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

To: Neocon who wrote (85605)	8/17/2000 9:49:56 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

My point is that Americans were simply not prepared to support a total war effort in Vietnam. It is easy to pretend to ourselves that this reluctance was caused by left influence or bleeding-heart liberalism, but it was not. It was caused by the hard, simple, truth that no vital American interest was being pursued. We could speculate all day about what might have happened if the will to fight had been there, but this ignores the fact that the absence of will was a basic part of the scenario. The only way to create the will would have been to create the perception of a vital interest, which was tried, but without success. Some things are simply too obviously absent to be successfully conjured up. What would have happened if Goldwater had won? Speculation is easy, but the fact remains that he didn't. Personally, I think that it would at most have delayed the inevitable. The enemy had all the options: if we escalated to an intolerable point all they had to do was back off, play at negotiation, watch our puppet government implode, wait for us to pull out, and start all over again. We were fighting a war with no vital interest at stake, which assured lackluster domestic support. We were fighting in support of a series of governments without the mandate, apparatus, or competence to govern. That's a losing hand, any way you slice it. I find it ironic - and a little amusing - that many of the same people that insist that a total effort could have led to "victory" in Vietnam are the same ones who declare so loudly today that American troops should not be deployed overseas except in pursuit of vital American interests. I wonder what changed.