The Vietnam War – 42 years Ago

Discussion in 'History & Past Politicians' started by longknife, Mar 30, 2015.

  1. longknife

    longknife New Member

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  2. mihapiha

    mihapiha Active Member

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    it is hard to believe that this war was started on a fake incident and would end up costing 2 million lives.
     
  3. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    What "fake incident" are you referring to?

    Do you have any idea whatsoever the history of the region is?
     
  4. mihapiha

    mihapiha Active Member

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    I thought it was obvious. My mistake...

    I was referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
    Here is the NSA's files available since 2006: https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/gulf_of_tonkin/

    They admit that the North-Vietnamese attack were "suggested", meaning "specifically faked"
     
  5. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    There were actually two Gulf of Tonkin incidents - one on Aug. 2 and one on Aug. 4, 1964. While there is general consensus today that the second incident didn't actually occur, the first one did result in an exchange of fire between US and North Vietnamese forces. Regardless, though, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was just a convenient pretext to get Congressional approval. In Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkins were like streetcars - they came around all of the time... if it wasn't this incident, it just would have been another that would have proven the pretext. Here's a State Department draft Congressional Resolution dated May 24, 1964 - over two months before the Gulf of Tonkin incidents: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v01/d169
     
  6. JHoneyman

    JHoneyman New Member Past Donor

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    The 'incident' is irrelevant to the main U.S. mission of preventing a Communist takeover of So. Vietnam by 'force of arms' by N. Vietnam. Even 'Giap's' horrendous military failure...'Tet' proved that the So. Vietnamese populace would not 'rise up' and support the NVA. Only American 'liberal' influence and 'defeatist' attitude could give N. Vietnam a win.

    American liberal politicians allowed NVA 'sanctuaries' to exist in Cambodia for years...only a 'hard day march' from Saigon...where NVA inf. divisions could rest and strike 'at will' and retreat back across the border.

    What a way to 'win a war.' :angered:

    Nixon eventually ordered a 'strike' against these sanctuaries in May of 1970 and was thoroughly 'trashed' for it. Nobody understood the reason(s) why it was necessary.
     
  7. mihapiha

    mihapiha Active Member

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    Thanks in clarifying that. I personally didn't study much about the Vietnam war other than maybe in a handful of books. I certainly don't know too much about it. I personally just felt if was a useless war costing 2 million lives without achieving anything. The key thing was (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the Gulf of Tonkin incident made the US go to war.

    In continental Europe the attitude towards war has changed a lot, and it's often hard for us to understand why the US government is so keen on starting (or getting involved in) wars all over the planet. Personally I feel that us having so many losses in WW2 might have changed the attitude. It also seems that the trust towards the government in that respect is gone. The denazification of our region worked well it seems.
     
  8. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    WW2 changed a lot of attitudes, Mihapiha... if the US and Britain had been more keen on intervening then, perhaps Hitler could have been stopped the moment he entered the Rhineland in 1936. It also taught the lesson that expansionist dictators must always be confronted and faced down and that ignoring a problem and putting your head in the sand through appeasement is going to make things worse instead of better. No more Munichs.
     
  9. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    The only historical regret I have about the war is that the Democrates weaklings did not go full scale and win this war. All they had to do was invade the North, end of the war. China was not going to get involved not with the conflicts it was begining to have with India, and USSR.
     
  10. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    Gulf of Tonkin fake was treason by the government against the people.
     
  11. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    What's the endgame, though? Do you think the North Vietnamese would just roll over and give up? Now, instead of fighting a guerilla war in the South you'd be fighting a guerilla war across the whole country and the North Vietnamese would still have a safe haven to operate from in China... ask the French how that worked out for them.
     
  12. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    You are right it would not have been simple, we would not be able to hold North Vietnam, but we could use it as a barganing chip to force them to stop supporting Charlie in the South. Do a Sherman march, destroy their infarstructure, roads, bridges, industry, everything. Then give them back the territory in exchange for peace treaty.
     
  13. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    That's what Rolling Thunder was about, though... they bombed every target they could find in the North. They dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than were dropped in WW2 on Germany and Japan combined and it still didn't bring them to the table. Johnson tried the carrot too - he offered to fund a "Mekong River TVA" to benefit the whole region but he was still rebuffed. The Vietnamese are an exceedingly stubborn people.
     
  14. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    Yes Rolling thunder was better then what the Johnson white house tried to do, but if the US started such actions in the begining coupled with boots on the ground the North would have been crushed and forced into guerrila warfare. Then the US could have began negotiations, before the American streets began to fill with protesters. The US lost the war in PR, glorious early victories would have made a whole different outcome. IMO
     
  15. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    There's nothing glorious about war, Oxy... especially so for the war in Vietnam. You would have occupied the North in a bloody invasion and then have been bogged down in continuous root canal of a counter-insurgency campaign against the whole country. The only way you could have any hope of maintaining this level of effort would have been to call up the reserves and expand the draft. How many PR points do you think that would have gotten you?

