Interesting but also wrong on many points. You were born after the war so you did not experience any of its realities. It wasn't just the justification for the conflict and mistaken ideas of foreign policy (meaning total lack of knowledge about the country of Vietnam) but also sending our young men into the jungle with no training for that environment, exposure to hard drugs, prostitution, language barrier, disease etc. It was on a collision course with native peoples fighting for their land against a foreign invader. One of my closest friends died there, plane crash into the Gulf of Tonkin. The plane and bodies were never recovered. He died for nothing more than imperialism.
I'm not criticizing you, but the revisionists. Were they there? Did they participate in the conflict? So many stories. It seems rather disingenuous to write about all of this if they weren't there or did not participate.
Sorry for all the criticism. Have never really gotten over the loss of my wonderful friend. We were 12 years old when we met. His name is on The Wall.
Very sorry for the loss of your friend, but:Yes, Lewis Sorely was in the Vietnam War.
From Wikipedia:
“ From 1966 to 1967 he served as executive officer, 1st Tank Battalion, 69th Armor, U.S. Army in the Republic of Vietnam.[4] From 1968 to 1970 he served as assistant secretary of the General Staff, Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.”
Vietnam was a disaster from the get go, a calamity and failure of our own making. For starters just look at some internal US assessments from the mid-50’s:
* NIE (August 1954): prospects are 'poor'
* JCS (August 1954): prospects are 'hopeless'
* Secretary of Defense to NSC (October 1954)
- Calls situation RVN: 'utterly hopeless'
- Urges U.S. to get out 'completely' ASAP
- Sees 'nothing but grief if we remain'
We had virtual no understanding of the Vietnamese Revolution, avoided any genuine political debate in our country and fed ourselves a narrow range of predigested advice. I could go on but………
My OCS Class graduated Ft. Belvoir in February 1967. By some quirk of serendipity, while my classmates deployed, I spent my tour traveling all over the US doing Personnel Utilization Review for a Major Command HQ. During the course of my tour I learned that about 30% of my OCS classmates made their US Homecoming from Vietnam in body bags. And for what?
I’ll leave this observation from Bernard B. Fall:.
“As a revolutionary war, the Vietnam struggle is and always has been political: military operations are meaningless unless they have a political objective.”
Then Colin Powell wrote:
“I recently reread Bernard Fall's book on Vietnam, Street Without Joy. Fall makes painfully clear that we had almost no understanding of what we had gotten ourselves into.”
"You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win."
Curtis LeMay led his bombers the entire war - lead plane.
He also said the A Bomb wasn’t necessary to destroy anything of industry, etc in Japan.
(It was necessary to break their will, as we know from the own documents of the Japanese. But that’s another story).
Winning wars by slaughter is well usually what war means. If we want to call it mass murder, fine.
Semantics. Legalist nonsense.
As far as mass murder, if you have a problem with mass murder in wartime then you have a problem with war. Which means a problem with human nature and history.
The Vietnamese as it turns out did come to the table because of mass bombing by Nixon.
I was there from Feb 1965 to Aug 1967 translating Vietnamese telegraphs and decrypting and translating Viet-Cong and North Vn Army coded messages. Later I studied Vietnamese history. I take the long view that Vietnam is much better off having suffered so many more dead than the U.S. Was it a mistake? Those of us who were there did not think about the politics of the event. When I returned home I was initially angry at students who protested the war but after studying the history of Vietnam and experiencing the different attitudes to the conflict by South and North Vietnamese during the Tet of 1974 in Paris, I realized how corrupt the Southerner elite were and how patriotic the Northerner students were.
The bottom line is that the United States should never have been involved in Vietnam. Over 58,000 Americans were killed for nothing.
At the end of World War II, the United States should have come home and focused on the betterment of its own country rather than pursuing a mission to control the world.
Interesting, but that last criticism of Nixon is a bit off. What he deserves eternal damnation for is his furtive and successful effort to undermine the peace talks for political advantage in the run-up to the ‘68 election. It will always be an open question as to how many American lives he was willing to sacrifice for the sake of his own ambition. FWIW the Burns doc vividly confirmed this chicanery by including the actual audio of LBJ telling him to back off a couple weeks before the election. Why he didn’t out Nixon is one of the biggest, most tantalizing and vastly underpublicized mysteries in American history.
But it is interesting to speculate on how the outcome could’ve been different. One look at the map of SVN indicates to any rank amateur such as myself that successfully defending the entire country was virtually impossible. Here’s another alternative scenario: what if we’d ceded the mountains - or most of them - and withdrawn to fortified perimeters around Saigon and DaNang? We might still be there, as in SoKo, but we wouldn’t have to pretend not to care about the outcome when we buy cheap shit from them now.
When in Saigon a few years ago, I stayed in a hotel room used by a former Saigon News reporter during the war. For years he reported faithfully, interviewing American diplomats and military leaders. Eventually becoming a well respected journalist in the South. As the plaque on the room’s wall revealed, with great pride, he had been a spy for the north the entire time.
Both Trump and the war in Ukraine — i.e. Russia going “rogue” — can be reliably traced back to the Bush/Cheney War on Terror, a Second Vietnam if there ever was one
Interesting but also wrong on many points. You were born after the war so you did not experience any of its realities. It wasn't just the justification for the conflict and mistaken ideas of foreign policy (meaning total lack of knowledge about the country of Vietnam) but also sending our young men into the jungle with no training for that environment, exposure to hard drugs, prostitution, language barrier, disease etc. It was on a collision course with native peoples fighting for their land against a foreign invader. One of my closest friends died there, plane crash into the Gulf of Tonkin. The plane and bodies were never recovered. He died for nothing more than imperialism.
