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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (48250)	9/30/2002 11:29:39 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Lets see, we ended up with a "stalemate" between North and South Korea from way back in the mid-50s and North Korea is STILL menacing South Korea. NOT a success story. At an unconscionable cost in lives for a period of almost a decade we fought in Vietnam. Many who survived were destroyed by the experience. Drugs became prevalent after we invaded. Finally when Nixon had pursued the Vietnam cause for six years, we pulled out and turned it over to its own in mid 70's. Now Vietnam is NOT divided and is user friendly. Perhaps we should have never invaded. Certainly, this country would be better off had that - as John F. Kennedy wanted - been the case.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (48250)	9/30/2002 10:21:05 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "But what really was necesary was to convince the population of the South that THEY were responsible for the security of their country, NOT the US. And this reality wasn't apparent to them until the US enacted "Vietnamization" and began withdrawing." This is in the right direction. But the basic underlying problem the US had in Vietnam was that the South Vietnamese government, especially in the early part of the war, was hated by too many of the people who lived in South Vietnam. Bombing the shit out of North Vietnam wouldn't have done any good. Maybe it's time to revisit the real reasons for the disaster in Vietnam. The primary religion of the country, according to the CIA, is still Buddhism: cia.gov The US supported president Ngo Dinh Diem, on the other hand, was Catholic, had no support in rural areas, and even decided to repress the Buddhists: The Buddhist of Vietnam had grown increasingly frustrated with Diem's favoritism toward the Catholics. They had also found themselves the only voice for the masses of people who were being torn apart by a bloody civil war and called for negotiations and peace in an increasingly polarized situation. The Buddhists' frustration reached a peak in the central Vietnamese city of Hue on May 8, 1963, as the Buddhists gathered to celebrate the 2,507th year since the Buddha's birth. Just a few weeks before, authorities had allowed blue and white papal flags flown to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the archbishop's ordination. But now they cited a law, dating back to the French period, that reduced Buddhism to the status of a “private” religion and made it unlawful for Buddhists to meet or gather in any number without permission of the authorities. home.earthlink.net That's right! Diem made it unlawful for the majority religion of his country to meet or gather! The result was world-wide photographs of self-immolating monks. It was obvious to the US that the South Vietnamese regime was hated, and eventually Kennedy sent word to Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republican ambassador, to give private words of support to military leaders for a coup. Diem was killed in the resulting coup just a few weeks before Kennedy was likewise assassinated. The Vietnamese government went through another coup a few months later. The Vietnam war might have been winnable, but that "might" was not something that US military might could have obtained. Like many other cases, it was a matter of the hearts and minds of the people, not how many of them were killed by US soldiers. In fact, the presence of US soldiers has exactly the opposite effect on the hearts and minds of the citizens. No one likes having their nation overrun by over-sexed guys with itchy trigger fingers and bad social habits. To overcome that revulsion, you have to kill and kill and kill, but with South Vietnam already a US ally, that was not possible. You'd have gotten the North Vietnamese to surrender, eventually, by killing enough of them, but that tactic could not work in South Vietnam. -- Carl