Vietnam Part MCXLVIII

[RetiredGySgt]

boat people were from Vietnam. Boat people are from Cuba.... people want to leave communism. Big deal. They died climbing over the Berlin Wall for exactly the same reason. My point was....you should quit running away from your position. You claimed millions dead in Vietnam AFTER our departure and that is just plain wrong.

No it isn't. I realize you don't want to admit your buddies are responsible for mass murder but thems the facts.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

An example of what the boat people went through, assuming they didn't drown first.

http://www.fortunecity.co.uk/amusement/golf/200/viet.html

Caused directly by democrats.

And you would not mind what happens to the Iraqis after you get your wish and we cut and run.

 

[maineman]

No it isn't. I realize you don't want to admit your buddies are responsible for mass murder but thems the facts.

no.... millions of people did not die in boats.... millions of people died in Cambodia, not in Vietnam. You wouldn't know a fact if it kicked you in the place where your balls used to be.

 

[maineman]

An example of what the boat people went through, assuming they didn't drown first.

http://www.fortunecity.co.uk/amusement/golf/200/viet.html

Caused directly by democrats.

And you would not mind what happens to the Iraqis after you get your wish and we cut and run.

what will happen to the Iraqis will be done to one another by Iraqis and they will do it whenever we finally leave. The only variable will be OUR body count

 

[RetiredGySgt]

In other words you don't give a damn about anyone but your self.

And I hate to tell you but Iraq will be run by either terrorists or Iran if we abandon them. Both of whom are a direct threat to us. Allowing that to happen ensures that in a year or so not only will things be worse they will be on a order of magnetude much worse. The enemy will control a huge stockpile of Oil and a country to operate from.

 

[maineman]

In other words you don't give a damn about anyone but your self.

And I hate to tell you but Iraq will be run by either terrorists or Iran if we abandon them. Both of whom are a direct threat to us. Allowing that to happen ensures that in a year or so not only will things be worse they will be on a order of magnetude much worse. The enemy will control a huge stockpile of Oil and a country to operate from.

In other words, I am throwing out the BULLSHIT flag at your claim that millions died in Vietnam after our departure.

And I hate to tell you that you don't have a fucking crystal ball. YOu can't TELL me shit about what will happen in Iraq when we leave.

I, for one, find it inconceivable that the shiite majority in Iraq is going to allow foreign insurgent sunnis to ever run their country... so the "terrorists" running Iraq is silly. Of course, when the shiite theocracy in Iraq comes to fruition, it will ally itself with its brothers in Iran...but that was a foregone conclusion from the day we overthrew Saddam. Our staying there and dying will not prevent that from happening.

 

[Gunny]

I disagree Gunny. No way would the Chinese have exchanged the protection of Hanoi for the obliteration of Beijing. They were zealots, but not insane. Besides, in the mid 60s, the Chinese had only a few nuclear weapons, coupled with very questionable delivery systems. As you know, war is not a zero-sum game. It is a risk-reward endeavor. If you are not willing to take the risks, then you should stay home. I do not believe that China would have risked war with the US in order to save Hanoi. Diuretic rightly points out the historical Vietnamese-Chinese hostility. If the Chinese responded with conventional cross-border attacks, then the B52s would have made them regret it. I do not believe that an American invasion of North Viet Nam would have sparked a world war. Instead, I think that it would have had a chance of making SE Asia free of communism, and prevented the unforeseen consequences in places such as Cambodia in the 70s.

You mean like we obliterated Beijing when a million chicom troops poured across the Yalu River into N Korea because we got too close to their border?

History disagrees with you.

 

[Gunny]

How can you compare Warsaw to Hanoi? One city is next door, and the other is thousands of miles away. I disagree that there was any hard evidence that the Soviets would engage in a nuclear war with the US over cities outside the USSR. Empty bluster, yes. Real evidence, no. Havana is a good example. Certainly is was a better strategic partner for the Soviets than Hanoi, yet when confronted they backed down. Had we actually invaded Cuba, in my opinion the Soviets would have done nothing.

Perhaps the Chinese would have invaded to try to stop the US from capturing North Viet Nam from the communists. Are you claiming that US forces could not have stopped them? I think the B52 fleet, combined with naval airpower, would have been able to make sure that the Chinese regreted any invasion.

Anyway, you and GunnyL have criticized my suggestion that North Viet Nam should have been invaded in order to secure victory in Viet Nam. GunnyL wrote above that victory in Viet Nam was possible, but unless I missed it above, he did not state how such victory could have been accomplished. Do you think that victory in Viet Nam was possible? If so, how?

I think that if we were going to tie the hands of the military and block an invasion of the North, prevent intradiction of supplies no matter where that needed to occur, and forbid attacks on the "civilians" that backed up the North Vietnamese war effort, then we should have never went to Viet Nam in the first place. We should have just declared defeat from Washington, and saved ourselves much blood and treasure. The fact that Johnson turned our combat forces in Viet Nam into some gigantic police force, confined to a corner of the battlefield where the supply lines to the North and the "civilian" supporters of the enemy were outside the zone permitted for combat, was an extreme miscalculation that turned our soldiers into targets of the enemy without giving them a chance to win. Bush as made precisely this same mistake in Iraq.

I criticize your statement because you don't have a true appreciation for Cold War politics, and the games that were played. This of course would lead me to ask how old you are. Not to criticize, but to point out that the Gunny and I are rougly the same age and grew up watching Cold War politics and Vietnam on the evening news. CSM was THERE. My father was military and he was there. It behooved me to know what was going on.

