4 ms·

Please. Even McNamara himself admitted that the "domino theory" was retarded. The U.S. should stop intervening in other people's business, period. Yes, the comm

by TriinT 17y ago

Please. Even McNamara himself admitted that the "domino theory" was retarded. The U.S. should stop intervening in other people's business, period. Yes, the communists were brutal thugs, but it was their country and they should deal with it. They should have the freedom to make their own mistakes and pay for it with their own lives. I don't see why American boys have to pay the ultimate price to solve a crisis which does not concern them. Oh, and if the communists were brutal thugs, so were the Americans. For example, CIA's Operation Phoenix (which killed over 60,000 Vietnamese) was the bloodiest operation against political targets ever, second only to the Nazis' terror campaigns in occupied Europe. You should travel to other countries. The U.S. is perceived as the biggest thug in the world, right now. There's no moral high ground after Uncle Sam's thugs butchered so many innocent people overseas.

anamax 17y ago
> I don't see why American boys have to pay the ultimate price to solve a crisis which does not concern them. Fair enough, but where is this line? I asked about WWII, but there are plenty of other instances where US got involved or folks argued that we should have. Which side is Rwanda on? How about Darfur? The Balkans? US inner cities? The pre-civil war US South? > You should travel to other countries. Do you really want to compare passports? I spend a lot of time outside the US. (I've got three more weeks planned this year alone.) > The U.S. is perceived as the biggest thug in the world, right now. That's because the rest of the world feels safe.
- TriinT 17y ago
  "Fair enough, but where is this line?" That's the difficult part, indeed. In WW2, the U.S. was attacked. The U.S. did not initiate aggression. Of course, it may be argued that the American foreign policy in the Pacific in the 1930s forced Japan to war. In WW2 it was quite obvious there was a threat to the U.S., and to the entire world. I don't want to claim that it was "the good war", but the U.S. won it without losing moral authority. Being the world police is an ungrateful job. If you act, people will accuse you of interventionism. If you don't act, people will accuse you of siding with genocidal thugs. It's tough. But look at what happened in Somalia in 1993. The trauma of that incident led the Clinton administration to avoid intervening in Rwanda. In the 1990s the Europeans were unable to solve the mess in the Balkans until the U.S. intervened. There are many ways of intervening, some smarter than others. The intervention in Vietnam was poorly-led. Both sides adopted an insane "war of attrition" doctrine. The U.S. needed to kill the entire population to win that war. It's kind of stupid to kill the people one's supposed to be defending. Some claim that it would have been wiser to invade North Vietnam and engage in a more conventional warfare in which the U.S. military power could be leveraged. I suppose the U.S. government was too afraid that China would intervene if that were the case, as it happened in Korea. Sometimes one needs to choose the lesser of two evils... Europe owes its stability to 50+ years of American protection. The European anti-Americanism is blasé, ungrateful, and naive. Right after 9/11 the western world was with the U.S. and approved the war in Afghanistan. It all changed when the U.S. decide to invade Iraq unilaterally. The perception of the U.S. as a thug is not entirely unjustified.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > In WW2, the U.S. was attacked. Not by Germany or Italy. (Yes, they were attacking ships that were supplying the UK, but that's not really an attack on the US.) > In WW2 it was quite obvious there was a threat to the U.S., and to the entire world. Revisionist twaddle. I think that WWII was a "good war", but by the standards you asserted above, you don't. If you don't like the results of your standards, you have to change them, not ignore them. > It's tough. It was easy just a message ago. Decisions can't be made in hindsight. > The U.S. needed to kill the entire population to win [the Vietnam] war. Nope. The US merely needed to consolidate the Tet gains, which wiped out the VC. The NVA wasn't ready at the time. (What? You think that Tet was a US military defeat? It wasn't. It was a US political defeat in the US, but that's a different argument.) I'm not going to call you on the back-pedaling but I do suggest a bit of research.
