How I began to teach about the Vietnam War

[Berzerker]

Did Horowitz blame the US withdrawal for Pol Pot? I thought his rise was a result of the chaos ensuing from our bombing campaigns along Cambodia's border and it was the Vietnamese who ended his reign once we left the country to them. I dont think we were gonna invade Cambodia to stop him when we had trouble hanging onto S Vietnam.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Did Horowitz blame the US withdrawal for Pol Pot? I thought his rise was a result of the chaos ensuing from our bombing campaigns along Cambodia's border and it was the Vietnamese who ended his reign once we left the country to them. I dont think we were gonna invade Cambodia to stop him when we had trouble hanging onto S Vietnam.

Long simmering resentment by Khmers against Chinese and Vietnamese people seemed to be always there and it didnt take long before the ethnic cleansing during the war began. Its Ironic that Horowitz is oblivious to the fact that it was Pro US Khmer government that began the ethnic cleanings almost immediately.

AS for some saying Vietnam couldn't be won. Nonsense.
General Abrams, like General Petraeus in Iraq, completely changed the situation.
BUt the Dems took over and like in Iraq withdrew all support.

Sure Germany could have won WW2 as well, Japan could have won WW2, Russia could have won in Afghanistan, China could have won Korea, US could have won in Iraq, Napoleon could have won in Russia, Turkey could have won in Poland, Persia could have won in Greece, Rome could have won in Germany and so on for every war and every battle that ever was fought.

Iam sure Iraq is a shinning model, how the Middle East works when it come to allying with enemies. 100% it would have worked out completely fine.
Just like the last time the US decided it would arm, train and fund certain "freedom fighters" allies in Afghanistan.

 

[Zkribbler]

Just like the last time the US decided it would arm, train and fund certain "freedom fighters" allies in Afghanistan.

We armed and funded the local freedom fighters. The Pakistanis trained them.

And they kicked out the bloody-handed Soviet invaders. It was only later that they fell to fighting among themselves.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Arming and encouraging rebels is a time honored strategy that isn't going anywhere any time soon...if ever. That isn't the same thing as bogging your military down in a civil war. Basically, nothing unites the sides in a civil war faster than giving them a foreign invader to hate together. It's just pointlessly stupid and arrogant.

 

[Zkribbler]

Long resentment by Khmers against Chinese and Vietnamese people seemed to be always there and it didnt take long before the ethnic cleansing during the war began. Its Ironic that Horowitz is oblivious to the fact that it was Pro US Khmer government that began this almost immediately.

By "ethnic cleansing" do you mean exiling the communist Vienamese who were supporting ousted Prince Sihanouk, and who Sihanouk was urging to attack government troops?

 

[FriendlyFire]

By "ethnic cleansing" do you mean exiling the communist Vienamese who were supporting ousted Prince Sihanouk, and who Sihanouk was urging to attack government troops?

Ethnic cleansing definition is pretty clear.
As I said Resentment by the Khmer of the Vietnamese was always there under the surface and the first ethnic cleansing was conducted by the Pro-US Khmer government. I hesitate to use Genocide because larges numbers of Vietnamese manage to flee Cambodia.

Hundreds of peasants were killed and whole villages were laid waste during the repression. the name of Lon Nol became associated with ruthless repression throughout Cambodia.

Massacre of the Vietnamese

Most of the population, urban and rural, took out their anger and frustrations on the nation's Vietnamese population. Lon Nol's call for 10,000 volunteers to boost the manpower of Cambodia's poorly equipped, 30,000-man army, managed to swamp the military with over 70,000 recruits.[59] Rumours abounded concerning a possible PAVN offensive aimed at Phnom Penh itself. Paranoia flourished and this set off a violent reaction against the nation's 400,000 ethnic Vietnamese

Lon Nol hoped to use the Vietnamese as hostages against PAVN/NLF activities, and the military set about rounding them up into detention camps.[57] That was when the killing began. In towns and villages all over Cambodia, soldiers and civilians sought out their Vietnamese neighbors in order to murder them.[60] On 15 April, the bodies of 800 Vietnamese floated down the Mekong River and into South Vietnam.

Significantly, no Cambodians—including the Buddhist community—condemned the killings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War

 

[Zkribbler]

AS for some saying Vietnam couldn't be won. Nonsense.

General Abrams, like General Petraeus in Iraq, completely changed the situation.

BUt the Dems took over and like in Iraq withdrew all support.

Revise history much?

It was the Dems who escalated the War in Vietnam and who introduced first U.S. "advisers" and later, U.S. line troops.

It was Republicans Nixon and Kissinger who took over and negotiated the peace treaty, which led to the U.S. pullout.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Revise history much?

Well, yes, he does actually. All the time.

 

[abradley]

Revise history much?

It was the Dems who escalated the War in Vietnam and who introduced first U.S. "advisers" and later, U.S. line troops.

