General Westmoreland

[sparky]

The problem is that even stating historical facts about this country is instantly regarded as being anti-American by a significant part of the population.

We're not big on admitting who and what we really are in the global arena

~S~

 

[rightwinger]

I don’t think there was a path to victory
Even if we had “won” we would still be there today occupying the country and would still be suffering casualties from insurgents who wanted us out

There was. If we had entered in like we started in 1969, we would have broken the back of the North very quickly. Of course, the North would have looked more like the Moon in the process. We lost the lessons learned during WWII.

And that “win” would have committed us to stay in Vietnam indefinitely

The corrupt, inept S Vietnamese was incapable of holding the country. The war would have went underground with the Vietnam Cong fighting in the outskirts being supplied by Russia and China

We'll never know, will we.

We do know that if we allowed Vietnam to form its own government after WWII, we could have avoided the whole mess

Ah no; we would have been in it a lot sooner if that were case, having committed up front to keeping it free from Soviet attempts to collapse it.

Johnson did what anybody else would have done in the same situation, i.e. where his entire JCS and his own Secretaries were ally lying about the facts, and trusted none of them, so he took control of some facets of the war himself. He wasn't going to be led into criminal acts in violation of the UN mandates by his political enemies, either. IT was the press who made TET, a major and final defeat of the Viet Cong, look like a major victory, and it was also the press who never complained about the North's constant violations of UN restrictions ignoring the DMZ and their use of the trails in Laos and Cambodia. You can blame the press and the pseudo-intellectual commie in American academia for selling the public bullshit about the 'war' that continues to this day. It was right for the U.S. to get involved, same as it was to get involved in Korea, the ME, Africa, and South America. The difference between Johnson's escalations and Eisenhower's wimpiness and conservative approach to the Cold War is like night and day; Eisenhower rescued no one from Soviet and Red Chinese mass murders and slavery, Johnson's polices bankrupted the Soviets' imperialist dreams and kept Red China and the Soviets divided, and pretty much ended the Cold War. Nixon merely reaped the benefits of a bankrupt Soviet Union.

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country......just like today
They would avoided millions of deaths

I agree any politician would have followed the path of LBJ. In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

 

[GLASNOST]

The problem is that even stating historical facts about this country is instantly regarded as being anti-American by a significant part of the population.

We're not big on admitting who and what we really are in the global arena

~S~

That is the gentlest and most honest & sober response I think that I have ever seen on any thread.

 

[rightwinger]

We do know that if we allowed Vietnam to form its own government after WWII, we could have avoided the whole mess

That is certainly true, but then the Military-Industrial Complex (and the dirty politicians who had their tongues up the butthole of the war-manufacturers) would have been a few gazillion dollars poorer. So, "the whole mess" was their goal. Creating THAT WHOLE MESS was the reason the U.S. went to Vietnam in the first place.

France created the whole mess through their colonialism

The US got involved to prop up a corrupt and inept S Vietnamese government

 

[GLASNOST]

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country.....

What EXACTLY do you mean by "own country"? Give me a geographical location with some sort of border(s) as a clue.

In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

What parameters are you adhering to when you say "allow"? Are you hinting that the U.S. had legal jurisdiction in the matter?

 

[rightwinger]

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country.....

What EXACTLY do you mean by "own country"? Give me a geographical location with some sort of border(s) as a clue.

In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

What parameters are you adhering to when you say "allow"? Are you hinting that the U.S. had legal jurisdiction in the matter?

Gee...that’s a tough one
How about their existing borders?

Yes, the US had legal jurisdiction. After WWII we were the ones involved in dividing up the booty. Part of that booty was Vietnam which we agreed to give back to France

 

[Picaro]

Ah no; we would have been in it a lot sooner if that were case, having committed up front to keeping it free from Soviet attempts to collapse it.

Jesus, you are up to your eyeballs in shit. The Vietnamese kicked out the French and was gearing up for Democratic Elections but the US prevented the elections and started a war instead. It is no more complicated than that. You should get an education and stop spewing trashy lies.

Rubbish. You ideological clown acts are dumber than rocks. Teh FRench asked for U.S. intervention early on, and Ike refused. As for your stupid attempt at claiming 'free elections', that's a load of rubbish as well; commies don't participate in 'free elections', and they certainly didn't anywhere in the world. Give up the vodka and reading all those old issues of Pravda you're using for toilet paper; your frontal lobes are numb.

 

[Picaro]

Westmoreland is from an epoch full of American war criminals. Johnson, McNamara, Nixon, Kissinger and underlings would all have been hanged if the Nuremberg principles had been applied. It has become a tradition for Presidents and advisers to violate humanity's fundamental laws without consequences. The problem is that even stating historical facts about this country is instantly regarded as being anti-American by a significant part of the population.

You could try and post some of the 'actual facts', instead of the stupid tabloid trash you posted here.

 

[longknife]

On the other side of the coin you had the Harvard educated whiz kid Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara who micromanaged the Vietnam war using the latest and newest in egg head system analysis from the White House.

Coupled with Gen. Westmoreland ineptly leading the Army on the ground, and McNamara directing the action from his Ivory tower. The prosecution of the Vietnam war was doomed to failure. ....

