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dad crawled for miles with 2 men on his back, according to the medal. he was shot but his va pension was based on losing his toes to frostbite. 1st marines were torn up very badly at chosin but.McA wanted to use Atomic Bombs, a lot of them on North Korea. He wanted push all the way up to the N.K./Communist Chinese Border. Never mind that Russia had the bomb as well. I met a Marine at the Pentagon who was at Chosin. Left side of his face horribly scared. But he also that blue and white ribbon, a cetified bad ass.
How do you classify a "great general"? WW1 veteran MacArthur retired as COS before WW2.does a great general officer allow sycophants to mislead him or tell him what he wants to hear?
not if he wants to win.
maybe i prefer a general who did not leave his army at bataan?How do you classify a "great general"? WW1 veteran MacArthur retired as COS before WW2.
dad crawled for miles with 2 men on his back, according to the medal. he was shot but his va pension was based on losing his toes to frostbite. 1st marines were torn up very badly at chosin but.
we do not leave people behind. semper fi
at least i was never that cold.
after further review. answering this question with a flip list of west pointers really wasn't enoughHow do you classify a "great general"? WW1 veteran MacArthur retired as COS before WW2.
The fight in Vietnam as far as the North and their NLF/ VC were concerned was always more about Vietnamese national liberation from Colonialism and Imperialism than communism, some people still don't understand that even now, wouldn't you fight foreign invaders if your Country was under attack from Colonialists and Imperialists?.It's quite sad and rather disgraceful to see people who are blessed to be Americans choosing to believe outright Communist propaganda about the war and trashing our noble effort to keep 19 million South Vietnamese free.
Even when former Viet Cong leaders tell them the truth about the war, they refuse to believe it. They don't want to know anything about the historic disclosures about the war that have come from North Vietnamese and other Communist sources disclosures that debunk every major lie that the anti-war movement peddled during the war and that liberal books on the war still peddle.
Truong Nhu Tang's book, though important and revealing, is only a small part of the evidence that has emerged since the war ended, especially over the last 20-30 years.
Mike makes a lot of allegations with no proof.
Are your books not selling, so you are printing part of them here to get noticed, Mike?
This idiot who worships the Republican Party always ignores that Nixon murdered 58000 Americans as much as Johnson did expanding the war into Cambodia delaying ending it fir another four years when he could have ended it immediately,if not for the American people and if Nixon had his way,he would have let it go on several more years.Vietnam history is about politics and politics is about protecting democrats. Blame a republican senator, McCarthy, for Truman's war on communism and blame Nixon for LBJ's war in Vietnam. It's easy if you are an angry victim of a sub standard education.
Another great book that should be added to that list on the truth of the Vietnam war is David kaisers book American tragedy Eisenhower kennedy Johnson and the origins of the Vietnam war,he documents how Eisenhower got us into Vietnam not kennedy and how kennedy resisted Eisenhower plans that were drawn up in his last year in office to escalate the war and how they were nearly implemented in his final days then once Johnson got in office,he implemented the CIAS plans drawn up when Ike was in office to give them the war they wanted.Here are some facts about the Vietnam War that most liberal historians ignore:
-- Ho Chi Minh was not the most popular Vietnamese leader after WWII ended. Huynh Phu So, the charismatic founder of the Hoa Hao and of the Vietnamese Democratic Socialist Party, had far more followers than did Ho Chi Minh. However, the Communists murdered Huynh Phu So in April 1947.
-- The French only decided to work with and recognize the Viet Minh, i.e., the Communists, because the Viet Minh were the only nationalist group that was willing to allow France to deploy troops in Vietnam. The other major nationalist groups opposed allowing French troops to return to Vietnam.
-- After the signing of the Geneva Accords in July 1954, North Vietnam began to violate them almost as soon as the ink was dry on them.
-- Although the Geneva Accords called for Vietnam-wide elections in 1956, and even though Communist propaganda attacked the U.S. and South Vietnam for refusing to hold elections in 1956, the North Vietnamese themselves had no intention of holding free and fair elections in 1956 (or in any other year), and, equally important, they knew that no elections would take place. Furthermore, the U.S. and South Vietnam were not bound by this provision of the Geneva Accords. Historian Guenter Lewy:
There are strong indications that nobody at the conference took the idea of an early unification through free elections seriously. Why have a massive exchange of population if the two zones were to be unified within 700 days or so? Why was the machinery for settling future disagreements on the implementation of this agreement so haphazard?
