised the situation was quite beyond you, it was decided that bombing vietnam into the stone age was an acceptable direction to go. oh and while we're at it why don't we cross the border and dump on the cambodians.
that whole bullshit about destroying a village to save it. what brainiac came up with that one?
no matter how many films hollywood makes about this debacle, it will never change the fact that the US lost and nothing you can say can justify what happened in indo-china.

Cosmo

Viet Nam was a war waged by the 'Best and Brightest' in think tanks that wanted to demonstrate how to win a guerilla war with overwhelming technology. It was the perfect testing ground to prove that superior firepower and technological advances could defeat this relatively new type of warfare.
Why? Because the U.S. saw how Cuba was defeated by Castro's guerillas. They feared that his type of warfare would flare up in South and Central America and sweep upward to the U.s. border with Mexico. This type of thinking (fear) also lead to our covert operations the C.I.A. executed in Latin American nations in the form of military coups throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
These think tanks convinced the Pentagon to test out operations in Indo-China where the French were involved with trying to hold on to their Imperial colonies there. The French were getting their asses kicked by guerillas fighting in the jungles and villages and not the open land that favors conventional weapons and tactics. Ho Chi Mihn was NOT A COMMUNIST. He was a nationalist who wanted to unifiy his country that was arbitrarilly divided by Western nations. He tried to gain support from the U.S. to pressure France to leave Viet Nam and was turned away. That is why he turned to China to help fight he French. When the Americans became involved, the Soviet Union provided aid in the form of weapons and advisors.
Initially, the U.S. forces were C.I.A. advisors who tried to train South Vietnamese forces. It lead to military support personel and soon spun out of control as the tactics we deployed failed over and over again.
Read the 'Ten Thousand Day War: Viet Nam 1945-1975' by Michael Maglear for an in depth report on the events that took place.
We were supposed to learn the lessons of Viet Nam... Colin Powell did... so did Norman Swartzkopf. Overwhelming force with overwhelming support from the homefront using clear military objectives and an exit strategy. Command and Control from the commanders on the battlefield, not the civilians and politicians in the White House and the Pentagon. Win the hearts and minds of the populous with aid and support, not bullets and bombs.
Finally, to lessen the results of our experience and defeat in Viet Nam by pretending it wasn't such a bad loss is to pay disrespect to the young men and women who died or came back home fucked up from their exposure to that war. This country should never treat our military personel as pawns at the disposal of rich, fat mother fuckers sitting safely at home.

sponger

Vietnam is what happens when the government doesn't want to fight a war like it's a war. That's why I wouldn't say that we "lost" in Vietnam. After all, all it took was heavy B-52 strikes on Hanoi to bring the North to the negotiating table.

The US lost approx. 58,000 troops in Vietnam. In 1995, the Vietnamese government stated that it lost approx. 1,000,000 combatants during the war.

It was an ugly war that did not work out in the US' favor, but I would hardly say that the US "lost" and it "got its ass kicked".

It's always fun to slag a superpower when things don't exactly go its way, but look at the statistics: The only thing keeping the North in the game was a bottomless supply of bodies, not superior military tactics.

catefrances

sponger wrote:

It's always fun to slag a superpower when things don't exactly go its way, but look at the statistics: The only thing keeping the North in the game was a bottomless supply of bodies, not superior military tactics.

so tell me, did the united states achieve it's objective in vietnam?

and as far as i could see the thing the north had going for it that the united states and friends didn't, was the fact that they were in the right.

fada

How is it that they were many US companies based in Vietnam during and after the war?

farfromglorified

fada wrote:

How is it that they were many US companies based in Vietnam during and after the war?

The same way there are US companies in basically every nation in the world.

fada

true statement.

Byrnzie

farfromglorified wrote:

Depends. There are a lot of nasty stories out there of veterans being spit on or assaulted or generally harassed. But that's not to say that all anti-war folk engaged in such acts.

You'll hear a lot of anti-war folks now go on and on about "we still support the troops", etc. That language is largely in response to the treatment of veterans post-Vietnam.

Strange that. A lot of the top brass of the anti-war movement were veterans. A lot of people forget this.

tybird

fada wrote:

How is it that they were many US companies based in Vietnam during and after the war?

The dollar (peso, yen, pound, Euro...etc.) trumps the sword.