Absolutely.
Everybody who served there knew Westy sat in Saigon waiting to be told what to do by McNamara who didn't have the faintest damn idea of how to fight the North or Cong.

 

[Picaro]

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country.....

What EXACTLY do you mean by "own country"? Give me a geographical location with some sort of border(s) as a clue.

In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

What parameters are you adhering to when you say "allow"? Are you hinting that the U.S. had legal jurisdiction in the matter?

Gee...that’s a tough one
How about their existing borders?

Yes, the US had legal jurisdiction. After WWII we were the ones involved in dividing up the booty. Part of that booty was Vietnam which we agreed to give back to France

So, you think FDR's goal of de-colonization was some Ebul Amurkin Plot For Woild Domination N Stuff!!! too, eh? No surprise there. Thoise Soviets were only there to help the poor peasants break free from dastardly capitalist pig chains, right? lol lol lol

 

[rightwinger]

Ah no; we would have been in it a lot sooner if that were case, having committed up front to keeping it free from Soviet attempts to collapse it.

Jesus, you are up to your eyeballs in shit. The Vietnamese kicked out the French and was gearing up for Democratic Elections but the US prevented the elections and started a war instead. It is no more complicated than that. You should get an education and stop spewing trashy lies.

Rubbish. You ideological clown acts are dumber than rocks. Teh FRench asked for U.S. intervention early on, and Ike refused. As for your stupid attempt at claiming 'free elections', that's a load of rubbish as well; commies don't participate in 'free elections', and they certainly didn't anywhere in the world. Give up the vodka and reading all those old issues of Pravda you're using for toilet paper; your frontal lobes are numb.

After the French left, the Vietnamese were offered free elections after two years to unify the country. Once it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would easily win, the US refused to allow the elections

 

[Picaro]

There was. If we had entered in like we started in 1969, we would have broken the back of the North very quickly. Of course, the North would have looked more like the Moon in the process. We lost the lessons learned during WWII.

And that “win” would have committed us to stay in Vietnam indefinitely

The corrupt, inept S Vietnamese was incapable of holding the country. The war would have went underground with the Vietnam Cong fighting in the outskirts being supplied by Russia and China

We'll never know, will we.

We do know that if we allowed Vietnam to form its own government after WWII, we could have avoided the whole mess

Ah no; we would have been in it a lot sooner if that were case, having committed up front to keeping it free from Soviet attempts to collapse it.

Johnson did what anybody else would have done in the same situation, i.e. where his entire JCS and his own Secretaries were ally lying about the facts, and trusted none of them, so he took control of some facets of the war himself. He wasn't going to be led into criminal acts in violation of the UN mandates by his political enemies, either. IT was the press who made TET, a major and final defeat of the Viet Cong, look like a major victory, and it was also the press who never complained about the North's constant violations of UN restrictions ignoring the DMZ and their use of the trails in Laos and Cambodia. You can blame the press and the pseudo-intellectual commie in American academia for selling the public bullshit about the 'war' that continues to this day. It was right for the U.S. to get involved, same as it was to get involved in Korea, the ME, Africa, and South America. The difference between Johnson's escalations and Eisenhower's wimpiness and conservative approach to the Cold War is like night and day; Eisenhower rescued no one from Soviet and Red Chinese mass murders and slavery, Johnson's polices bankrupted the Soviets' imperialist dreams and kept Red China and the Soviets divided, and pretty much ended the Cold War. Nixon merely reaped the benefits of a bankrupt Soviet Union.

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country......just like today
They would avoided millions of deaths

I agree any politician would have followed the path of LBJ. In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

Ho would have turned it into another North Korea, and more millions would have died. LBJ's polices crushed the Viet Cong, and yet the media kept claiming it was a 'loss', and also ignored the North's blatantly illegal invasions of the south, while all the commie sympathizers were running around calling Johnson and company 'war criminals', and of most dope addled idiots liked the sound of that, so the repeat it to this day. They would have kept on going, first Laos, then Cambodia, then Thailand, then Malaysia. Fortunately Viet Nam bankrupted the Soviets, the 1973 war ended their influence in the ME, and they collapsed in 1973, unable to exploit their victory.

 

[harmonica]

In his defense.....the French made the same mistake thinking the Vietnamese forces would be easy to defeat

but he should've LEARNED from that--that's like sticking your finger in the fire twice

 

[rightwinger]

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country.....

What EXACTLY do you mean by "own country"? Give me a geographical location with some sort of border(s) as a clue.

In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

What parameters are you adhering to when you say "allow"? Are you hinting that the U.S. had legal jurisdiction in the matter?

Gee...that’s a tough one
How about their existing borders?

Yes, the US had legal jurisdiction. After WWII we were the ones involved in dividing up the booty. Part of that booty was Vietnam which we agreed to give back to France

So, you think FDR's goal of de-colonization was some Ebul Amurkin Plot For Woild Domination N Stuff!!! too, eh? No surprise there. Thoise Soviets were only there to help the poor peasants break free from dastardly capitalist pig chains, right? lol lol lol

FDR was dead, but Truman capitulated to DeGaulle

 

[harmonica]

Back to Westmoreland.