“The provision for free elections which would solve ultimately the problem of Vietnam,” wrote Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau in 1956, “was a device to hide the incompatibility of the Communist and Western positions, neither of which can admit the domination of all of Vietnam by the other side. It was a device to disguise the fact that the line of military demarcation was bound to be a line of political division as well. In one word, what happened in Germany and Korea in the years immediately following 1945 has happened in Vietnam in the years following 1954.”
The likelihood that the provision for a political settlement in Vietnam through free elections in 1956 was indeed a hastily improvised afterthought to help save face for the Viet Minh is strengthened by the fact that the final declaration remained unsigned and was not even adopted by a formal vote. Five of the nine delegations present at the final session failed unreservedly to commit their governments to its terms. Laos, Cambodia and the DRV [North Vietnam] did not expressly associate themselves with the declaration.
The South Vietnamese delegate filed a protest against the armistice agreement which he asked to have incorporated in the final declaration. South Vietnam specifically objected to the date of the elections and reserved “to itself complete freedom of action to guarantee the sacred right of the Vietnamese people to territorial unity, national independence and freedom.” Undersecretary of State Walter B. Smith stated that the U.S. government “is not prepared to join in a declaration by the Conference such as is submitted.”
The American representative insisted that elections to be free and fair had to be supervised by the United Nations. “With respect to the statement made by the representative of the State of Viet-Nam, the United States reiterates its traditional position that peoples are entitled to determine their own future and that it will not join in an arrangement which would hinder this.” (America in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 8-9)
-- North Vietnamese sources confirm that the American war effort in South Vietnam was going quite well from early 1962 until December 1963, until a few weeks after the murder of South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem.
-- North Vietnamese sources confirm that the Hanoi regime decided to launch the 1968 Tet Offensive because the Communist war effort had gone badly in 1967, and because the Hanoi Politburo concluded that the protracted war strategy was not going to work.
-- Two of the other reasons that the Hanoi Politburo decided to launch the Tet Offensive were that they were certain that the South Vietnamese army (ARVN, pronounced ar-vin) would collapse as soon as they were attacked, and that the majority of the South Vietnamese people would rise up against the Saigon government (South Vietnam’s government).
-- Hanoi’s leaders were so certain the Tet Offensive would succeed that they made the astounding mistake of not making any retreat plans.
-- General Vo Nguyen Giap, North Vietnam’s commanding general, thought the Tet Offensive was a bad idea, but Le Duan and his fanatical allies overruled him. Giap was so opposed to the offensive that he left North Vietnam for several months and played no role in the offensive.
-- We now know from North Vietnamese sources that even Ho Chi Minh opposed Le Duan’s plans for the Tet Offensive. However, by 1967, Ho was merely a figurehead, and Le Duan was the driving force in the Hanoi Politburo.
-- In late 1967, Le Duan and other Politburo hardliners jailed dozens of officials and officers who opposed the Tet Offensive.
-- The 1968 Tet Offensive was a crushing military defeat for the Communists.
-- After nearly all the Communist assaults were quickly and severely repulsed, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong suffered unusually high casualties in flight because they had no retreat plans.
-- The Viet Cong never recovered from their losses in the Tet Offensive, and from that point onward North Vietnamese soldiers filled most of the ranks of the Viet Cong.
-- Much to the Hanoi regime’s surprise, if not shock, ARVN fought well in most cases during the offensive, and the vast majority of the South Vietnamese people stayed loyal to the Saigon government.
-- By 1970 and 1971, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified and was stable.
-- The collapse of the southern insurgency was one of the main reasons that the Hanoi Politburo decided to launch the Easter Offensive in spring 1972.
-- North Vietnamese sources reveal that another reason that the Hanoi Politburo decided to launch the Easter Offensive was that they did not believe the U.S. would intervene in a significant way. They were stunned by the massive aerial campaign that the U.S. waged in support of South Vietnam.
-- North Vietnamese sources confirm that the North Vietnamese army suffered such horrendous losses in the Easter Offensive that for a few months a majority of the Hanoi Politburo actually turned against Le Duan and other fanatics and voted against continuing large-scale warfare against South Vietnam. However, this changed when the U.S. Congress began to slash aid to South Vietnam, and when Congress placed severe restrictions on President Nixon’s ability to enforce the Paris Peace Accords.