It was Republicans Nixon and Kissinger who took over and negotiated the peace treaty, which led to the U.S. pullout.

If historians didn't revise history we'd still believe history as written by propagandists, there should be a constant review.

The peace treaty called for the pull out, but Nixon promised the South Vietnamese we'd support them if the North invaded, in '73 they invaded and w/US help the the North took a beating. Then the Dems took over and cut supplies to near nothing, at the same time the NVA were getting more supplies then ever from Russia and China. In '75 the NVA tested the waters with a small force to see if the US would back the South Vietnamese, we didn't, the NVA then flooded across the border.

We armed and funded the local freedom fighters. The Pakistanis trained them.

And they kicked out the bloody-handed Soviet invaders. It was only later that they fell to fighting among themselves.

Yes, and the Taliban came in from Pakistan to put an end to the warlords battling, they did and started their Taliban rule

<snip>

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Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Zkribbler]

No, in July '73 there was talk in the North about carrying on the war, but the Politburo rejected the idea. There was no invasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_the_Vietnam_War

When you say the Dems "took over," to what are you referring? All though the war, the Dems controlled both houses of Congress. Republican Nixon took over the White House in '68; he was followed by Ford. What did the Dems take over???

Yes, and the Taliban came in from Pakistan to put an end to the warlords battling, they did and started their Taliban rule

I see. So you're saying that Soviet rule in Afghanistan was a good thing?

I say that routing the Soviets out of a nation, the control of which left them just one nation away from achieving their centuries' old dream of a port on the Indian Ocean, was a good thing.

In contrast, the Taliban were just a bunch of religious fanatics who were really annoying but who posed no direct threat to the U.S. It was only later, when they gave safe harbor to al Qaeda, that they stepped over the line.

Hundreds of peasants were killed and whole villages were laid waste during the repression. the name of Lon Nol became associated with ruthless repression throughout Cambodia...

FriendlyFire, thank you for this. I have no present recollection of this aspect of the conflict. I don't know if I've always been unaware of it, or whether I knew of it at the time but simply ignored it because I really loathed the North Vietnamese.

 

[abradley]

No, in July '73 there was talk in the North about carrying on the war, but the Politburo rejected the idea. There was no invasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_the_Vietnam_War

When you say the Dems "took over," to what are you referring? All though the war, the Dems controlled both houses of Congress. Republican Nixon took over the White House in '68; he was followed by Ford. What did the Dems take over???

Yes, I was mistaken it was '72.

As for Dem control, how much control did they have, enough to override Repub opposition? In '73 (your link) they enacted the war powers act.

I see. So you're saying that Soviet rule in Afghanistan was a good thing?

Where did I post that?

 

[Gary Childress]

I would hope that we can all agree on a few things at least. At the very least there shouldn't have been a draft during the Vietnam war. If anyone wants to potentially die in someone else's civil war then it should be optional not mandatory. Furthermore if the army issued orders to an all volunteer force to participate in someone else's civil war then there should have been the option available for soldiers to refuse if they didn't want to go. The US military is here to defend the US not fight in someone else's dirty Civil War.

 

[Flying Pig]

I would hope that we can all agree on a few things at least. At the very least there shouldn't have been a draft during the Vietnam war. If anyone wants to potentially die in someone else's civil war then it should be optional not mandatory. Furthermore if the army issued orders to an all volunteer force to participate then there should have been the option available for soldiers to refuse if they didn't want to go. The US military is here to defend the US not fight in someone else's dirty Civil War.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that - as a member of the military, you don't get to pick and choose where you want to be deployed, still less spend years being paid, fed and looked after on the condition that you prepare for war only to turn around and decide you'd rather sit this one out. There are lots of things to be said about the decision to use force overseas, whether it should be purely in the hands of the executive or require approval from the legislature or from a referendum - but once the decision is made, they're marching orders, not polite marching requests.

 

[Cheetah]

polite marching requests

Has a nice ring to it though.

 

[Gary Childress]

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that - as a member of the military, you don't get to pick and choose where you want to be deployed, still less spend years being paid, fed and looked after on the condition that you prepare for war only to turn around and decide you'd rather sit this one out. There are lots of things to be said about the decision to use force overseas, whether it should be purely in the hands of the executive or require approval from the legislature or from a referendum - but once the decision is made, they're marching orders, not polite marching requests.

To be charitable, I think you may be misreading my post you are responding to. I added a clarification to it after you posted. I hope that helps you understand it better. Let me know if you need further clarification.

 

[abradley]

The public turned against they war because

body count =/= victory
The war was on TV every night and nobody liked what they saw
The rising youth culture of the Baby boomers turned against it, ("Hair" was better than "The A Team")

Very good point. Our media was free to show everything. What about North Vietnam, read an article by an American photographer who visited North Vietnam recently and interviewed North Vietnamese photographers who'd documented the war.

They reviewed photos and the American asked why everybody was smiling in their photos, their reply was 'We were ordered to take only smiling photos.'