    And for what? Who are you going to begin negotiations with? The only way the North Vietnamese were going to negotiate was if you agreed to their terms as a precondition, and even then only if China and the USSR pushed them to the table.
     
  16. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    Like I said the occupation would be purely punitive, and we would not really need to control the territory, simply annhilate all military valuable targets, all logistics, and industrial bases. We would withdraw, and continue huge scale bombing, forcing the N Vietnamese to think hard about trying to take the South. If we did this early in the war, without the protests being in full swing we would have years to push the NVA to the negotiatin table
     
  17. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    Essentially, that's 1972 Oxy.... except with a lot more casualties. You're not getting it... from the North Vietnamese perspective, South Vietnam was their territory. They weren't going to agree to any deal that left the US there any more than George Washington would have agreed to a Peace Treaty that left the British in Georgia and the Carolinas. The only deal they were interested in was one that saw the US withdrawing so that they could take over the South on their own timetable. Even that deal would have been hard for you to get if you cut off the shipping lanes for Soviet aid... then you would have forced the North Vietnamese to depend more heavily on the Chinese and the Chinese had no relations with the US at all. In fact, China was right on the cusp of the Cultural Revolution... how do you figure it would have turned out if Mao had told those hordes of red book-waving followers to go south and fight the imperialist invaders?
     
  18. Oxymoron

    Oxymoron Well-Known Member

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    I understand your position and not nessacarily disagreeing 100%, but I am Pretty sure in your scenario the result would end up much same way as Korea
     
  19. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    You know what the difference was in Korea? It was that the South Koreans were more committed to the fight than the South Vietnamese were. It's as simple as that. Wars are always going to be decided by the people who live there on the ground - foreign armies come and go... but it's the people who remain. Whatever they decide is what's going to prevail. That's why fighting the Taliban is futile... fight them or not, but it's going to be the Afghan people themselves who decide whether they come back into power or not. It's the same with ISIS in Iraq or the Russians in Eastern Ukraine. In the end, the people decide. That's democracy.
     
  20. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    The Gulf of Tonkin "Incident" occurred long after the initial American intervention in the area.
     
  21. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    I was not trying to attack anyone or anything.

    The US first sent "advisors" to Vietnam during the Eisenhower Administration! The US was concerned about the area during WWII. JFK started the Special Forces (Green Berets) to train advisors to be more effective in fighting to protect US interests and minority tribes that were opposed to Communism.
     
  22. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    I was in 'Nam and departed there the day the Tet Offensive started. (It was a military disaster for the North and the VC as admitted by General Giap)

    We lost the Tet Offensive in the press and that was the end of it?

    Before going there I did some research in the library as I wanted to know what I was going to get into. Even then, I and many, many others understood that micro-manging would in no way end the war and it was more an effort to keep our economy going.
     
  23. Cordelier

    Cordelier New Member

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    Well, that answers the question when did Vietnam turn to sh*t? When longknife DEROS'd out! *L*

    Seriously, though, Tet aside... do you agree there was no way to get a favorable outcome there unless or until the South Vietnamese got their act together?
     
  24. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The military coups that JFK signed off on to remove Diem from power wasn't a "fake incident," it actually happened and from that day on America owned South Vietnam, it became our problem.

    JFK should have listened to his elders (Esienhower) who warned JFK not to get involved with the Diem regime they were to corrupt and not to get in a shooting war in the RVN. But JFK instead believed he was smarter and instead listened to those he surrounded himself with, his Harvard buds who were known back then as the ":young and brightest." :roflol:
     
  25. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    President Esienhower told the JFK administration if they fail to follow his advice and find themselves in a shooting war in Southeast Asia in particular the RVN it has to be fought as total war.

    The war could have been won in 1965 if LBJ didn't think he was a general and micromanaged the war from 10,000 miles away. The rules of engagement (ROE) that he forced upon the Air Force and Navy were insane.

    http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/readings/drew2.htm

    In 1968 the NVA and VC got their butts whipped big time. Gen' Giap and Uncle Hoe were seriously considering a conditional surrender until some liberal by the name of Walter Cronkite went on tv and lied to the American people that the war was lost, that we were defeated during the Tet offense in 68. This is when North Vietnam came to the conclusion that they couldn't defeat the American soldier but still could win the war with the help of liberals on the streets of America.

    In 1969 the war could have came to an end but as Nixon said the biggest mistake he made as President was this. -> http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/10/us/nixon-cites-vietnam-as-his-worst-mistake.html
     

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