It seems that whenever people talk about the Vietnam war they talk about how pointless it was and how the soldiers there died for nothing.

This seems revisionist. While the Vietnam War became a travesty and a failure politically and militarily, people tend to forget the fear of Communism in those days. It was a fear based on history too. Two of the worlds largest and most powerful nations (Russia and China) fell to Communism not 40 years earlier and the Cold War was going stronger than ever. We came close to nuclear annhilation in '62 due to nutso Castro and the Soviet government. And we had already had success in '53 in defending South Korea from communism.

It seems everything in recent modern history was leading us to Vietnam. And our fear of China kept us there.

Was there any way for things to have been different. It seems like Vietnam was bound to happen. We couldn't stay out, but we couldn't leave either.

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lambaste me not

I don't see how everything in modern history led to Vietnam.

US intervention in Vietnam began in 1950, it could have easily been stopped before the "real" war began in 1965. The spread of the "red scourge" didn't happen any fasten after Vietnam.

And, China was not considered one of the "world's largest and most powerful nations", Mao's China was economically crippled from thirty years of continouss warfare. And was in no condition to be considered one, at first.

The spread of the Red Scourge happened in the early 1900s when the Communists took over Russia and then Russia took over surrounding nations becoming the Soviet Union. And China fell a bit later. Then our next door neighbor Cuba fell to Communism in the 50s. Then North Korea invaded South Korea (we won that war so we were feeling confident even though we were scared.) Then the scare in '62. My point is that it is easy to judge the Vietnam War now, when Communism is not a threat. But in the early 60s there was a real scare. Now I repeat, the Vietnam War became a travesty in itself and alot of lives were lost and ruined. But it is not as simple as saying we should never have been there. It should have been fought differently.

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lambaste me not

...that is the use of history, the value of hindsight. Errors of the past, can be detected and avoided in the future. This opportunity should not be wasted.

The threat of communism was strong at that time (I'm Finnish, I know...), but preventing a communist takeover in Vietnam I think hardly would have altered the global balance between the first and second worlds.

That, and we were fighting against the will of the Vietnamese people.

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"

A valid point. And we know that now, but not then. We also know that China was not as big a threat as we thought. Had we invaded Ho Chi Minh City and fought a war instead of a police action, we could have won, and China would probably not have bothered with it. But we relied on all of these secretive military tactics and wasted seven years lying to the American public that it failed.

I think we were afraid that if we simply did nothing, we would be seen as weak and that would have inspired more Communist revolts.

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lambaste me not

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"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

But ask the French, they had their fun time trying to hold on to Indochina with conventional military means, against the same opponent. They didn't fare too well. *cough*Dien Bien Phu*cough*

Regardless, I'll stick my, "it wouldn't have changed the global balance".

Not being disrespectful to those who gave their lives in the Vietnam war (Aussies included) but it was an unnecessary war.

The domino theory was an unfounded scare tactic.

Trot