In WW2 no photos of American dead were allowed until after D-Day.

 

[abradley]

This is what Horowitz does, and it's kind of my point. He started off on the fringe of the antiwar movement, then swung violently to the other end of things to be a neocon. What he has to say about this stuff is deeply unreliable, no matter where it's coming from. The fact that he was so closely involved in pushing the Bush administration's agenda at the outbreak of the war ought to be proof enough; it'd be like uncritically accepting the stories that Manstein or Guderian told about the Great Patriotic War. So he supported the war in '03, opposed it in '06, swung back to supporting it in the last few years. Seems to me that you should find better copypasta.

'Fringe', where'd you get that? How about a link to his not supporting the Iraq war?

As far as the modern Dolchstoßlegende about victory in Vietnam, the case rests on bizarre premises. South Vietnam died because the ARVN collapsed in the face of the PAVN's final offensive in the spring of 1975. Allegedly, American support would have been able to shore up the ARVN and prevent the collapse of South Vietnam, had the political will to do so existed, and it did not. Therefore, the fault supposedly lies with the lack of political will.

Disagree, we promised them support if they accepted a treaty that left them in a untenable position, we were honor bound to fulfill the promise.

This is prima facie preposterous. The US military serves at the will of its civilian leadership and the will of the voting public of the country. It does not get to do whatever it wants to do. I am sure that the American military could completely destroy Liechtenstein if it chose, but it does not get to do that, because nobody in this country would let it. And it may have been able to defeat the PAVN in 1975 - at the cost of even more money, more lives lost in combat, and an indefinite commitment to keeping a corrupt and unstable regime in power when that regime could not manage to do so on its own. As the American voting public and the American legislature defined the war, those were failure terms, and that makes Vietnam a defeat.

The US military was unable to create a functional ARVN. It was unable, within the existing rules of engagement, to eliminate the military threat posed by the NVA; it could suppress the PAVN and Viet Cong for a time, but it could not destroy either, and unless the US military stayed in a combat role in Vietnam for the indefinite future the PAVN would continue to pose an existential threat to the South Vietnamese government. And it was unable to develop a regime in South Vietnam that possessed stability and popular support, because that was not its job. The nature of the US military's failure exhibited some flaws in the organization, which were the subject of the reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s, but the fact of that failure was preordained, because no military on the face of the planet could complete that mission with those parameters - which means that the war should never have happened in the first place.

Those reforms I mentioned yielded, among other things, FM 100-5 1981: Field Operations, a statement of American doctrine and essentially the founding text of AirLand Battle. There's an interesting quote in there that quite clearly came about because of Vietnam. "Once political authorities commit military forces in pursuit of political aims, military forces must win something - else there will be no basis from which political authorities can bargain to win politically. Therefore, the purpose of military operations can not be simply to avert defeat - but rather it must be to win." Continuing the war beyond 1972 might have averted defeat, at a cost unacceptable to the American public. It would not have won, because of the war's impossible victory conditions.

That there are some former soldiers and ideologues interested in perpetuating the Dolchstoßlegende does not matter. The US military's tactical performance in set-piece engagements does not matter, either. They were empty victories that led nowhere, because the war as defined was a fundamentally unwinnable war.

Very good, if your interpretation is correct we shouldn't have accepted a cease fire in Korea, instead we should have fought until the American public forced us out ... what would South Korea look like today?

Maybe, if we'd kept our promise, South Vietnam would be another South Korea.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Maybe, if we'd kept our promise, South Vietnam would be another South Korea.

Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively. And if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past.-Richard M. Nixon

By 1968 the US had turned against the endless sacrifices and was seeking to exit the war, This was not a blind exit the US understood that and was prepared to spend lives and money for a lasting peace. But this commitment was reaching the end.

You can pretend this was the cause of Media, the rest of use who actutally lived through the war understood far clearer all the mistakes and costly stratergies, political corruption which lead to this point.
If you want to win the Vietnam war go back to ww2 when the US armed funded and trainned the communist North Vietnamese to fight against the Japanese.

 

[abradley]

By 1968 the US had turned against the endless sacrifices and was seeking to exit the war, This was not a blind exit the US understood that and was prepared to spend lives and money for a lasting peace. But this commitment was reaching the end.

You can pretend this was the cause of Media, the rest of use who actutally lived through the war understood far clearer all the mistakes and costly stratergies, political corruption which lead to this point.
If you want to win the Vietnam war go back to ww2 when the US armed funded and trainned the communist North Vietnamese to fight against the Japanese.

I joined the USAF in 1954 and served continuously until 1976.

 

[Agent327]

And the surprising point of that statement is that it seems to have left you almost as devoid of actual knowledge as the person in the OP. As Dachs extensive posting might have made clear, it was not 'the media' that blundered in Vietnam, but simple the entire US administration under successive presidents.

But perhaps you'd have preferred a situation where 'the media' would have hid such blunders from the public.