I'm not criticizing you, but the revisionists. Were they there? Did they participate in the conflict? So many stories. It seems rather disingenuous to write about all of this if they weren't there or did not participate.
Sorry for all the criticism. Have never really gotten over the loss of my wonderful friend. We were 12 years old when we met. His name is on The Wall.
Very sorry for the loss of your friend, but:Yes, Lewis Sorely was in the Vietnam War.
From Wikipedia:
“ From 1966 to 1967 he served as executive officer, 1st Tank Battalion, 69th Armor, U.S. Army in the Republic of Vietnam.[4] From 1968 to 1970 he served as assistant secretary of the General Staff, Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Sorley
And many other soldiers agree with his views.
Vietnam was a disaster from the get go, a calamity and failure of our own making. For starters just look at some internal US assessments from the mid-50’s:
* NIE (August 1954): prospects are 'poor'
* JCS (August 1954): prospects are 'hopeless'
* Secretary of Defense to NSC (October 1954)
- Calls situation RVN: 'utterly hopeless'
- Urges U.S. to get out 'completely' ASAP
- Sees 'nothing but grief if we remain'
We had virtual no understanding of the Vietnamese Revolution, avoided any genuine political debate in our country and fed ourselves a narrow range of predigested advice. I could go on but………
My OCS Class graduated Ft. Belvoir in February 1967. By some quirk of serendipity, while my classmates deployed, I spent my tour traveling all over the US doing Personnel Utilization Review for a Major Command HQ. During the course of my tour I learned that about 30% of my OCS classmates made their US Homecoming from Vietnam in body bags. And for what?
I’ll leave this observation from Bernard B. Fall:.
“As a revolutionary war, the Vietnam struggle is and always has been political: military operations are meaningless unless they have a political objective.”
Then Colin Powell wrote:
“I recently reread Bernard Fall's book on Vietnam, Street Without Joy. Fall makes painfully clear that we had almost no understanding of what we had gotten ourselves into.”
"You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win."
Ho Chi Minh
When did Ho say that?
Doesn’t sound like him
Sounds like someone else
https://www.cfr.org/blog/vietnam-war-forty-quotes
Always great to see Curtis Le May threatening mass murder. The old boy never changed.
💩
Curtis LeMay led his bombers the entire war - lead plane.
He also said the A Bomb wasn’t necessary to destroy anything of industry, etc in Japan.
(It was necessary to break their will, as we know from the own documents of the Japanese. But that’s another story).
Winning wars by slaughter is well usually what war means. If we want to call it mass murder, fine.
Semantics. Legalist nonsense.
As far as mass murder, if you have a problem with mass murder in wartime then you have a problem with war. Which means a problem with human nature and history.
The Vietnamese as it turns out did come to the table because of mass bombing by Nixon.
Curtis LeMay only did his duty.
true: arguably, he was too good at a job that should not exist
Wat history yu be reading?
I’m not likely to take the CFR at face value.
I was there from Feb 1965 to Aug 1967 translating Vietnamese telegraphs and decrypting and translating Viet-Cong and North Vn Army coded messages. Later I studied Vietnamese history. I take the long view that Vietnam is much better off having suffered so many more dead than the U.S. Was it a mistake? Those of us who were there did not think about the politics of the event. When I returned home I was initially angry at students who protested the war but after studying the history of Vietnam and experiencing the different attitudes to the conflict by South and North Vietnamese during the Tet of 1974 in Paris, I realized how corrupt the Southerner elite were and how patriotic the Northerner students were.
Great job for a Quick Take✅🕰️
You covered a lot of ground, old and recent, at a good pace. 🔔✍🏼🪖🌐🇺🇲🤔📚🎯🐲🐻☪️🏴🦅
The bottom line is that the United States should never have been involved in Vietnam. Over 58,000 Americans were killed for nothing.
At the end of World War II, the United States should have come home and focused on the betterment of its own country rather than pursuing a mission to control the world.
Thank you. The leaders never fight the battles. If they did, perhaps war would cease. We should have learned by now.
Right you are, Susan.
P.S. I also am a lover of dark chocolate.
Well now.😅 I just ate some.
Hi boomers
If you’re against Vietnam
But for Ukraine
You missed the point
Again
Your fellow American and veteran
TLW
Interesting, but that last criticism of Nixon is a bit off. What he deserves eternal damnation for is his furtive and successful effort to undermine the peace talks for political advantage in the run-up to the ‘68 election. It will always be an open question as to how many American lives he was willing to sacrifice for the sake of his own ambition. FWIW the Burns doc vividly confirmed this chicanery by including the actual audio of LBJ telling him to back off a couple weeks before the election. Why he didn’t out Nixon is one of the biggest, most tantalizing and vastly underpublicized mysteries in American history.
But it is interesting to speculate on how the outcome could’ve been different. One look at the map of SVN indicates to any rank amateur such as myself that successfully defending the entire country was virtually impossible. Here’s another alternative scenario: what if we’d ceded the mountains - or most of them - and withdrawn to fortified perimeters around Saigon and DaNang? We might still be there, as in SoKo, but we wouldn’t have to pretend not to care about the outcome when we buy cheap shit from them now.
When in Saigon a few years ago, I stayed in a hotel room used by a former Saigon News reporter during the war. For years he reported faithfully, interviewing American diplomats and military leaders. Eventually becoming a well respected journalist in the South. As the plaque on the room’s wall revealed, with great pride, he had been a spy for the north the entire time.
Both Trump and the war in Ukraine — i.e. Russia going “rogue” — can be reliably traced back to the Bush/Cheney War on Terror, a Second Vietnam if there ever was one
Yes.
Fine work, but proves the point, "Our democracy" does not excel at foreign policy, then or now.
It’s not supposed to