-- After the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, the U.S. Congress shamefully began to slash vital aid to South Vietnam. The devastating impact of these cuts is discussed in an official history of the Vietnam War published by the U.S. Marine Corps History and Museums Division:
During Fiscal Years (FY) 1974 and 1975, the U.S. Congress slashed budget line items providing military aid to South Vietnam. Although not cut entirely, the funding equaled only 50 percent of the administration's recommended level. During FY 1973 the United States spent approximately $2.2 billion in military aid to South Vietnam. In FY 1974, the total dropped to $1.1 billion. Finally, in FY 1975, the figure fell to $700 million, a trend that was not misread in Hanoi. As General Dung very candidly phrased it, "Thieu [South Vietnam’s president] was forced to fight a poor man's war."
Perhaps more distressing, as far as the recipients of the military aid were concerned, was the fact that by 1975 the dollars spent for certain items were buying only half as many goods as they had in 1973. For example, POL costs were up by 100 percent, the cost of one round of 105mm ammunition had increased from 18 to 35 dollars, and the cost of providing 13.5 million individual rations exceeded 22 million dollars. Considering the steady reduction in funding and the almost universal increase in prices, the South Vietnamese in 1975 could buy only about an eighth as much defense for the dollar as they had in 1973.
In June 1974, just before the start of FY 1975, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Lukeman replaced Lieutenant Colonel Strickland as Chief, VNMC LSB. Almost immediately he began to notice the effects of the reduced funding, less than a third the size of the 1973 budget. In September, in a letter to HQMC, he penned his concerns:
"Briefly, the current level means grounding a significant part of the VNAF [South Vietnamese Air Force], cutting back on the capabilities of the VNN [South Vietnamese Navy], and running unacceptable risks in the stock levels of ammunition, POL, and medical supplies. I am concerned it will mean, in the long run, decreased morale, because replacement of uniforms and individual equipment will start to suffer about a year from now, and the dollars spent on meat supplements to the basic rice diet will be cut way back. At this point, the planners have concentrated (understandably) most of their attention on shoot, move, and communicate but have lost in the buzz words a feel for the man who will be doing those things."
The South Vietnamese attempted to adjust to the decreased funding and rising costs, but each of these adjustments had the effect of placing them in a more disadvantageous position relative to the strengthened North Vietnamese forces. The tempo of operations of all services, most particularly the Air Force, was cut back to conserve fuel. The expenditure rate of munitions also dropped. Interdiction fire was all but halted. The decreased financial support forced the South Vietnamese to consider cutting costs in all areas of defense, including the abandonment of outposts and fire bases in outlying regions.
The overall impact of the budget reduction on the allocation of military monies was readily apparent. In FY 1975 at the $700 million level all of the funded appropriations were spent on consumables. There was nothing left over for procurement of equipment to replace combat and operational losses on the one-for-one basis permitted by the Paris Accords. (https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/U.S. Marines in Vietnam_The Bitter End 1973-1975 PCN 1900310900_1.pdf)
-- South Vietnam actually held its own in 1973, with no U.S. intervention, which proved that South Vietnam could survive if the U.S. provided adequate aide. But, as mentioned, the U.S. Congress began to slash aid to South Vietnam in mid-1973, and the disastrous impact of those cuts began to be felt in early 1974.
-- Although the Saigon government was hardly a model of democracy, it was far less oppressive than the Hanoi regime. There were 15-20 independent newspapers in South Vietnam, a number of which routinely lambasted government corruption and malfeasance, etc. There were no independent newspapers in North Vietnam.
There were opposition parties in South Vietnam; they held seats in South Vietnam’s national assembly, and they frequently criticized government actions. In North Vietnam, only the Communist Party (the VWP) was legal and allowed to operate.
In South Vietnam, private schools were allowed to operate, and public schools had some flexibility in deciding on their curriculum. North Vietnam did not allow private schools and strictly controlled all public schools.
-- Over and over again during the war, Hanoi’s leaders insisted that they had no desire to conquer or occupy South Vietnam but only to expel the “foreign invaders.” Over and over again, Hanoi’s leaders promised that South Vietnam would have its own government and substantial autonomy after the “foreign invaders” were gone. Yet, the Hanoi regime egregiously broke these promises immediately after South Vietnam fell.
-- After South Vietnam fell, the North Vietnamese executed at least 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent at least another 800,000 to brutal concentration camps (“reeducation camps”), where the death rate was at least 5%.