The simple point is, as I noticed the Gunny also made, China didn't give a damn about our threat of using nuclear weapons when they poured into N Korea. They would have done the same in Vietnam. You say "protecting Hanoi," but such would not have been the case. China and Vietnam's border disputes are thousands of years old. Under the guise of "protecting Hanoi," the Chinese would have come across to expand their territory.

How to win is a pretty complicated topic since it not only involves military tacts and strategy, but the perserverance both home and abroad to stay until you do win. Not posessing the the latter just makes the former a waste of time, effort, money, and lives.

 

[manu1959]

You wont even outline how we could have won a civil war in Vietnam?

How does a foriegn government win a civil war for someone else?

same way the french did with the us vs brits

 

[maineman]

same way the french did with the us vs brits

how would that apply to Vietnam OR Iraq?

 

[manu1959]

how would that apply to Vietnam OR Iraq?

you are kidding right?.....

 

[Truthmatters]

Are you sugesting the french fought and won our civil war for us?

I submitt they helped us but it was The people of Americans blood who got the job done.

How about we back off and let the Iraqis win their own, they have already told us they want a troop freeze and timetables for withdrawl.

Do the Iraqi people have a right to tell us to leave their country?

 

[maineman]

you are kidding right?.....

no...I am suggesting that America's hamfisted approach to both Vietnam and Iraq has little to nothing in common with France's involvement with our revolutionary war. Do you disagree? If so, please point to the hundreds of thousands of french troops on our soil between 1776 and 1783. I seemed to have missed that.

 

[Diuretic]

Sure thing, all the boat people weren't from Vietnam , got ya. It was such a great place after the North "freed" the south that all those people put to sea in sinking boats , they would rather die at sea then be "freed" by the North.

I dealt with some of the boat people who arrived in Darwin in the Northern Territory when they were transferred down south to immigration hostels. I can tell you they weren't exactly peasants, I saw a lot of the gold they brought with them from Vietnam and other parts of SE Asia. Many of those people had been involved with the South Vietnamese regime and were simply getting out with their assets before they - presumably - lost them to the new regime. In other words I suspect they were a blend of economic and political refugees.

 

[Diuretic]

Are you sugesting the french fought and won our civil war for us?

I submitt they helped us but it was The people of Americans blood who got the job done.

Throughout the war, the British were able to use their naval superiority to capture and occupy coastal cities, but control of the countryside (where 90% of the population lived) largely eluded them. After an American victory at Saratoga in 1777, France, with Spain and the Netherlands as its allies, entered the war against Britain. French involvement proved decisive, with a French naval victory in the Chesapeake leading to the surrender of a British army at Yorktown in 1781. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the war and recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded by what is now Canada to the North, Florida to the South, and the Mississippi River to the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

 

[Gunny]

Are you sugesting the french fought and won our civil war for us?

I submitt they helped us but it was The people of Americans blood who got the job done.

How about we back off and let the Iraqis win their own, they have already told us they want a troop freeze and timetables for withdrawl.

Do the Iraqi people have a right to tell us to leave their country?

He's saying the French entered the American Revolution on our side against the British and most certainly DID cintribute greatly to our winning.

You STILL spinning the dishonest version of what the Iraqi government asked for?

 

[Gunny]

I dealt with some of the boat people who arrived in Darwin in the Northern Territory when they were transferred down south to immigration hostels. I can tell you they weren't exactly peasants, I saw a lot of the gold they brought with them from Vietnam and other parts of SE Asia. Many of those people had been involved with the South Vietnamese regime and were simply getting out with their assets before they - presumably - lost them to the new regime. In other words I suspect they were a blend of economic and political refugees.

I imagine many of them were leftovers from the French colonial intellectually "enlightened" class of people who would be nothing but targets to the North Vietnamese.

 

[Truthmatters]

He's saying the French entered the American Revolution on our side against the British and most certainly DID cintribute greatly to our winning.

You STILL spinning the dishonest version of what the Iraqi government asked for?

Gunny please go back and read the articles I provided ,they ask for a Freeze of troops and timetables for withdrawl.

I would say its reasonable to say they want us to leave

 

[Diuretic]

I imagine many of them were leftovers from the French colonial intellectually "enlightened" class of people who would be nothing but targets to the North Vietnamese.

A number of the older people I met were definitely from the French regime. I remember speaking with one old gentleman, this would have been about 1978/9 and he would have been in his seventies then and he was speaking French with our translator (my schoolboy French failed me beyond a simple greeting). Our translator spoke Vietnamese (the southern version), French and English thankfully (actually her father was a bigwig in the French colonial government). The old gentlemen told me about the French regime and explained the genesis of the resistance, he even referred to the "Viet Minh". Really interesting man to talk to and very well educated to boot.

 

[Gunny]

Gunny please go back and read the articles I provided ,they ask for a Freeze of troops and timetables for withdrawl.

I would say its reasonable to say they want us to leave

Not in the context you keep presenting it. Your statement implies they have suddenly demanded we get out now, when the truth is, the Iraq government voted on their own timetables to gradually replace US troops with Iraqi forces.

Now, this thread is about Vietnam. Not France in 1775 and not Iraq in 2007. Could we try to keep a semblance of the topic going here since you already have several other threads on your version of Iraq?

And if you want to start another thread on the American Revolution, fell free.