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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: TimF who wrote (144307)8/28/2004 9:42:03 AM
From: GST  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Tom, where do you think people get their estimates? On the US side, what person would have a better sense of "body count" than MacNamara? The numbers used in published articles are usually unreferenced. The Vietnamese numbers provide a breakdown -- and they correspond with reports of 1 million killed (soldiers in the north), and 3 million killed (soldiers and civilians in the north). They also provide a sense of the scale of the killing in the south, where we were very active in stopping people from "becoming communists" -- often by killing them just in case we were too late.

In terms of defending an ally -- who would that be? The French? What were the alternatives? Perhaps a country called Vietnam? And if there had been elections, who do you think would win -- Ho Chi Minh?

Killing millions of people under any circumstances is a weighty matter. When most of them are civilians it is much more tragic. When the reasons for fighting are at best, weak, and when there are far better alternavtives, then the total picture puts us somewhere between profound tragedy and crimes against humanity -- without any need to impune the reputation of individual soldiers who were all in a no-win situation. The "quality" of the force was no doubt degraded by reliance on the draft, and a war that turns into a qugmire, and the deep frustrations of the war itself and the conditions under which it was fought were ripe for breakdowns in proper conduct -- denying that just defies logic. But in the end, the character of the war was undermined more by the cloud that always hung over the mission -- and still does 30 years later.
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