    - TriinT 17y ago
      "Nope. The US merely needed to consolidate the Tet gains, which wiped out the VC. The NVA wasn't ready at the time." That seems over-optimistic to me. Yes, the VC took a beating during the Tet Offensive, but Khe Sahn was close to ending up like Dien Bien Phu. There was combat inside the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The U.S. soldiers were demoralized and did not want to fight in Vietnam because they saw no point in doing so. The flow of NVA soldiers and supplies along the Ho Chi Mihn trail was never stopped though it was bombed to hell. Sure, the U.S. military could have consolidated the Tet gains, but at what political cost?! Instead of fighting at a tactical level and failing, the U.S. military could have fought at a strategic level. One great idea would be to destroy the enemy's logistics. Though they bombed the railroad in the North, the U.S. only mined the Haiphong harbour in 1972, when the war was already lost. They should have focused on mining harbors in 1965 so that the Soviet SAM missiles, AK-47s, RPGs and land mines could never get to the VC and NVA forces. Instead, the U.S. decided to fight at a tactical level. Burning villages and villagers. Spreading agent orange all over to kill vegetation, and condemning generations to come to cancer and other illnesses. Last but not least, there's no comparison between WW2 and Vietnam. The U.S. fought the Nazis and the Japs to liberate occupied countries. In Vietnam there was no occupation by an external country. The U.S. messed up with a sovereign country's internal problems, and it lost the war it could have won. Sure, the Soviets were playing a role behind the curtains, but the U.S. did the same during 1954-1965.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
The U.S. should stop intervening in other people's business, period. Sounds like a great blurb for a breakfast cereal but not much of a policy. How would you handle global trade? Competition between nations for resources? Ideological world-wide battles that run hot or cold, like we had with communism or Nazism? Struggles to control pollution? It was true 80 years ago but it's even more true today: everything is all mixed up. Americans are everywhere, making deals on everything. People in Indiana sell things to people in China via E-bay (and vice-versa). The world is simply too complex. Everybody's business is ours (and vice-versa). When we quit in Vietnam we left a lot more people to die at the hands of the communists than died during our intervention. History does not lend itself to slogans.
- TriinT 17y ago
  There seems to be a misunderstanding here. We haven't agreed on what we mean by "intervention". When I say that the U.S. should stop intervening in other people's business, I mean that the U.S. should stop planting brutal dictatorships around the world. These may satisfy Washington's interests in the short term, but they're a disaster in the long term. In the 1950s a left-wing government was elected in Iran, and the CIA and the MI6 orchestrated a coupe to depose the democratically elected government and plant a dictatorship. Same happened in Chile in the 1970s. Sure, back then there was a threat of the having the Cold War turning very, very hot indeed, and sometimes pawns have to be sacrificed. But people don't easily forget. This sort of Uncle Sam's "baby-sitting" prevents the people from doing mistakes on their own, and gives them a common enemy, the U.S.. Let them fail on their own. Especially so if their government was democratically elected. There are smarter ways of fighting for resources. I think the 1991 Gulf War was a prime example. Vietnam was an act of insanity that should never be repeated. If you're going to waste an entire generation of American boys and tear the fabric of the American society, the least you should do is make sure the war is worth fighting.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    There's a long thread of conversation here that we can have another day. I'd simply like to point out that you are using quite a bit of hyperbole. The Vietnam War did not "waste an entire generation" -- casualty figures were nowhere near that high. And "tearing the fabric of American society" sounds like something you'd hear in a political rally. American society's fabric -- whatever that means -- is doing just fine. Enough with the naval gazing. When I run into phrases like that, either in other people or my own writing, it's a red flag that there's quite a bit of emotion lurking there somewhere. Just something for you to think about.