These facts are documented in hundreds of books. Below are a few of the better and more-available books that document these facts (all of the books below are available in Kindle form on Amazon):
America in Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 1980), by Dr. Guenter Lewy.
Hanoi’s War (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), by Dr. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen.
Vietnam’s American War (Cambridge University Press, 2018), by Dr. Pierre Asselin.
Kissinger’s Betrayal: How America Lost the Vietnam War (RealClear Publishing, 2023), by Dr. Stephen B. Young.
Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75 (Encounter Books, 2013), by Dr. George Jay Veith.
America and Vietnam, 1954-1963: The Road to War (McFarland Publishers, 2022), by Colonel Michael M. Walker (U.S. Marine Corps, Retired).
The Vietnam War Reexamined (Cambridge University Press, 2017), by Dr. Michael Kort.
Losing Vietnam: How America Abandoned Southeast Asia (University Press of Kentucky, 2013), by Major General Ira Hunt (U.S. Army, Retired).
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 (Harper Publishers, 20180, by Dr. Max Hastings.
This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive (Encounter Books, 2010), by Dr. James Robbins.
I have numerous sources on the Vietnam War on my website The Truth About the Vietnam War.
Thank you for your service and what you endured.The main problem was the Vietnam War was micro managed from the White House by the President and the feckless wiz kid McNamara.
They put political expediency ahead of actually winning the war.
Drafted US Army 1970-71
lines are an interesting concept, and wwi lines were well established and defended to the death of millions.That's what I'm saying. The front lines are where you begin. The Pacific Islands were taken inch by inch during WW2. Korea was mismanaged but the strategy was to outflank the N.K and take real estate and keep it. The Vietnam conflict was a hodge podge of missions and exaggerated claims of "kills" and successes while the V.C. merely withdrew and took their dead and returned.
It's over the Imperialists and their Vietnamese collaborators lost, they said there would be a bloodbath once the NVA and the NLF took control, it never happened, and one parting shot of the US when they left was to abduct thousands of Children as if they would be under threat from the liberation forces, as for educating those collaborators they needed educating to take pride in their own Country and not have a slave mentality to foreign Imperialists, from what i see now Vietnam is a sovereign State that's doing ok taking into account the devastation that was inflicted on it for many decades.During the war, anti-war activists actually claimed that life in the south would be better under Communist rule than under Saigon's rule, that a Communist southern government would actually be more humane and tolerant, and even more democratic, than the Saigon government.
When this delusion quickly evaporated after Hanoi's victory, many anti-war activists suddenly lost interest in "peace, democracy, and freedom" for Vietnam. Indeed, many of them denied the thousands of reports of Communist tyranny and terror in the south.
One of those accounts came from Nguyen Cong Hoan in 1977. Hoan had been a militant South Vietnamese anti-war activist. Hoan had called for a U.S. withdrawal and for negotiations with the Communists. He honestly believed that a Communist victory would be a liberation and would improve the lives of the South Vietnamese. But after the North Vietnamese took over, Hoan soon realized he had been duped and fled the country by boat in 1977.
Here is part of an article that Hoan wrote that was published in Newsweek in late 1977:
The government of Vietnam has accepted triumphantly its full United Nations membership, to the cheers of what Hanoi calls “progressive mankind” – the Communist countries, much of the Third World, and those in the West who opposed American Government policies during the war.
To a Vietnamese like myself, who detested the corrupt and repressive Thieu regime and considered the Communist victory a liberation, such an event should bring joy. But after living for nearly two years in Communist Vietnam, I feel precisely the opposite emotion.
I escaped from Vietnam to tell the world the truth about what is happening in my country. Within days after Hanoi’s troops came to my town, such widely proclaimed policies of the Viet Cong’s National Liberation Front as religious freedom, democratic liberties, peace and neutralism went out the window. Even the southern Communists were cast aside by northerners acting as conquerors, seizing all levers of power, inventorying and requisitioning everything.
For those bold enough to question, a vast network of prisons called “re-education camps” was established almost overnight – prisons where inmates were worked to death or starved. The prisoners included not only former Saigon military and civilian officials, but also many who opposed them – advocates of democratic liberties and a compromise peace. . . .
In my province, Phu Yen, alone, out of a total population of about 300,000, there were more than 6,000 prisoners in seven camps when I left Vietnam last spring. . . .
