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

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (52958)	10/18/2002 4:06:56 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

First of all, the French Vietnam War lasted 8 years, not 20. And we did not,per se, "give them Vietnam", the Allies decided to restore their former colonies. Also, even after Dien Bien Phu, the turning point battle, the French sustained a fraction of the fatalities that the Viet Minh did, even though they had been outnumbered. I am not judging whether they should have or not, I am noting that they lost far fewer soldiers than in one WWI battle, during the entire course of the war, which suggests that there is something to the idea that their will to fight had been undermined. We did not draft every eligible male, we had a lottery system, as well as liberal exemptions. The first US combat troops entered Vietnam in 1965. The last combat troops left in 1972. That means we had actual troops in Vietnam for 7 years, one year less than the French. As far as lack of commitment goes, we purposely conducted a war of attrition, which worked against us,instead of invading and conquering the enemy (i.e., North Vietnam). Early in the conflict, Johnson made it clear we would not invade, so even the threat was gone, allowing North Vietnam to send the bulk of its Regular Army troops to the South. Also, we waited much too long to try to close down the Ho Chi Minh trail, which was a pipeline for supplies and troops into the South. As for home front defeatism, that is the proper term to describe a large movement of people not only against the war, but claiming we cannot win it, and have no moral right to do so. Hanoi played directly to them, in order to break the political will to win. Oh, and by the way,in 1969, 71% of Americans approved of Nixon's Vietnam policy. In 1972, Nixon was re-elected in a landslide. Again, my point is not to decide whether we should or should not have intervened,but to point out that having intervened militarily, we did a poor job of it. Had we won, we would have saved the South Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians a lot of anguish, though. There would have been no boat people or massive re-education camps, Pol Pot would not have come into power, and instead of chaos, they would have gained years in economic development. Meanwhile, we would have demonstrated the kind of resolve that might have gotten us a Gorbachev as the leader of the Soviet Union years before........