Let’s look at it….The US was treaty bound to protect So Korea and and So Vietnam. Guess what, the idea was not to overrun No Korea and No Vietnam. The south of each are both functioning democracies NOW. What ever we did, worked
Well, the U.S. War in Vietnam sure didn’t “work” for U.S. imperialism!
The U.S. supported French colonial rule there until the French were defeated at DianBianPhu and then we sent as many as 500,000 troops there to stop the National Liberation Movement led by the Vietnamese Communist Ho Chi Minh.
The U.S. was following traditional Cold War thinking but did not understand the uniqueness of the Vietnamese situation. It sure didn’t make South Vietnam “a functioning democracy.”
The “Communists” won that round. Not because the Russians gave the Vietnamese people better or equal weapons — they used NO planes — but because of a long history of struggle and support by the majority of Vietnamese people. It was a bloody and terrible war and perhaps 2 million of more Vietnamese died. Most of the blame for that horror lies squarely on our own political leaders of the time, and on American naïveté.
But the Ukraine-Russian war is very different. Most Ukrainians now understandably believe Putin and Russia act like the bloody foreign aggressors who want to re-establish imperial control over them.
History is filled with errors and while the U.S. has made its share of them in dealing with Ukrainian nationalism, it was
the Russian police state which invaded and did try its best to take Kiev and destroy Ukrainian sovereignty.
Meanwhile we have no ground troops fighting there.
Biden is correct NOT to provide jets to Kiev. In my opinion, Biden and the West is correct to supply financial aid other mainly defensive weapons to help Ukrainians fight the Russian invasion. But Biden is
wrong (imo) to support Zelensky’s maximal demands to retake Crimea. The time for negotiating a compromise settlement will likely arise in the next period, assuming both sides exhaust themselves.
Biden is an old Cold Warrior, and he may prove inflexible and miss real opportunities for a peaceful resolution … in the future.