Outside the camps, many are unemployed and those with jobs can barely earn enough to feed one person, let alone a family. Thousands are press-ganged into nonpaying, ostensibly “voluntary” labor brigades working on roads, canals and irrigation ditches. Large numbers are forced to settle in remote, disease-ridden “new economic zones,” a population dispersal aimed more at political control than at economic development. . . .
The new authorities rule by force and terror. What little freedom existed under Thieu is gone. The An Ninh secret police are dreaded – worse than any previous Vietnamese regime. There is no freedom of movement or association, no freedom of the press, or of religion, or of economic enterprise, or even of private personal opinion. Rights of habeas corpus, or of property, are either unknown or flouted even as the government redefines these rights. Fear is everywhere. An indiscreet remark can make one liable to instant arrest and an indefinite prison term (Why I Escaped From Vietnam).
Hoan learned the hard way that the Saigon government was not nearly as repressive as the Hanoi government.
Indeed, although the Saigon regime could treat anti-government activists harshly and sometimes even brutally, it allowed considerable freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, private schools, substantial free enterprise, the right of private property, freedom of association, etc. The Hanoi regime allowed none of these rights.
Yet, incredibly, a few diehard anti-war types still claim that the Saigon government was really no different than, or was worse than, the Hanoi regime, and that life under Communist rule was better than life under the Saigon government. No kidding. I have personally dialogued with a few people who still peddle these myths. They think that all the former Viet Cong and North Vietnamese officials who later defected and exposed massive Communist brutality were lying or were paid by the CIA to smear the Communists.
This was one of the main Communist talking points. It is just surreal how anyone can believe this drivel after all we now know. The only "invaders" were the North Vietnamese forces that invaded South Vietnam. We were there to try to keep South Vietnam from falling under the brutal tyranny that ruled North Vietnam.The fight in Vietnam as far as the North and their NLF/ VC were concerned was always more about Vietnamese national liberation from Colonialism and Imperialism than communism, some people still don't understand that even now, wouldn't you fight foreign invaders if your Country was under attack from Colonialists and Imperialists?.
You can pull all the numbers out of your backside you like, as i said the war was about liberation, that demarcation line between North and South was only meant to be temporary until elections were held on unification of the Country as agreed at the Geneva conference, South Vietnam was not a separate Country, we know that election never took place because the South Vietnamese puppet Regime and their US backers knew they would lose, i find it unbelievable there are still people who think the US war in Vietnam was a noble cause, they didn't learn a damn thing from the French Colonialists.This was one of the main Communist talking points. It is just surreal how anyone can believe this drivel after all we now know. The only "invaders" were the North Vietnamese forces that invaded South Vietnam. We were there to try to keep South Vietnam from falling under the brutal tyranny that ruled North Vietnam.
And what happened when North Vietnam finally conquered South Vietnam? Hey? If the Communists really fought for "Vietnamese national liberation," why did they impose a reign of terror on the South Vietnamese and break all of their promises about autonomy and "liberation" for the south? Why did they send over 800,000 South Vietnamese to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%? Why did they execute over 60,000 South Vietnamese?
Why did they shut down all the private schools that had operated in South Vietnam? (North Vietnam had no private schools--only government-controlled schools.) Why did they abolish all the independent newspapers that had operated in South Vietnam? Why did they outlaw private property and free enterprise and then loot the bank accounts of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese? What kind of "liberation" was that?
Did you read what former Viet Cong official Truong Nhu Tang said about the Communist takeover of South Vietnam? He certainly didn't view it as "liberation." I discussed this in a previous post in this thread (LINK).
Speaking of foreigners in Vietnam, how about the 100,000-plus Chinese troops who were in North Vietnam providing logistical support during the war? How about the 2,000-plus Soviet advisers who were in North Vietnam manning and training SAM batteries during the war?
No, it is unbelievable that you would get on a public board in 2024 and repeat these long-debunked Communist talking points. I know you still haven't bothered to read any of the scholarly sources cited in the OP to document the points in the OP.You can pull all the numbers out of your backside you like, as i said the war was about liberation, that demarcation line between North and South was only meant to be temporary until elections were held on unification of the Country as agreed at the Geneva conference, South Vietnam was not a separate Country, we know that election never took place because the South Vietnamese puppet Regime and their US backers knew they would lose, i find it unbelievable there are still people who think the US war in Vietnam was a noble cause, they didn't learn a damn thing from the French Colonialists.