Did he do the whole thing wrong?

obviously

 

[Picaro]

Ah no; we would have been in it a lot sooner if that were case, having committed up front to keeping it free from Soviet attempts to collapse it.

Jesus, you are up to your eyeballs in shit. The Vietnamese kicked out the French and was gearing up for Democratic Elections but the US prevented the elections and started a war instead. It is no more complicated than that. You should get an education and stop spewing trashy lies.

Rubbish. You ideological clown acts are dumber than rocks. Teh FRench asked for U.S. intervention early on, and Ike refused. As for your stupid attempt at claiming 'free elections', that's a load of rubbish as well; commies don't participate in 'free elections', and they certainly didn't anywhere in the world. Give up the vodka and reading all those old issues of Pravda you're using for toilet paper; your frontal lobes are numb.

After the French left, the Vietnamese were offered free elections after two years to unify the country. Once it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would easily win, the US refused to allow the elections

Why should we have 'allowed' them? They wouldn't have been 'free elections', the Commies had their guns and foreign support.

 

[Picaro]

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country.....

What EXACTLY do you mean by "own country"? Give me a geographical location with some sort of border(s) as a clue.

In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

What parameters are you adhering to when you say "allow"? Are you hinting that the U.S. had legal jurisdiction in the matter?

Gee...that’s a tough one
How about their existing borders?

Yes, the US had legal jurisdiction. After WWII we were the ones involved in dividing up the booty. Part of that booty was Vietnam which we agreed to give back to France

So, you think FDR's goal of de-colonization was some Ebul Amurkin Plot For Woild Domination N Stuff!!! too, eh? No surprise there. Those Soviets were only there to help the poor peasants break free from dastardly capitalist pig chains, right? lol lol lol

FDR was dead, but Truman capitulated to DeGaulle

FDR's policy didn't die; it was his plan to do away with the European colonial govts. It became obvious that plan was the only way to go.

 

[rightwinger]

And that “win” would have committed us to stay in Vietnam indefinitely

The corrupt, inept S Vietnamese was incapable of holding the country. The war would have went underground with the Vietnam Cong fighting in the outskirts being supplied by Russia and China

We'll never know, will we.

We do know that if we allowed Vietnam to form its own government after WWII, we could have avoided the whole mess

Ah no; we would have been in it a lot sooner if that were case, having committed up front to keeping it free from Soviet attempts to collapse it.

Johnson did what anybody else would have done in the same situation, i.e. where his entire JCS and his own Secretaries were ally lying about the facts, and trusted none of them, so he took control of some facets of the war himself. He wasn't going to be led into criminal acts in violation of the UN mandates by his political enemies, either. IT was the press who made TET, a major and final defeat of the Viet Cong, look like a major victory, and it was also the press who never complained about the North's constant violations of UN restrictions ignoring the DMZ and their use of the trails in Laos and Cambodia. You can blame the press and the pseudo-intellectual commie in American academia for selling the public bullshit about the 'war' that continues to this day. It was right for the U.S. to get involved, same as it was to get involved in Korea, the ME, Africa, and South America. The difference between Johnson's escalations and Eisenhower's wimpiness and conservative approach to the Cold War is like night and day; Eisenhower rescued no one from Soviet and Red Chinese mass murders and slavery, Johnson's polices bankrupted the Soviets' imperialist dreams and kept Red China and the Soviets divided, and pretty much ended the Cold War. Nixon merely reaped the benefits of a bankrupt Soviet Union.

After WWII, Vietnam would have united under Ho Chi Minh and formed its own country......just like today
They would avoided millions of deaths

I agree any politician would have followed the path of LBJ. In Cold War USA, allowing Vietnam to turn communist was political suicide

Ho would have turned it into another North Korea, and more millions would have died. LBJ's polices crushed the Viet Cong, and yet the media kept claiming it was a 'loss', and also ignored the North's blatantly illegal invasions of the south, while all the commie sympathizers were running around calling Johnson and company 'war criminals', and of most dope addled idiots liked the sound of that, so the repeat it to this day. They would have kept on going, first Laos, then Cambodia, then Thailand, then Malaysia. Fortunately Viet Nam bankrupted the Soviets, the 1973 war ended their influence in the ME, and they collapsed in 1973, unable to exploit their victory.

Not necessarily
Ho had made repeated overtures to the West to support a free Vietnam. Colonialism was hated and oppressive. When the West supported a return to Colonial rule, Communism offered a tempting alternative

 

[harmonica]

....the US could NEVER win in Nam, but USMC Gen. Walt wanted to do it differently--small USMC/SV units--getting to know the people/etc
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/williamson.pdf
Lewis William Walt - Wikipedia
etc

 

[Picaro]

I see people are so indoctrinated they can't criticize commies at all, not the Soviets, not Ho, not the Maoists. Why is that? Oh yeah, they're brainwashed by pseudo-intellectual academics and a left wing press corp. The Soviets and Maoist never caused any problems or did anything at all. Nobody should have resisted them cuz they were wonderful freedom spreading Heroes.