by TriinT 17y ago

anamax 17y ago

> I don't see why American boys have to pay the ultimate price to solve a crisis which does not concern them. Fair enough, but where is this line? I asked about WWII, but there are plenty of other instances where US got involved or folks argued that we should have. Which side is Rwanda on? How about Darfur? The Balkans? US inner cities? The pre-civil war US South? > You should travel to other countries. Do you really want to compare passports? I spend a lot of time outside the US. (I've got three more weeks planned this year alone.) > The U.S. is perceived as the biggest thug in the world, right now. That's because the rest of the world feels safe.

TriinT 17y ago
"Fair enough, but where is this line?" That's the difficult part, indeed. In WW2, the U.S. was attacked. The U.S. did not initiate aggression. Of course, it may be argued that the American foreign policy in the Pacific in the 1930s forced Japan to war. In WW2 it was quite obvious there was a threat to the U.S., and to the entire world. I don't want to claim that it was "the good war", but the U.S. won it without losing moral authority. Being the world police is an ungrateful job. If you act, people will accuse you of interventionism. If you don't act, people will accuse you of siding with genocidal thugs. It's tough. But look at what happened in Somalia in 1993. The trauma of that incident led the Clinton administration to avoid intervening in Rwanda. In the 1990s the Europeans were unable to solve the mess in the Balkans until the U.S. intervened. There are many ways of intervening, some smarter than others. The intervention in Vietnam was poorly-led. Both sides adopted an insane "war of attrition" doctrine. The U.S. needed to kill the entire population to win that war. It's kind of stupid to kill the people one's supposed to be defending. Some claim that it would have been wiser to invade North Vietnam and engage in a more conventional warfare in which the U.S. military power could be leveraged. I suppose the U.S. government was too afraid that China would intervene if that were the case, as it happened in Korea. Sometimes one needs to choose the lesser of two evils... Europe owes its stability to 50+ years of American protection. The European anti-Americanism is blasé, ungrateful, and naive. Right after 9/11 the western world was with the U.S. and approved the war in Afghanistan. It all changed when the U.S. decide to invade Iraq unilaterally. The perception of the U.S. as a thug is not entirely unjustified.
- anamax 17y ago
  > In WW2, the U.S. was attacked. Not by Germany or Italy. (Yes, they were attacking ships that were supplying the UK, but that's not really an attack on the US.) > In WW2 it was quite obvious there was a threat to the U.S., and to the entire world. Revisionist twaddle. I think that WWII was a "good war", but by the standards you asserted above, you don't. If you don't like the results of your standards, you have to change them, not ignore them. > It's tough. It was easy just a message ago. Decisions can't be made in hindsight. > The U.S. needed to kill the entire population to win [the Vietnam] war. Nope. The US merely needed to consolidate the Tet gains, which wiped out the VC. The NVA wasn't ready at the time. (What? You think that Tet was a US military defeat? It wasn't. It was a US political defeat in the US, but that's a different argument.) I'm not going to call you on the back-pedaling but I do suggest a bit of research.
  - TriinT 17y ago
    "Nope. The US merely needed to consolidate the Tet gains, which wiped out the VC. The NVA wasn't ready at the time." That seems over-optimistic to me. Yes, the VC took a beating during the Tet Offensive, but Khe Sahn was close to ending up like Dien Bien Phu. There was combat inside the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The U.S. soldiers were demoralized and did not want to fight in Vietnam because they saw no point in doing so. The flow of NVA soldiers and supplies along the Ho Chi Mihn trail was never stopped though it was bombed to hell. Sure, the U.S. military could have consolidated the Tet gains, but at what political cost?! Instead of fighting at a tactical level and failing, the U.S. military could have fought at a strategic level. One great idea would be to destroy the enemy's logistics. Though they bombed the railroad in the North, the U.S. only mined the Haiphong harbour in 1972, when the war was already lost. They should have focused on mining harbors in 1965 so that the Soviet SAM missiles, AK-47s, RPGs and land mines could never get to the VC and NVA forces. Instead, the U.S. decided to fight at a tactical level. Burning villages and villagers. Spreading agent orange all over to kill vegetation, and condemning generations to come to cancer and other illnesses. Last but not least, there's no comparison between WW2 and Vietnam. The U.S. fought the Nazis and the Japs to liberate occupied countries. In Vietnam there was no occupation by an external country. The U.S. messed up with a sovereign country's internal problems, and it lost the war it could have won. Sure, the Soviets were playing a role behind the curtains, but the U.S. did the same during 1954-1965.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

The U.S. should stop intervening in other people's business, period. Sounds like a great blurb for a breakfast cereal but not much of a policy. How would you handle global trade? Competition between nations for resources? Ideological world-wide battles that run hot or cold, like we had with communism or Nazism? Struggles to control pollution? It was true 80 years ago but it's even more true today: everything is all mixed up. Americans are everywhere, making deals on everything. People in Indiana sell things to people in China via E-bay (and vice-versa). The world is simply too complex. Everybody's business is ours (and vice-versa). When we quit in Vietnam we left a lot more people to die at the hands of the communists than died during our intervention. History does not lend itself to slogans.

TriinT 17y ago
There seems to be a misunderstanding here. We haven't agreed on what we mean by "intervention". When I say that the U.S. should stop intervening in other people's business, I mean that the U.S. should stop planting brutal dictatorships around the world. These may satisfy Washington's interests in the short term, but they're a disaster in the long term. In the 1950s a left-wing government was elected in Iran, and the CIA and the MI6 orchestrated a coupe to depose the democratically elected government and plant a dictatorship. Same happened in Chile in the 1970s. Sure, back then there was a threat of the having the Cold War turning very, very hot indeed, and sometimes pawns have to be sacrificed. But people don't easily forget. This sort of Uncle Sam's "baby-sitting" prevents the people from doing mistakes on their own, and gives them a common enemy, the U.S.. Let them fail on their own. Especially so if their government was democratically elected. There are smarter ways of fighting for resources. I think the 1991 Gulf War was a prime example. Vietnam was an act of insanity that should never be repeated. If you're going to waste an entire generation of American boys and tear the fabric of the American society, the least you should do is make sure the war is worth fighting.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  There's a long thread of conversation here that we can have another day. I'd simply like to point out that you are using quite a bit of hyperbole. The Vietnam War did not "waste an entire generation" -- casualty figures were nowhere near that high. And "tearing the fabric of American society" sounds like something you'd hear in a political rally. American society's fabric -- whatever that means -- is doing just fine. Enough with the naval gazing. When I run into phrases like that, either in other people or my own writing, it's a red flag that there's quite a bit of emotion lurking there somewhere. Just something for you to think about.