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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Bruce L who wrote (148677)10/22/2004 2:30:54 PM
From: cnyndwllr  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Bruce, whoa there. Let me see if I've got this right:

The Vietnamese were disadvantaged because we had spilled so much blood and treasure fighting for them,

The NVA were better fighters than they were,

The few tanks the NVA had were superior to the choppers we gave the S. Vietnamese and taught them to use along with all those other arms, artillery and military hardware we'd supplied,

and even if they weren't armed better, the "moral superiority of the victor trumps the "military superiority" of the loser?

And all this demonstrates that the neocon interventionalist, nation-building theories are correct?

I don't see it. I think that our attempts to force people of another culture to do the "right thing" will ultimately prove to be based on the false assumption that out military might gives us that power. I think that if the South Vietnamese had been forced into fighting versus quitting sooner, they'd have quit sooner. I think they were better armed but not enough of them were willing to commit their lives for their cause. I think we kept fighting their fight because we knew that they were never "ready to assume their own defense just yet." Sound familiar? If it doesn't it might soon in Iraq.

No matter how you turn it, it appears that the "enemy" in Vietnam was destined to win and our "protectorate South Vietnamese government" was destined to fall under the weight of too little popular support and too little commitment.

The tragedy was that we ignored reality and kept pouring the blood of our young into a glass with a hole in the bottom of it. When we did that we had plenty of people who were willing to find theories that could explain away reality and postulate a fix just around the corner. And the lives just kept pouring away until finally we "lost."

And "losing" was such a tragedy for America because......?
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