Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (85076)	8/8/2000 7:57:34 PM
From: Krowbar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

<< Sure it did: Laos and Cambodia went Communist, and Vietnam became the hegemonic power in the region. The fact that it stopped at Thailand only shows the exhaustion produced by years of war....... >> And how did that affect the rest of the world? Was it worth the 50+ thousand American lives. What exhaustion? It probably would have gone on for another 20 years. How much different would the outcome have been if we withdrew 2 years earlier, or 3 or 4, or if we never got involved? If anything, we probably just delayed Viet Nam's experiment with communism. The point is that we were there to placate right wing gung-ho radicals. It's too bad that they get to conscript young men to do die in order to advance their agenda. Del

To: Neocon who wrote (85076)	8/9/2000 2:34:42 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Vietnam became the hegemonic power in the region. The fact that it stopped at Thailand only shows the exhaustion produced by years of war....... Cambodia and Laos did not fall because of anything Vietnam did: if anything, the fall of Cambodia was a consequence of our intervention there, and our installation of the preposterous Lon Nol. There is of course no way of knowing what would have happened if we had let Sihanouk remain, but it could hardly have been worse. The failure of Thailand to "fall" as predicted had nothing at all to do with the exhaustion of war. It had a great deal to do with the fact that Thailand was never anybody's colony. The post-colonial strains that the Communists exploited effectively in Indochina did not exist in Thailand. There is nothing we could have done to prevent the Communists from taking power in Vietnam; they earned the mandate and the right to rule by providing the only effective opposition to the detested French invaders. We backed the wrong horse, and paid the price.